Stepping Heavenward Part 40

I said playfully:

"And mamma's consent is not to be asked ?"

"No," he said, "getting hold of what there is left of my hand. "I know you wouldn't say a word. Don't you remember telling me once when I was a little boy that I might go and welcome?"

"And don't you remember," I returned, "that you cried for joy, and then relieved your mind still farther by walking on your hands with your feet in the air?"

We both laughed heartily at this remembrance, and then I said:

"My dear boy, you know your fathers plan for you?"

"Yes, I know he expects me to study with him, and take his place in the world."

"And it is a very important place."

His countenance fell as he fancied I was not entering heartily into his wishes.

"Dear Raymond," I went on, "I gave you to G.o.d long before you gave yourself to Him. If He can make you useful in your own, or in other lands, I bless His name. Whether I live to see you a man, or not, I hope you will work in the Lord's vineyard, wherever He calls. I never asked anything but usefulness, in all my prayers for you; never once.

His eyes filled with tears; he kissed me and walked away to the window to compose himself. My poor, dear, lovable, loving boy! He has all his mother's trials and struggles to contend with ;but what matter it if they bring him the same peace?

JUNE 30.--Everybody wonders to see me once more interested in my long-closed Journal, and becoming able to see the dear friends from whom I have been, in a measure cut off. We cannot ask the meaning of this remarkable increase of strength.

I have no wish to choose. But I have come to the last page of my Journal, and living or dying, shall write in this volume no more. It closes upon a life of much childishness and great sinfulness, whose record makes me blush with shame but I no longer need to relieve my heart with seeking sympathy in its unconscious pages nor do I believe it well to go on a.n.a.lyzing it as I have done. I have had large experience of both joy and sorrow; I have the nakedness and the emptiness and I have seen the beauty and sweetness of life. What I say now, let me say to Jesus What time and strength I used to spend in writing here, let me spend in praying for all men, for all sufferers who are out of the way, for all whom I love. And their name is Legion for I love everybody.

Yes I love everybody! That crowning joy has come to me at last.

Christ is in my soul; He is mine; I am as conscious of it as that my husband and children are mine; and His Spirit flows from mine in the calm peace of a river whose banks are green with gra.s.s and glad with flowers. If I die it will be to leave a wearied and worn body, and a sinful soul to go joyfully to be with Christ, to weary and to sin no more. If I live, I shall find much blessed work to do for Him. So living or dying I shall be the Lord's.

But I wish, oh how earnestly, that whether I go or stay, I could inspire some lives with the joy that is now mine. For many years I have been rich in faith; rich in an unfaltering confidence that I was beloved of my G.o.d and Saviour. But something was wanting I was ever groping for a mysterious grace the want of which made me often sorrowful in the very midst of my most sacred joy, imperfect when I most longed for perfection. It was that personal love to Christ of which my precious mother so often spoke to me which she often urged me to seek upon my knees. If I had known then, as I know now what this priceless treasure could be to a sinful human soul, I would have sold all that I had to buy the field wherein it lay hidden. But not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of G.o.ds word by the loss of earthly joys, sickness destroying the flavor of them all, did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to know that I love Him-this is all!

And when I entered upon the sacred yet oft-times homely duties of married life, if this love had been mine, how would that life have been transfigured! The petty faults of my husband under which I chafed would not have moved me; I should have welcomed Martha and her father to my home and made them happy there; I should have had no conflicts with my servants, shown no petulance to my children. For it would not have been I who spoke and acted but Christ who lived in me.

Alas! I have had less than seven years in which to atone for a sinful, wasted past and to live a new and a Christ-like life. If I am to have yet more, thanks be to Him who has given me the victory, that Life will be Love. Not the love that rests in the contemplation and adoration of its object; but the love that gladdens, sweetens, solaces other lives.

O gifts of gifts!

O grace of faith My G.o.d! how can it be That Thou who hast discerning love, Shouldst give that gift to me?

How many hearts thou mightst have had More innocent than mine!

How many souls more worthy far Of that sweet touch of Thine?

Oh grace! into unlikeliest hearts It is thy boast to come The glory of Thy light to find In darkest spots a home.

Oh happy. happy that I am!

If thou canst be, O faith The treasure that thou art in life What wilt thou be in death?

STEPPING WESTWARD.

WHILE my fellow-traveler and I were walking by the side of Loch Katrine one fine evening after sunset in our road to a hut where in the course of our tour we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region two well-dressed women, one of whom said to us by way of greeting, "What, you are stepping westward?"

"What, you are stepping westward?" "Yea." --'Twould be a wildish destiny If we who thus together roam In a strange land and far from home Were in this place the guests of chance: Yet who would stop, or fear to advance, Though home or shelter he had none, With such a sky to lead him on? The dewy ground was dark and cold; Behind, all gloomy to behold: And stepping westward seemed to be A kind of heavenly destiny: I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound Of something without place and bound, And seemed to give me spiritual right To travel through that region bright. The voice was soft and she who spake Was walking by her native lake: The salutation had to me The very sound of courtesy: Its power was felt; and while my eye Was fixed upon the glowing sky, The echo of the voice enwrought A human sweetness with the thought Of traveling through the world that lay Before me in my endless way. --WORDSWORTH.

The End