“Lord, teach us to pray.”
—_Luke_ xi. 1.
“O Thou, by whom we come to God,
The Life, the Truth, the Way!
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod;
Lord, teach me to pray.”
Judith stood on the parsonage piazza; a voice within was unfamiliar,
then in a change of tone she recognized something and was reminded of
her afternoon at Meadow Centre; that laugh she had heard before, it
was not Don—it was—the face at the window looked out into the
shadows,—it was Richard King. He was a strong tower; he was safe,
like her parsonage life; she would go in and feel at home. No new
face or voice would ever come between and keep her away. Across the
room, as she discovered by a peep through the curtains, Marion sat
with some of her usual pretty work in her hand; Roger was not there.
“In the excavations in Babylon,” Mr. King went on in easy
continuation of the subject in hand, “a collection of bowls was
found, inscribed with adjurations of all sorts of spirits by name,
and with indications that could not be mistaken of medicines they
once held. You know, that capital R with which the physician heads
his prescription, believing it stands for Recipe, in the days of
superstition was understood to be an appeal to Jupiter.”
“That was consistent,” Marion replied, still bending over her work.
“Imagine our physicians writing at the head of a prescription: _In
the name of Jesus Christ_.”
“As Peter did when he healed the lame man.”
“Our old Meadow Brook physician prays with his patients very often; I
tell him he leaves nothing for the parson to do.”
“Roger says sometimes the doctor has a way of getting nearer our
Bensalem people than he has.”
“I am not sure of that. They tell the doctor a different kind of
trouble. You would be amazed—if you were not the minister’s sister—at
the histories people tell me about themselves, and their neighbors.”
“I am always delighted that people have a story to tell. When I first
came to Bensalem I thought no man, woman, or child, lived a life
worth living. Now I know the sweetest stories. Aunt Affy is one, and
Nettie Evans, and even her hard-featured mother brims over once in a
while with an experience.”
The coming back from Babylon to Bensalem brought Judith to the
consciousness that she might be considered an eavesdropper; at that
instant Roger entered in his shirt-sleeves, remarking: “Let’s be
informal, like Wordsworth. He used to take out his teeth evenings
when he did not expect callers.”
“But you _have_ a caller,” remonstrated Marion, when the laughter
ceased.
“Yes, and here’s another one,” Roger replied, as Judith walked softly
in. “Judith, must I put on my coat? I’ve been potting plants for
Marion and I couldn’t afford to soil my coat.”
“Yes,” said Judith, who was always on Marion’s side in influencing
the Bensalem minister to remember the claims of society.
“I wish you had stayed at home. What are you looking so full of news
about?”
“I have come back—to stay. No one else in the world wants me.”
“And we don’t,” declared Roger.
Something in the gleam of the eyes under Richard King’s tangled
eyebrows was a revelation to Marion. She knew his secret. She would
keep it. Roger was stupid, he would never guess. But how could she
keep it from Judith? Poor little Judith, was she growing up to have a
love story? To-night Marion did not like love stories.
She wished the tall girl with the serious eyes and braided hair were
a little girl with long curls.
“Did _you_ get a letter from Don to-night?” Roger asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you like it?”
“I—think I like it. It will not make any difference to me—only the
difference that it hasn’t made.”
“A good distinction,” remarked Richard King.
“May I go upstairs, Marion?”
“Surely—your room has been waiting for you as the Holy Land waited
for the Israelites to return from their captivity; nobody spoiled
either, or occupied either.”
“Mine was not seventy years,” said Judith, “although sometimes it
seemed like it.”
Marion did not follow her; it would not be an easy thing to talk to
Judith about Don’s marriage; she was relieved that the only view the
girl would take of it would be in regard to the difference it made to
herself.
When Judith returned, feeling as much at home as though she had been
away but for a night, Marion was matching silks for her work, and the
gentlemen were talking, sitting opposite each other in the bay window.
It had been so long since she had heard Roger talk; that “talk” was
one of the delights of her parsonage life. She had heard him preach
but once during her stay at Aunt Affy’s.
“That point about praying came up,” Mr. King was saying, “and I am
not satisfied with the answer I gave. The man gave his experience—it
was an experience of years—and then he asked me what was the matter
with his prayer, and I decidedly did not know. I know he has
fulfilled the conditions, praying in faith, and in the name of
Christ, and the thing prayed for was innocent in itself. He said,
‘What _is_ the matter with me?’ and I could not tell. He went away
unsatisfied. I went down on my knees, you may be sure, thinking
something was the matter with _me_ because I had no illumination for
him.”
Roger’s strong, brown hand was stretched along the arm of his chair;
he looked down at his fingers in deep thought.
“He said he had been praying months to learn if the petition in
itself were not acceptable to God, and had, he thought, studied a
hundred prayers in the Bible, comparing his prayer with the
acceptable and unacceptable prayers of the old saints.”
“He is determined to get at the bottom of it,” said Roger.
“I never saw a man more determined. I quoted Phillips Brooks to him:
‘You have not got your answer, but you have got God.’”
“He was not satisfied with that getting?”
“No. He said he knew he should not be satisfied until he had God’s
answer to himself. I think he has almost lost sight of the thing he
was anxious for when he began to pray. It has been worth a course in
theology to him.”
Marion dropped her silks; Judith was listening with all the eagerness
of her childhood. She felt sure Aunt Affy could explain the
difficulty.
“The thing that strikes me,” began Roger, “is that he may be like
those men sent to the house of God to inquire about fasting.”
“Well?” questioned Richard King.
“These men went to pray before the Lord and to ask a question. Their
question was about fasting; but fasting has to do with praying—your
friend has certainly been in a weeping and fasting spirit. They
asked: Should I weep in the fifth month separating myself, as I have
done these so many years?
“The Lord’s answer came through the prophet Zechariah. He understood
all about that so many years separating themselves and fasting. He
told them the fasting was not so much to him as for them to hear the
words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets. They might
better study his revealed will than seek to find a new answer to this
question of fasting. The fasting in itself was all right if they
wished to fast. ‘When ye fasted did ye do it to me?’ he asked. ‘When
ye did eat and when ye did drink, did ye not eat for yourselves, and
drink for yourselves?’ In feasting and fasting they had been selfish.
Then he gives them plain words of command, like the plain words the
former prophets had spoken. Obedience was better than fasting; better
even than coming to him to inquire about fasting. There is a parallel
in the history of one of Joshua’s prayers. He could not understand
why the people should flee before their enemies. Then he rent his
clothes and fell to the earth, the elders, also, all day, with dust
on their heads; praying and fasting.
“But the Lord’s answer was: ‘Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus
upon thy face?’
“Tell your old man praying and fasting are good, but sometimes God
has enough of them. He prefers obedience. The conditions of the
covenant had been violated by disobedience in both instances. Praying
in faith, and in the name of Christ, are but two conditions; hearing
and obeying is a third condition. Your man may be in the midst of a
very interesting experience, but I would advise him to stop
questioning the Lord, and try what a little obedience would do.”
“But, he’s a _good_ man, Roger,” urged Judith, “only a good man could
bear a trial like that.”
“Good men have favorite little ways of disobedience, sometimes; God’s
own remedy is more obedience.”
“I wish we could know all about it—the rest of the story, and, if he
ever has his prayer,” said Marion, to whom “people” were becoming a
real and live interest.
“Joshua had his prayer. The story of Ai is the story of how God
answers prayer when he has made way for it; it shows his disciplinary
government; it places obedience before all things; obedience makes
God’s answers to prayer a natural proceeding.”
“I’m afraid I have depended too much on prayer,” Judith answered,
troubled.
“Oh, no,” Mr. King reassured her, “only you have not depended enough
on obedience. I will call upon my old man to-morrow and tell him
these two stories of disciplinary government.”
“You are not going home, to-night, old fellow,” urged Roger, “the
girls will give us some music. We four will make a fine quartette.”
“Miss Judith, did you know I have a housekeeper?” he asked, turning
brightly to Judith.
“I am very glad.”
“So are we all of us,” declared Roger.
“A man and his wife I have taken in. She’s a good cook; the house is
a different affair; I wish you would come and see. The man gets work
among the farmers and takes care of my horse, which I used to do
myself. They are both grateful for a home and I am very happy to be
set in a family.”
Judith fell asleep thinking of Aunt Rody’s beef-tea, and wondering if
Aunt Affy would remember to keep the water bag at her poor, cold feet.
It was luxury to be at home again; to be at home and in the way of
obedience. That was God’s will on earth as it was in Heaven.
The next day the gentlemen went fishing and Marion and Judith kept
the long day to themselves. In the afternoon Marion and Nettie had
their weekly history talk, and, Judith shut herself up in the study
and wrote a story about a girl who learned a new lesson in the way of
obedience. The story was from a child’s standpoint; in writing for
children she was keeping her heart as fresh as the heart of a little
child.
“Judith,” said Roger that evening as the “quartette” were together in
the study, “I have a thought of work for you; you smell work from
afar as the warhorse scents the battle; how would you like to write
up the childhood of a dozen famous women? The study itself will be
delightful, and the writing more so. Call the series: ‘_When I was a
Girl_.’”
“I would _like_ it,” was the unhesitating reply, “if I can do it.”
“You can do it. You can do anything you like.”
“Then I will,” she decided, thus encouraged.
“But the books?” said Richard King, ready to place his own
bookshelves at her service.
“Oh, the books are easily found. There’s our school library, and the
Public Library in Dunellen, and everybody’s house to ransack in
Bensalem. Besides, my own library is no mean affair. Books and
fishing are my laziness and luxury. No hurried work, Judith,
remember. You shall not read the first one of the series to me until
a month from to-day.”
“Are you such a slow worker yourself?” Roger’s friend inquired.
“I am a plodder. And I believe in other people plodding. I believe
that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. I have sermons
laid away to mellow that I’ve been six months on.”
“But you do other writing and studying in the mean time,” said Judith.
“Oh, yes, while the seed is sprouting.”
“Kenney, you are planning something.”
“Yes, I am planning to salt down a barrel of sermons before I take a
new charge.”
“Mellowing, salting, sprouting,” laughed Judith.
“Roger, a new charge!” exclaimed Marion, startled.
“A new charge, my dear sister. I am too small for Bensalem, they need
a bigger man here.”
“But, Roger,” remonstrated Judith, with big, distressed eyes; “will
you not give dear, little Bensalem your best?”
“My very best,” he answered, solemnly.