Different Motives.
“WHAT a busy, cheerful little party!” exclaimed Mrs. Temple, as she
entered the study on the afternoon of that same day, and found all
her children sitting together, sewing, cutting, gilding, and chatting
merrily as they worked. “You remind me of the busy, happy scene outside
Jerusalem, beheld every year when the Feast of Tabernacles was kept.”
“What was the Feast of Tabernacles, mamma?” inquired Amy. Lucius would
have asked the same question, but he dared not speak at that moment
lest his breath should blow away the sheet of gold-leaf with which he
was trying to cover his wires.
“The Feast of Tabernacles was a yearly festival held by the Israelites
in remembrance of the time spent by their fathers in tabernacles or
tents in the desert,” replied the lady. “This was the most cheerful of
all the feasts, and was kept in a remarkable manner. The people made
booths for themselves of the branches of palm, willow, and other trees,
and for seven days lived in these booths. There were processions, glad
hosannas, and sounds of singing and mirth. The people enjoyed their
out-of-door life, and blessed the Lord for His goodness in guiding
the Israelites through the wilderness to the good land in which their
children now dwelt.”
“One could hardly keep such a feast in England,” observed Agnes,
glancing out of the window at the gray sky and the dripping trees,
which were dimly reflected in the pools left by the morning’s rain.
“I think that living in green leafy booths would be delightful in
summer, even in England!” exclaimed Lucius, who had managed to fix his
gold-leaf. “I should have liked, had I been a Jew, to have kept the
Feast of Tabernacles—better perhaps than to have helped to make this
model Tabernacle,” added the boy, who, after several hours of steady
work, was beginning to feel rather tired. “I should much prefer hewing
down branches, and doing the rough carpentering part of the business,
to gilding these tiresome, fidgety wires, which I am sure to ungild
again as soon as I attempt to fix them into their frame.”
“What, you are weary of your work already!” exclaimed Dora, as she
paused in her sewing to thread her needle.
“Not exactly weary of it now,” answered Lucius, “but I guess that I
shall be so long before this model is finished. It is all very well,”
he continued, taking up his knife to hack away at some stubborn
pasteboard—“it is all very well to make pillars and curtains while
the sky is cloudy, and the rain falls fast, and I am kept prisoner at
home; but suppose that the rain should stop, and the sun shine out,
and the weather become settled at last, wouldn’t every one of us like
running about in the fields all day, playing at cricket, or croquet, or
rounders, better than measuring and cutting and——there! snap goes my
knife, my new knife!” and with a gesture of impatience the boy flung
the unmanageable pasteboard down on the table.
There was much to justify the suspicion expressed by Lucius that
the work so eagerly begun by the Temples would, before it could be
finished, become a burden and a tax upon the patience of all. On the
very next day began a season of warmth and sunshine, which did more to
drive away coughs and restore vigor to late invalids than could all the
skill of the doctor. Even Agnes was able to spend hours in the open
air; and, except at mealtimes, Lucius liked to be out all the day. His
fidgety work, as he called it, could scarcely be done but indoors, and
the boy found it a grievous task.
“But it would be a shame not to go on with the model now, after putting
mamma to so much trouble and expense,” observed Lucius one morning to
Dora. “Besides, I engaged to do it, and no English boy must flinch back
from keeping his word. The new knife which I bought yesterday is not to
be compared to that which I so unluckily snapped over the pasteboard;
but I must hack away steadily, and show a good example to that lazy
puss Elsie, who since the fine weather began has not put another stitch
into her Turkey-red curtains.”
“She has stowed them away in her doll’s cradle,” observed Dora,
laughing.
Mrs. Temple was not surprised to find that the making of the model
now progressed more slowly; she was rather pleased to see the amount
of perseverance shown by her children after the charm of novelty had
worn off. Even the “lazy puss” drew her work from its hiding-place,
and would sew—for five minutes at a time—“just to please dear mamma.”
All the five Temples continued to work, when work had ceased to be
an amusement; but they worked from different motives. Those which
influenced Lucius—a manly, honorable boy—have been mentioned already,
as well as the simple wish to please mother which made Elsie prick
her plump little finger under her Turkey-red cloth. But if you could
glance into the hearts of the three other girls as they sit together
industriously plying their needles, we should find an example of how
the very same effect may be produced by different causes.
Amy had from the very first considered her humble work as something to
be done for her Heavenly Master, and this sweet thought made her take
pleasure in labor, which without it would have been wearisome indeed.
It was this thought which made Amy put fine hemming and stitching into
the long strips of white lawn which represented the linen curtains
surrounding the court of the Tabernacle, and even unpick any portion
which did not seem to her to be sewn neatly enough. Amy tried to give
her best, her very best work, because she was giving it to the Lord,
and some of the happiest hours which the little girl ever had known
were spent over her tedious curtains.
“I cannot think, Amy, how you can go on so patiently with what is so
tiresome, with no variety in it, and a kind of work which will not look
striking when all is done,” exclaimed Dora one day, as she unrolled
some glittering gold thread from her reel.
Amy smiled as she glanced up at her sister’s far more amusing
occupation. “If I could have worked anything so pretty as the veil
which you are making, I daresay that I should have liked it much
better,” she observed. “But I am pleased to do the plain work as well
as I can, as the embroidery would have been far too difficult for me.”
Amy’s curtains might seem plain to the eyes of most people, but her
mother looked upon them with special pleasure; for, as she said to
herself, “they are embroided all over with faith and love.”
Agnes also made steady progress with her not very inviting work, though
she took in it no great pleasure. Agnes regarded the sewing as a matter
of duty, and therefore plied her needle in the same spirit as that in
which she struggled to subdue her temper, and tried to put a bridle on
her tongue. It was the work which had been given to her, and she would
do it, without asking herself whether she liked it or not.
“This material, neither smooth nor pretty, is something like a type of
me,” thought Agnes, as she put the finishing stitch into one of her
mohair curtains; “but the goats’-hair had just as much its appointed
place in the Tabernacle as loops of silver and sockets of gold. I shall
never be as much liked and admired as Dora is—I may as well make up my
mind to that; but if God help me by His grace, I too may lead a useful
life, and be dear—at least to my mother.”
And more and more dear was Agnes becoming to her mother, who watched
with the keen eye of affection the struggle made by her eldest daughter
against her besetting sins. Mrs. Temple guessed what it cost Agnes to
bear a rough joke in silence, to lend pretty things which she feared
that the borrower might spoil, to give up her own way, and to show no
jealous anger when another was preferred before her.
“My girl’s character is becoming stronger and nobler every day,”
thought Mrs. Temple; “I thank the Lord for my Agnes, for I am sure that
it is His grace that is working in her heart. Agnes promises to grow up
into a really valuable woman, one whom her mother can trust.”
Mrs. Temple could not have said as much for her dearly loved Dora. The
lady was perplexed and pained to feel that something—she knew not what
it could be—seemed to have come between her and her bright, clever,
affectionate child. Dora, indeed, gave Mrs. Temple no cause to find
fault with her conduct; her lessons were well learned, her temper was
good, she was a favorite still with her brother and sisters; and yet
her mother felt that there was a change in her Dora for which she could
not account. Mrs. Temple was wont to have little quiet conversations
separately with each of her children at night: in these meetings they
were able to open their hearts more freely to their mother than they
could have done had a third person been present, and their parent could
speak upon religious subjects in the way best suited to the character
and age of each. These quiet moments spent alone with mamma had been
greatly prized by all the children; but Dora could take pleasure in
them no more, and her parent was conscious that such was the case.
The girl generally managed, only too easily, to forget all about her
unrepented sin when the remembrance of it was not forced upon her
now half-deadened conscience, but when her mother sat by her bedside
and softly talked to her about heaven, Dora grew uneasy in spirit.
She did not like to be reminded of the holy God whose law she had
broken—what pleasure could the knowledge of His truth bring to one
who was conscious of unrepented falsehood! The returns of Sundays,
nay, even the hour for family prayer, were never welcome to Dora. When
she repeated texts or hymns, as the rest of the family did, she had
the wretched consciousness that she was acting a hypocrite’s part,
and taking God’s name in vain. Dora’s life was becoming one long act
of deceit. She was secretly ashamed of herself for appearing so much
better than she in reality was.
“But my work—my beautiful work—my work for the poor—I’ll make up for
what I’ve done wrong by taking extra pains with that!” thought Dora.
And so the poor girl usually succeeded in winning much praise from
others, and in deceiving her own sinful heart, only too willing to be
thus deceived.
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