The Old Stone House Part 16

"Well, my dear, ignorant people are like little children; they will tell and believe stories about ghosts just as little children tell and believe stories about Santa Claus and his coming down the chimney. My dear little girl, never think of those silly ghost-stories again.

People die, and the good Lord takes them into another life; where they go or what they are doing we do not know, but we need _never_ fear that they will trouble us. It is of far more consequence that we should think of ourselves, and whether we are prepared to enter into the presence of our Creator. Our summons will come and we know not how soon it may be. When I think of our family circle, six of us under the roof to-night, I know that it is possible, I may even say probable that among so many a parting will come before very long. And, my little Gem, if it should be you, the youngest, I pray that you may be ready. I do not want you to think of death as anything dreadful, dear.

It is not dreadful, although those who are left behind feel lonely and sad. I look forward with a happy antic.i.p.ation to meeting my brothers and sisters, my father and mother, and my husband; it will be like going home to me. But, although I am old, the summons does not always come to the oldest, first. Tell me, my child, are you trying to be good, to govern your temper, and to do what is right as far as you are able?"

"I try when I think of it, Aunt Faith," said Gem, "but half the time I don't think; I forget all about it."

"I do not expect you to think of it all the time, dear; but when you do think of it, will you promise me to try as hard as you can? Will you try to speak gently to Tom, to forgive him when he teases you, to give up your own way when your playmates desire something else, and, above all, to pray night and morning with your whole heart?"

"Yes, Aunt Faith," whispered Gem, "I will try as hard as I can."

"G.o.d bless you, my darling," said Aunt Faith, kissing her little niece affectionately. "And now, go to sleep; it is very late."

With the happy facility of youth, Gem was soon asleep, but Aunt Faith lay wakeful through several hours of the still summer night. Her heart, was disturbed by thoughts of Sibyl and her worldly ambition, of Hugh and his unsettled religious views, of Bessie and her lack of serious thoughts on any subject. Again the sore feeling of trouble came to her, the doubt as to her own fitness for the charge of educating and training the five little children left in her care. "I fear I am not strong enough," she thought; "I fear both my faith and my perseverance have been weak. Have I entirely failed? When I look at Sibyl, and Hugh, and Bessie, I fear I have. Even the younger children are by no means what I had hoped they would be."

A terrible despondency crept into Aunt Faith's heart, and the slow tears of age rolled down her cheeks; but with a strong effort of will she conquered the feeling, and kneeling down by the bedside, she poured out her sorrows in prayer. She laid all her troubles at the feet of her Saviour, and besought Him to strengthen her and give her wisdom for her appointed task. Again and again she asked for faith, earnest faith, which should never falter, although the future might look dark to her mortal eyes, and again and again she gave all her darlings into the Lord's hand. "Give me strength to do my best," she prayed, "and faith to leave the rest to Thee,"--and gradually there came to her a peace which pa.s.seth all understanding, a peace which cometh after earnest prayer, and which those who pray not earnestly, can never know.

Aunt Faith knelt a while longer, but no words formed themselves in her mind; she seemed to feel a benediction falling around her, and a sweet contentment came into her heart. When she lay down again, sleep came, and for the rest of the night all was quiet in the old stone house.

CHAPTER VI.

SUNDAY.

Breakfast at the old stone house was later on Sunday morning than on week days, by Aunt Faith's especial direction. She gave all the family a longer sleep than usual to mark the day of rest and give it a pleasant opening, but they all understood that when the first bell rang there must be no further delay, and at the sound of the second bell they all a.s.sembled in the sitting-room in their fresh Sunday attire for morning prayers. Aunt Faith's rule was gentle, but there were some regulations which the cousins had been brought up to obey implicitly; this way of beginning the Lord's day _was_ one of them, and unless prevented by illness they never failed to a.s.semble promptly in the sitting-room, carefully dressed, and with pleasant, quiet demeanor at the sound of the second bell. This bright July Sunday, Aunt Faith received them with a smile, and when they were seated, she opened her Bible, and read in her clear voice the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, the beloved disciple of our Lord.

Then Sibyl went to the cabinet organ, and all the young voices joined in singing a morning hymn, simple and cheerful like the praise of creation at the dawn of day, when from the forest ascends the song of thousands of G.o.d's creatures, praising their Maker in the only way they know. The hymn ended, Aunt Faith knelt down, and they all joined in the Lord's prayer. Then came the pet.i.tion for the day, for a better realization of G.o.d's goodness, and a reverent spirit in the wors.h.i.+p of this temple; for forgiveness of sins and aid in forgiving the faults of others; and above all, for a spirit of hearty thankfulness and praise to the Maker of the universe, and loving remembrance of His Son the Saviour of mankind. With a final pet.i.tion for the aid of the Holy Spirit, Aunt Faith closed her prayer, and the morning wors.h.i.+p was concluded by the ancient ascription of praise to Jehovah. The conversation at the breakfast-table was bright and happy; there was no gloomy or sullen look, no fault-finding. When the children were little, their tempers often showed themselves on Sunday as well as on other mornings, but patience overcomes many obstacles, and Aunt Faith's unvarying effort had been so far crowned with success, that as they grew older, they grew to remember and even love the brightness of the Sunday morning breakfast-table. Habit is a powerful agent, and perhaps also the fact that Aunt Faith did not severely rebuke every manifestation of ill temper on week days, but allowed them to come naturally to the surface, helped to produce the placid atmosphere of Sunday morning. Her children were not afraid of her; they never hurried out of her presence to vent their bad feelings; she saw the worst of it, whatever it was, and at some quiet hour she sought the offender alone, and reasoned or rebuked as the case required. The cousins loved her dearly, and as her rule was easy, it was generally obeyed; love is a great aid to authority where children are concerned.

Aunt Faith, on her part, also, never transgressed her own rules; no matter what her cares, feelings, or bodily ailments might be, she never allowed them to darken the opening of the Lord's day. They were thrown aside as far as possible, and, in after years when the old stone house was tenantless and its inmates dispersed, their thoughts often turned with affectionate regret towards the bright Sunday morning breakfast table.

An hour later, the faint sound of the church-bells brought the family together again in the front hall, and, as every one was dressed for the day before breakfast, there was no hurry, no confusion. Aunt Faith had in early life seen much of tardiness, haste, and consequent ill temper on Sunday morning; at the last moment somebody would be late, something lost, and everybody cross in consequence; little biting speeches would be spoken, unnecessary comments made, and the result was, that the family almost always arrived at the church-door in anything but a peaceful state. Indeed, "Sunday headaches," and "Sunday temper," were by-words in the house, and, as a child once expressed it, "everybody's cross on Sunday."

With this example, (and it is a very common one) before her, Aunt Faith had striven to bring about; a different order of things in the old stone house. She had not confined herself to theory, but, for years she had made it a rule to examine personally on Sat.u.r.day all the clothes to be worn on Sunday, to inspect the strings and b.u.t.tons which are apt to give way under impatient, childish fingers, and to see that all was in order from the hat to the shoe-strings. She superintended the Sat.u.r.day-night bath, for she was rigid in her ideas of personal neatness, and the five little children always tumbled into their five little beds on Sat.u.r.day night, as fresh and clean as it was possible to make them. Not that this was the only cleansing time in the week, for they were taught to jump into their bath-tubs daily, but on Sat.u.r.day more time was given to the work, and it was made pleasant with nice soaps, soft towels, and all the little luxuries that children love; for children are made as happy by gentle purification as other little animals, and it is a mistake to suppose they dread the water. It is the rough hand they dread; to be caught up roughly, smeared with coa.r.s.e soap, sent into a s.h.i.+vering fit with cold water, rubbed the wrong way with torturing towels, rasped against the grain with stiff hair-brushes, and left to stand on an icy oil-cloth, naturally excites their terror. I imagine there are few grown persons who could endure it with equanimity. But Aunt Faith had no such method. She made the bathing-hour a happy time, and showed the little children all the luxuries of personal neatness, so that as they grew older, they kept up themselves all the habits she had taught them, as matters of necessity for _their_ own comfort.

Thus, trained in these habits, the children grew into men and women with physical health to help them in their contest with evil. And it, is a great help. Aunt Faith knew that all the cleanliness in the world could not compensate for the lack of G.o.dliness, but she reasoned that while first attention should be paid to the inside of the platter, certainly second attention should be given to the outside that both may be clean together. A clean heart in a clean body, she thought, was better than a clean heart in a dirty body; health and steady nerves help a man to be orderly and even-tempered, while nervousness, dyspepsia and weakness are so many additional temptations besetting him on every side.

This July Sunday, the cousins started from the old stone house with time enough for a leisurely walk amid the music of the bells, arriving at the church-door before the service commenced, without hurry, quiet and composed, and ready to join in the wors.h.i.+p without distracting thoughts. The church was full, Aunt Faith had two pews, one for herself with Gem and Tom, another immediately behind for Sibyl, Bessie, and Hugh. As the organ was pealing out the opening voluntary, a young girl came up the aisle and entered the first seat; Aunt Faith looked up and recognizing Margaret Brown, she smiled and pressed her hand cordially. When she visited Margaret, she asked her to accept a seat in her pew when ever she desired to come to that church, but the invitation had pa.s.sed from her mind among the occupations of her busy life, so that she was surprised as well as pleased when the young girl appeared. Aunt Faith had no respect for persons; she thought of them only as so many souls sent into the world, all equally dear to the Creator, and precious to the Saviour of mankind. That there were great differences in their lot on earth, that some were more easily tempted than others, that, some had apparently small chance for improvement and religious privileges while others found all ready to their hand, that some suffered trouble, affliction, sickness and hard labor while others seemed to pa.s.s through life without a cloud, she well knew, but she did not attempt to explain it. She left it all in the hands of a Higher Wisdom and addressed herself to the evident duty that lay before her. Some of her friends said that she was narrow minded, that she had no interest in the progress of humanity; it is true that she cared more about having the children of the Irish laborer, down on the flats, washed and comfortably dressed, than about an essay on philanthropy, and took more pleasure in aiding Margaret Brown than in talking about the sufferings of human nature; but perhaps she was none the worse for that. Once when an enthusiastic lady called to ask her aid in establis.h.i.+ng an International Society for Reform, Aunt Faith listened quietly, and then said, "I will join you, Mrs. B------, when I have the leisure time at my disposal." She never found the time, but in her answer, she was not insincere. If she had been left unemployed, she might have joined some organization for religious work, and esteemed it a pleasant privilege, but as it was, her daily home duties stood first, and as long as they surrounded her, she did not lift her eyes beyond.

The minister was an old man, who had officiated in the same church many years of his life, and hoped to die, as he expressed it, "in the harness." The people loved him, and respected his wishes with more unanimity than they might have given to a younger man; there was no discord, no restless desire for novelty among the congregation, and the various good works connected with the church moved forward at a steady pace, growing with the growth of the town, but not running into any violent extremes to the right hand or the left.

Mr. Hays, the venerable minister, was a gentle, kind-hearted man; the children in the Sunday school listened to him with attention, and their parents loved to hear his sermons. He had the rare faculty of interesting children, and when he addressed them, the teachers had no difficulty in keeping their cla.s.ses in order, because the children really wished to hear what he said. In church, among older hearers, the effect was the same; his sermons were simple, but all liked to hear them. As he grew older, he seemed to think more and more of the beautiful words, "G.o.d so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son;" on this text all that he said and did was founded, and he never wearied of telling his hearers about this great love, and urging them to give their reverent affection in return.

"If we were all like Mr. Hays, the world would be a very different place, Aunt Faith," said Hugh, as they walked home together; "I suppose he has had nothing but love all his life."

"You are greatly mistaken, Hugh. He has endured severe suffering, and no doubt the want of earthly affection has taught him to appreciate the dearer worth of heavenly love."

"I thought he had lived here in Westerton for forty years without anything to disturb his quiet," said Hugh.

"Because his troubles came to him long ago, they were none the less heavy to bear, Hugh. Before he came here, a half-brother to whom he had trusted all his little fortune, disappeared, carrying the whole with him; and not only that, but upon hearing of his loss, the young girl to whom he was engaged, broke her promise and married another.

Thus he was left doubly bereft; not only forsaken and injured, but also wounded by the discovery of treachery in those he trusted with all his heart."

"I could never recover from such a blow," said impulsive Hugh; "the thought of being deceived and betrayed by those we love and trust is fearful to me."

"It was fearful to Mr. Hays also, Hugh; after a short time he came to Westerton, and threw his whole strength into his work. It may have been a hard struggle at first, but you can yourself see how he has conquered at last; love is the groundwork of all he says and all he does, and his sufferings instead of turning his heart into bitterness, seem rather to have given it a new sweetness."

"Yes, that is why I like Mr. Hays. He is not censorious. He does not denounce sin so continually that he has no time to tell of forgiveness; he does not keep us so constantly trembling over the past that we have not the courage to hope for better things in the future; I like him for that."

Aunt Faith did not reply. She knew when to be silent, and she had long hoped that the gentle, fervent words of the good old man would yet bring her impulsive nephew into the right path. She knew that much harm was sometimes done by too much urging, and when she saw that Mr.

Hays' words had made an impression upon Hugh, she left the impression to sink by its own weight.

The Sunday-noon meal at the old stone house was always a simple lunch, prepared the previous day in order to give the servants full liberty to attend church. It was, however, abundant and attractive. In the winter, Aunt Faith added a hot soup, prepared by her own hands, but at this season of the year, cold dishes were the most appetizing.

Directly after lunch the family dispersed, Sibyl, Bessie, and Hugh going to their rooms, and Aunt Faith remaining in the sitting-room with Tom and Gem while they looked over their Sunday school lessons.

At half-past two, the children started for the church, and then Aunt Faith rested quietly on the sofa until it was time to prepare for afternoon service at the chapel where Mr. Leslie officiated, a mission in whose welfare she was much interested. There was never any regularity about attending this afternoon service; sometimes Aunt Faith would go alone, sometimes Sibyl would accompany her, and sometimes the three cousins would all go. This afternoon they all came down, and Aunt Faith welcomed them pleasantly; she knew that Hugh might have been influenced by the beauty of the weather, Bessie by Hugh's companions.h.i.+p, and Sibyl by the opportunity of seeing Mr.

Leslie; but she believed that all her children were truly reverent at heart, and she had large faith in the solemn influence of the house of G.o.d, so she always encouraged them to go to church whenever they would, and on this occasion she made the walk pleasant with her cheerful conversation.

The chapel stood in one of the suburbs of Westerton, where the houses of the railroad workmen were crowded together in long rows, with the smoke from the mills and shops hanging in a cloud over them all the week. Busy, grimy men lived there, careless, tired women, and a throng of children, some neglected, some apparently well-tended, but all poor. In the midst of this bustle and smoke Mr. Leslie lived and worked. When he first came to Westerton, this chapel was almost deserted, but now it was filled with a congregation of its own, a congregation drawn from the neighboring houses, the laborers and their families whose zeal and liberty according to their means, might have put to shame many a church record in the rich quarters of the town.

Aunt Faith and her party entered the door as the little bell rang out its last note, and took their seats upon the benches, for there were no pews, and the sittings were free to all. The organ was played by a young workman, a German, with the national taste for music, and when the hymn was given out, the congregation as with one voice took up the strain, and in a powerful burst of melody, carried the words, as it were, high towards heaven. The music was inspiring, as true congregational music always is. All sang the air, but the harmony was well supplied by the organ; all sang, men, women, and children, and if there were any discordant voices, they were lost in the powerful melody. Hugh liked to sing, and he liked the simple hymns which Mr.

Leslie always selected for his congregation; so he found all the places and sang with real enjoyment, while Bessie, looking over the same book, joined in after awhile in her low alto, as if borne along by his example. Then came the sermon, and, as Mr. Leslie gave out his text, Aunt Faith recognized it as one of the verses which she had read in the morning,--St. John, the seventeenth chapter, and the fifteenth verse, "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." "My friends," said Mr.

Leslie, speaking as usual without notes, "we often hear and read of the great desire felt by Christians of this and all ages to leave this world, this world of sickness and sorrow, of labor and poverty, and enter immediately into another life. Young persons who have lost dear friends wish to go and join them, for life looks dreary without love, and the days seem very long when they are not broken by the sound of that well-known footstep on the walk, and the words of love in that well-known voice which they can never hear on earth again. 'I cannot stay on earth alone,' they cry; 'I shall grow wicked in my wild grief.

Let me go to them, since they cannot come back to me.' The middle-aged who have outlived the quick feelings of youth, sigh over the years still before them, years neither dark nor light, neither hard nor easy, the dull, monotonous path lengthening out before them, with neither great joy to lighten it, or great sorrow to darken it, the same commonplace cares and duties until the end. 'This is doing us no good,' they think; 'life is slowly withering, zeal is gone. A flower cannot bloom in the desert! Let me go to a better country.'

"The old, who are past all labor, sometimes grow weary of waiting. 'I am of no use,' they say; 'I am only a burden to myself and every one else. I have outlived my time, and it would be better for the world if I was taken out of it. My day is over. Let me go.' Thus they all lament, and thus they sometimes pray, forgetting that the Lord knoweth best.

"The feeling is natural, and is founded upon the innate aspiration of the soul towards immortality, the consciousness and certainty that better things are laid up in store for us in another world. This innate consciousness of immortality is found in all men, even the most ignorant heathen possessing a glimmering of the idea, and this fact is an eternal contradiction to the arguments of the atheist; he cannot destroy this soul hope, for even if he should succeed in blighting it in the father, it would be there to confront him in the child, and so on from generation to generation. That there are persons who have wilfully stifled this divinely-given hope, that there are persons who have brought themselves to contradict their very being is an idea so awful that we shudder to think of it. A man may murder his companion and yet repent and be forgiven; but a man who murders his soul, a man who turns his back upon his Creator cannot repent, for he does not believe in his sin, and he cannot ask for forgiveness because he cannot believe in the existence of a power to forgive. My friends, the idea of such a man is almost super-human; and some wise persons have said that no such men have ever existed. They may think they have stifled their consciences and souls, and even live a long life in this belief, but sooner or later the terrible certainty of their mistake will overwhelm them, and they will find themselves stripped of their poor sophistries, of all sinners the most miserable.

"I hope and believe that there are no such persons in this congregation to-day. Do you not, on the contrary, feel in your hearts, the certainty of another and better life? I feel sure that you do,--that there is not one of you who is not looking forward to that happiness which G.o.d has prepared for those who love Him; a happiness which eye has not seen, which ear has not heard, and which it has not entered into the heart of men to conceive.

"But this precious engrafted hope must not be abused. It must not be twisted into an excuse for neglecting our duties here on _earth_. We are put into the world to live in it, and the duties which lie nearest to us must be faithfully performed, no matter how humble or how commonplace they may be. We must not go sighing through life, deluding ourselves with the idea that we are too good for our lot, and that it is praiseworthy to hold ourselves above common labor and dull routine, and devote our time to so-called religious aspiration. If the labor and routine are placed before us, it is our duty to accept them, and, whatever we do, do it with our _might_. I tell you, my friends, our path is clear before us, and we are sinning if we turn out of it.

Suppose we are afflicted, suppose our loved ones are taken from us; we may weep, for Jesus wept. But we must not throw down our appointed work, and sit with idle hands and gloomy regret, while the precious time slips by. The mourner who stays in her darkened room, and refuses to interest herself in anything but her sorrow, is far less a Christian mourner than she who goes forth to take up her tasks again, thinking of her lost ones as only 'gone before.'

"Those of us who have dull lives, with neither the suns.h.i.+ne nor the thunder-cloud to vary the monotonous gray of our horizon, must still strive to perform faithfully our uninteresting duties. We must not murmur over our lot, or think we are fitted for better things; we are not so fitted if the Lord keeps us there. There is, perhaps, some fatal weakness in our character which needs just that routine; we must learn patience and humility in the world, not _out_ of it. _Here_ is our school-house. _This_ is our appointed lesson.

"The old, also, who are full of eagerness to go,--they, too, are wrong.

To them, life with its joys and sorrows, its labor and care, is over, and they look uneasily around them; their occupation is gone. Perhaps they were busy workers, and it is hard to be idle; perhaps they were self-reliant, and it is hard to become a care to others; perhaps they have had powerful intellects, and it is hard to endure the consciousness that their mental powers are failing, day by day. Still, there is one duty remaining, and that they must learn. It is this: to wait. To wait patiently for the Lord in the world in which He has placed them. And this is, sometimes, the hardest duty of a long life.

"My friends, I cannot too heartily condemn the spirit of scorn for this world which we sometimes meet among Christians. The world is full of beauty. G.o.d Himself p.r.o.nounced it very good. The evil, and the sorrow in it, are owing to man. What can be more fair than this very summer afternoon? What more beautiful than that lake, with those white clouds heaped over the horizon? Let us enjoy it, and praise G.o.d for His goodness; it is ungrateful not to admire and love His tender care for us in every flower by the roadside, in every tree that shades the heated land. I say, then, love this fair world; notice its beauties; take pleasure in the gifts it offers to you, its fruits and its flowers, its spring-time and harvest. Learn to admire them; thank G.o.d for them, and teach your children to appreciate them. The same words apply here which the beloved disciple used in reference to our love for our fellow-men: 'For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love G.o.d whom he hath not seen?' That is, if we have never tried to love on earth, if our hearts have never been softened by unselfish affection for those of our own household, how can we expect to love in heaven? And, in the same manner, it seems to me that if we scorn this world, if we neglect the innocent pleasures it offers us, and never pause to admire and love its beauties, it will be very hard for us to love the Celestial country. We must learn to love here on earth if we would love in heaven.

"My friends, the text is a part of our Saviour's last prayer before he entered the garden of Gethsemane. He was praying for his disciples, so soon to be left to temptation and danger. Notice the words: 'I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.' He did not ask that they should be taken _away_ from the earth, but that strength should be given them to fulfil their duty _on_ the earth; they were men, the earth was their home, and on the earth were their duties.

"And so it is with us now. We have our work to do, and the time is none too long to accomplish it; every day brings its task and the man who stays among his fellows, doing his part with energy, actuated by firm religious principles, is a far better Christian than he who shuts himself up apart, scorning the fair world, unmindful of the suffering he might relieve, neglecting his own plain duties, and occupied only with his own brooding thoughts and gloomy self-a.n.a.lysis.

"No, my friends; we are not to be taken out of the world until our Lord so wills, we must not think of it, must not pray for it. He knows best. And, while He leaves us on the earth, let us work with all our might. Let us see to it that our faith is earnest, and that our grat.i.tude and praise are expressed in our daily lives.

"I fear we do not think sufficiently of the great part which praise should hold in our wors.h.i.+p; whereas if there is any lesson taught us by the whole created universe, and by the long testimony of holy men from the beginning of the world until now, it is this: 'Praise ye the Lord. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.'"

Such were some of the points in Mr. Leslie's sermon. He spoke in a direct manner, using all the powers of eloquence which nature and cultivation had given him, but his ideas were plain and his words simple, and the charm of the discourse lay in its earnestness. He spoke as though his heart was in his words; and so it was. Another great attraction was that his sermons were short; before the attention of the congregation flagged in the least, the sermon was done. There was no looking at watches, no stifled yawning, no uneasy change of position, no watching the clock; strangers visiting the chapel listened, at first, from real interest, with a feeling that by-and-by they would relapse into their usual listlessness, but before they had time to _relapse_, behold the sermon was done. This afternoon there was the accustomed attention, and then after the closing hymn, the congregation streamed out into the late afternoon again to enjoy the quiet of the Sabbath, the working-man's blessed day of rest.