A Face Illumined Part 45

"He wouldn't go as fast as that if he wasn't a little uneasy, too,"

muttered the druggist, whose dearth of business gave him abundant leisure to see all that was going on, and to imagine much more.

Van Berg determined to overtake Ida before she reached the hotel, and his strides were as long and swift as mortal dread could make them.

In the meantime, while the artist was making the detour necessary to reach the drug-store without meeting Ida, she and her companions had started homeward. As they approached a church on the outskirts of the village, the bell in the steeple commenced tolling.

"What's that for?" asked a young man of the party of a plain, farmer-like appearing man, who was just about to enter.

"For prayer-meetin'," was the good-natured reply. "It wouldn't hurt you to come to it;" and the speaker pa.s.sed into the lecture-room.

"I call this frivolous a.s.semblage to order," cried the youth, turning around to his companions. "If any one of our number has ever attended a prayer-meeting, let him hold up his right hand.

I use the masculine p.r.o.noun, because the man always embraces the woman--when he gets a chance."

No hands were held up.

"Heathen, every mother's son of us," cried the first speaker.

"The daughters are angels, of course, and don't need to go to prayer-meetin', as he of the cowhide sandals just termed it. But for the novelty of the thing, and for the want of something better to do, I move that we all go to-night. If it should be borous, why, we can come out."

The proposition pleased the fancy of the party, and with gay words and laughter that scarcely ceased at the vestibule, they entered the place of prayer and lighted down among the sober-visaged, soberly-dressed wors.h.i.+ppers like a flock of tropical birds.

Ida reluctantly followed them. At first she half decided to walk home alone, but feared to do so. She who had resolved on facing the "King of Terrors" shrank, with a woman's instinct, from a lonely walk in the starlight.

She sat in dreary preoccupation a little apart from the others and paid no more heed to the opening services than to their ill-concealed merriment.

the minister was away on his August vacation. Prayer-meetings were out of season, and very few were present. The plain farmer was trying to conduct the service as well as he could, but it was evident he would have been much more at ease holding the handle of a plow or the reins of his rattling team, than a hymn-book. Dr.

Watts and John Wesley might have lost some of their heavenly serenity could they have heard him read their verses, and certainly only a long-suffering and merciful G.o.d could listen to his prayer. And yet rarely on the battle-field is there more moral courage displayed than plain Thomas Smith put forth that night in his conscientious effort to perform an unwonted task; and when at last he sat down and said, "Bruthren, the meetin' is now open," he was more exhausted than he than he would have been from a long day of toil.

"The Lord looketh at the heart" is a truth that chills many with dread, but it was a precious thought to Farmer Smith as he saw that his fellow church members did not look very appreciative, and that the gay young city-people often giggled outright at his uncouth words and manner.

Ida would have been as greatly amused as any of them a few weeks since, but now she scarcely heard the poor man's stumblings, or the wailing of the hymns that were mangled anew by the people. She sat with her eyes fixed on vacancy, thinking how dreary and empty the world had become; and it seemed to her that religion was the most dreary and empty thing in it.

"What good can this wretched little meeting do any one?" she thought, more than once.

She was answered.

Near her was a very old man who had been regarding the ill-behaved party with an expression of mingled displeasure and pity. Now that the meeting was open to all he rose slowly to his feet, steadying himself with his cane.

"He looks like the Ancient Mariner," giggled an exceedingly immature youth, who sat next to Ida.

She turned upon him sharply and said, in a low tone, "If you have the faintest instincts of a gentleman you will respect that venerable man."

The youth was so effectually quenched that he bore the aspect of a turnip-beet during the remainder of the service.

"My young friends," began the old main in tones of gentle dignity, "will you listen patiently and quietly to one that you see will not have the chance to speak many more words. My eyes are a little dim, but you all appear young and happy; and yet I am sorry for you, very sorry for you. You don't realize what you are and what is before you. You remind me of a number of pleasure boats just starting out to sea. I have been across this ocean, and have almost reached the other sh.o.r.e. I know what terrible storms and dangers you will meet. You can't escape these storms, my young friends.

No one can, and you don't seem prepared to meet them.

"Your manner has pained me very much, and yet, as my Master said, so I have felt, you 'know not what you do.' There is a Kingly Presence in this place that you have not recognized. Do you not remember who it was that said, 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them'?

"I am very old, but my memory is good. It seems but a short time ago that I was as young thoughtless as any one of you, and yet it was seventy years ago. I have tested the friends.h.i.+p of Jesus Christ for over half a century. Have I not then a right to speak of it?

Ought I not to know something about him?

"Do you ask me if my Master has kept me from trouble and suffering all these years? Far from it. Indeed, I think he has caused me a good deal of trouble and pain in addition to that which I brought on myself by my own folly and mistakes; but I now see that he caused it only as the good physician gives pain, in order to make the patient strong and well. But one thing is certainly true. He has stood by me as a faithful friend all these years, and has brought good to me out of all the evil. I have been in sore temptations and deep discouragement. My heart at times has seemed breaking with sorrow. Mine has been the common lot. But when the storm was loudest and most terrible, his hand was on the helm, and now I am entering the quiet harbor. There has been much that was dark and hard to understand; there is much still; but there is plenty to prove that my Heavenly Father is leading me home as a little child.

"It is a precious, blessed truth that I wish to bring you fact to face with to-night, and yet it may become a very sad and terrible truth, if you shut your eyes to it now and remember it only when it is too late. I wish to a.s.sure you, on the ground of simple, down-right experience, through all these years, that G.o.d's 'unspeakable gift,' his only Son, is just what our poor human nature needs.

Jesus Christ 'is able to save them ot the uttermost that come to G.o.d by him.' He helps us overcome that awful disease--sin. He brings to our unhappy hearts immortal life and health. I know it as I know that I exist. He has helped me when and where there was no human help. I have often seen his redeeming work in the lives of other faulty, sinful people like myself.

"The question therefore which you must each decide is not whether you will believe this or that doctrine, or do what this or that man teaches. The question is this:--Here is a tender, merciful, Divine Friend. He offers to lead you safely through all the dangers and hard places in this world, as a shepherd leads his flock through the wilderness. Will you follow him, or will you remain in the wilderness and perish when the night comes, as it surely will? If you will follow him as well as you can, he'll bring you to a happy and eternal home. Thanks to his patient kindness which never falters, he has brough me almost there.

"And now, my young friends, beat with an old man, and let me say, in conclusion, that you all need the kind, patient, faithful Friend that I found so long ago. No evil, no misfortune can come into any human life that is beyond his power to remedy and finally banish forever. I you have not found this Friend, this Life-giver, I am younger and happier than you are to-day, although I am eighty-eight years old."

Once before a rash, despairing man lifted his hand against his life, but G.o.d's message to him, through his apostle, was, "Do thyself no harm." And now again a faithful servant, speaking for him whose coming was G.o.d's supreme expression of good-will towards men, had brought a like merciful message to another poor soul that had taken counsel of despair. Ida Mayhew might learn, as did the jailer of Philippi, that G.o.d has a better remedy than death for seemingly irretrievable disasters.

The old gentleman's words came home to her with such a force of personal application that she was deeply moved, and even awed.

They seemed like a divine message--nay more, like a restraining hand. "How strange it was," she thought, that she had come to this place!--how strange that a serene old, man, with heaven's peace already on his brow, should have uttered the words best adapted to her desperate need. If he had spoken of duty, obligation, of truth in the abstract, his tones would have been like the sound of a wintry wind. But he had spoken of a Friend, as tender, patient, and helpful as he was powerful. What was far more, he spoke with the strong convincing confidence of personal knowledge. He had tried this Friend through all the vicissitudes of over half a century, and found him true. Could human a.s.surance--could human testimony go farther? Deep in her heart she was conscious that hope was reviving again--that the end had not yet come.

The gay young party, touched and subdued, pa.s.sed out quietly with the others. But Ida lingered.

"Who is that old gentleman?" she asked of a lady near her.

"That is Mr. Eltinge--Mr. James Eltinge," was the reply.

Ida pa.s.sed slowly towards the door, looking wistfully back at the old man, who stopped to greet cheerily one and another.

"No one need be afraid to speak to him," she thought. "His every look and tone show him to be kind and sincere. I'll see him before--before"--she shuddered, and scarcely dared to put her dark purpose in thought in the presence of one who had lived patiently at G.o.d's will for nearly a century.

She stepped out into the night and watched for his coming. In a moment or two the old gentleman also pa.s.sed out, and stood waiting for his carriage.

Timidly approaching him, she said, "Mr. Eltinge, may I speak with you?"

He stepped with her a little aside from the others.

"Mr. Eltinge," she continued, in a voice that trembled and was broken by her feeling, "I am one of the young people you spoke to this evening. I'm in trouble--deep trouble. I want such a Friend as you described to-night."

He took her hand and said, in a hearty voice, "G.o.d bless you, my child. He wants you more than you want him."

"May I come and see you to-morrow morning?" asked Ida, hurriedly, for his tones of kindness, for which her heart was famis.h.i.+ng, were fast breaking down her self-control.

"I'll come and see you," was his prompt and cordial response.

"No," she faltered, "let it be as I wish. Please tell me where to find you."

As he finished directing her, she stooped down and kissed his hand, and then vanished in the darkness.

"Perhaps I'm not yet a c.u.mberer of the ground," murmured the old man, wiping a sudden moisture from his eyes.