A SABBATH-DAY.
Types of eternal rest, fair buds of bliss,
In heavenly flowers unfolding week by week
The next world’s gladness imaged forth in this,
Days of whose worth the Christian’s heart can speak.
VAUGHAN.
The Sabbath dawned clear and beautiful, bringing refreshing breezes
after the intense heat of the past fortnight. After the morning service
in the Methodist church Mrs. Lester stayed to the Bible class led by the
minister. The lesson was the eighth chapter of Romans, and it was
interesting to see two old men, with spectacles, bending earnestly over
one book, and talking over the meaning of the passage. The members of
the class were all men and women, and there was a very free interchange
of thought, as they looked into the Scriptures of truth. One face
especially attracted Mrs. Lester’s attention. It was a youthful face,
rather large, very fair, with light hair, blue eyes, and regular
features, not beautiful, but with a sweet, heavenly expression on the
high brow, and in the untroubled eye. In the class-meeting that followed
the Bible class, she spoke calmly, but with an unfaltering trust, of her
love to the Saviour, as being the master-passion of her soul; that she
loved God supremely, and found him to be a satisfying portion. Her
father, who led the class, spoke to her, with tears in his eyes, of the
time when her decrepit form would put on immortality, and would shine
with glorious beauty; when she would know no weary hours of pain, but
would dwell in the land where the inhabitants shall no more say, I am
sick, but where all tears shall be wiped away.
Yes, that sweet face was the face of a cripple. Her form was shrunken
and withered, and her limbs had never carried her whithersoever she
would. Her father took her into his arms at the close of the service,
her limbs hanging limp and as if without life, and carried her to the
little wagon in which he had drawn her to church. Mrs. Lester asked her
if she was not tired with the long service.
“O no,” she said; she would like to stay there till the evening
prayer-meeting at five o’clock.
It was not very often she could go to the house of God. She felt with
David, “A day in thy courts is better than a thousand: I had rather be a
doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of
wickedness.” O how she loved the house of God, the place where his honor
dwelleth.
This poor, crippled girl, who had known no happy childhood, who had
never been able to participate in its sports, who had always been
confined to the narrow precincts of a home destitute of all the luxuries
of life, who had been daily accustomed to pain and privation, had yet
found the true secret of happiness. It lay like moonlight on her
countenance. She had that within which many of the rich and wise and
great, who look at will on the glorious scenery of earth, who command
the treasures of literature and art, who surround themselves with all
the comforts and appliances of a home of elegant sufficiency, fail to
gain—calm peace in her heart, perfect contentment with her lot, and a
spring of never-failing happiness. Nor is she useless in the world,
though she has no worldly means to give, nor hands or feet to do her
bidding. The light of her holy example, her patience, meekness,
resignation, and faith, are treasures to the Church. Every Wednesday
there is a prayer-meeting in her room, of which she takes the charge, as
she can be always present, and the beauty and propriety with which she
speaks of divine things make her words very profitable.
In the afternoon Mrs. Lester and Norman went to the prayer-meeting. At
the close of the service Mrs. Day, to whom Mrs. Clayton had introduced
her in the morning, came up and asked her to go home by the way of her
house, as she wished to gather some flowers for her. The large garden,
filled with flowers and shrubbery, blooming most luxuriantly in that
fertile soil, looked cool and inviting. Mrs. Day handed Norman some
flowers as the beginning of his bouquet, and told him to go and pick
what he liked. Pink and white spireces, double China pinks, a few
lingering June roses, the pretty bee larkspur, the coreopsis, candytuft,
and verbenas, were gathered in profusion by Mrs. Day’s lavish hand, and
arranged in two bouquets for Mrs. Clayton and Mrs. Lester. “Four years
ago,” said she, “this garden was a bare field. I never was so
discouraged in coming to any new place.”
“You certainly have transformed it into a very pleasant home,” replied
Mrs. Lester. “Taste and cultivation, with such a soil as this, can soon
work wonders. You can truly sit under your own vine and fig-tree,”
continued she, pointing to a beautiful grape-vine that had crept up a
lattice, and inclosed with its graceful green curtain a verandah in the
rear of the house.
“Yes,” said she, “I planted that vine myself, and it is a daily
rejoicing to me, and a sermon too. It reminds me continually of that
true Vine from which we must draw all our life and sustenance.”
“It is well,” said Mrs. Lester, “to have divine truths thus brought to
our minds by the objects that surround us.”
“My prairie home,” said Mrs. Day, “was really beautiful; that was quite
to my mind; a nice house shaded with trees, adorned with shrubbery and
flowers, and looking upon broad fertile fields.”
“Why did you leave so pretty a home?” asked Mrs. Lester.
“We came here to be near a church, and to enjoy religious privileges.
For years after we went on the prairie our house was the home of the
preachers, and meetings were always held there. As the country became
more settled the services were transferred to a church, four miles from
us, and we at length concluded to give up our home to our son, and come
to spend the evening of our lives in a place where we could constantly
enjoy the services of God’s house. We have tried to make religion the
chief business of our life, and God has prospered us.”
“And you enjoy this new country?” inquired Mrs. Lester.
[Illustration:
No. 666.
WESTERN SETTLER’S FIRST HOME.]
“It seems to me,” she replied, “the oldest country God has made; such
riches as these are in the soil all ready and prepared for the seed of
the sower, only waiting for man’s coming to yield of its abundance.”
The sun was tinging town and prairie with his parting beams, and the
garden was already in deep shadow when Norman and his mother, loaded
with bright and fragrant flowers, returned home.