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From Jest to Earnest, a novel by Edward Payson Roe |
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Chapter 32. The Christmas Sunday |
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_ CHAPTER XXXII. THE CHRISTMAS SUNDAY This Christmas Sabbath, though marked by no unusual event, was destined to be a memorable day in the lives of Frank Hemstead and Charlotte Marsden. A chain of unforeseen circumstances and experiences, and a sequence of emotions still less understood, had lifted them higher and higher, until this culminating day was scarcely one of earthly existence. Lottie, in her previous life, had been frivolous and selfish; but her evil resulted from thoughtlessness, rather than from the deliberate purpose to do wrong. She was the type of multitudes of her fair sisters, who, with sparkling eyes, look out upon life in its morning to see only what it offers to them, and not the tasks it furnishes them for others. Only by experience--only by God's logic of events--do they find that their happiness is in these tasks; in unselfish giving and doing. The world had been at Lottie's feet. It had offered her all that it has to give to a girl in her station; but when, withdrawn from it by a day of suffering, she had summed up her treasures, she had found that she had nothing but remorse. She had been receiving all her life, and yet had nothing. She would then gladly have remembered that she had given even one an impulse towards a truer and happier life. But she could not. Apart from natural impulses of affection towards kindred and friends, her only thought in regard to all had been,--How can I make them minister to me and my pleasure? With tact and skill, enhanced by exceeding beauty, she had exacted an unstinted revenue of flattery, attention, and even love; and yet, when, in weakness and pain, she wished the solace of some consoling memory, she found only an accusing conscience. This experience conveyed to the practical girl a startling lesson. With all her faults, she did not belong to the class that is hopeless, because so weak and shallow. Though her handsome face might often express much that was unlovely and unwomanly, it ever expressed mind. When she, in her turn, like hosts of others, came to realize the limitations of her being, her weakness and need, she looked around, instinctively, for help and support. Human teaching presented a God from whom she shrank in fear and dislike. The Bible revealed Jesus. When she most felt her need, the Bible presented One whose eyes overflowed with sympathy, and whose hand was omnipotent. She instinctively felt, like Mary of old, that, at "His feet," there were rest and hope. The feeling was not reached as a mathematician solves an equation, or a theologian comes to a conclusion, but more after the manner in which some women and most children will look at a person and say, "I like him; I'll trust him." There was nothing incongruous or unnatural in the contemporary love growing up in her heart for Hemstead, though it is possible that some may so think. In some minds the ideas of love and passion seem inseparable, and they regard religion as something far removed. These are but the right wing of that sinister class who jumble their passions and religion together, and, in pious jargon and spiritual double entendre, half conceal and half convey the base meaning of their hearts. In others, love, or what with them goes by the name, is equally inseparable from management and match-making, trousseaux and settlements,--concerns pertaining to earth, and very earthy, it must be admitted. No doubt many excellent, solid people would regard Lottie's spiritual condition with grave suspicion, and ask, disapprovingly, "What business have two such DIFFERENT loves to be originating in her heart at the same time?" But, in the term "different," they beg the question. Where is the antagonism? Where is even the dissimilarity? Are not these two impulses of the heart near akin, rather? and does not a truer and deeper philosophy of life teach that love for a human object may be as certainly God's will as love towards Himself? Have these solid, excellent people aught to say against the faithful devotion of a wife, or the patient tenderness of a mother, which are corner-stones of the family, as the family is the corner-stone of all true civilization? But what is the origin of the wife's devotion and the mother's tenderness? These people, surely, are as wist as they are solid. They would have the day without the dawn. At any rate, it would appear that Heaven was making the match between Hemstead and Lottie,--making it as the spring comes on in northern latitudes, subtilely, imperceptibly, and yet speedily. Just how or when it came about, they did not know; but when they met on that Christmas morning, the peace and gladness of an assured and reciprocal love smiled from each other's eyes. They needed no explanations. Frank Hemstead's face had ever been as easily interpreted as his honest words; and he now had taught Lottie's face to tell the truth. A blessed truth it revealed to him that Christmas day. As he entered the pulpit that morning his face was radiant with the purest human love, as well as love to God. So far from being incongruous, the one seemed to kindle and intensify the other. Though his sermon was simplicity itself he spoke as one inspired. His message now was a gospel, and came to his hearers as the angel's announcement (which was his text) to the shepherds. But his closing words were searching, and sent many of his hearers home thoughtful and conscience-smitten, as well as cheered by the great hope which Christmas day should ever bring to the world. "I would gladly correct," he said, "the impression which I fear was made on some minds last Sabbath. Christ is the embodiment of Christianity, and His coming to the world was 'tidings of great joy'; His coming to every sinful heart should be 'tidings of great joy.' But I fear that I led some to dread His coming, as they would purgatorial fires. How did the All-powerful One come? As a little, helpless child, that he might disarm our fears and enlist our sympathy. How did He live? The humblest among the humble, that no one on earth should be too lowly to go straight to His side with his griefs. How did He act? He took little children in His arms, and blessed them. He laid His hand on the loathsome leper from whom all shrank. He looked into the glare of the demoniac's eyes: the demons fled. Then, in meekness, He would offer to enter the poor wretch's heart, and dwell in what had been the foul abode of the foulest fiends. When men wept, He, from sympathy, wept with them, though his next breath changed their mourning into joy. When man dishonored God, or wronged his fellow-men,--as did the Pharisees, with their unhallowed traffic in the Temple, their robbery of the widow and fatherless, their blocking up of the way of life with their senseless ceremonies, puerile traditions,--no knight in all the heroic past ever breathed out a more fiery indignation. How did He die? In such a way that even the thief might be redeemed and live eternally. He was an ideal man, as well as perfect God. He was the servant of all, as well as King of kings. Not from his throne did He stoop to us. He stood at our side, and sustained fainting humanity with His encircling arm, as a brother. Little wonder, then, that the angel called the announcement that God had thus visited His creatures 'good tidings of great joy.' "But there is a brief word of pointed and searching significance in this message. The angel said, 'Unto YOU is born a Saviour.' Is that true of each one of us? Is this Christmas day a mockery, reminding us of a hope that is not ours,--of a heaven in which we have no right or part? Does conscience tell us to-day that we have looked upon the light that shone at Bethlehem with apathetic eyes, and heard the angel's message with unbelieving hearts, so that practically no Saviour has been born unto us? Why do you keep this day as a festival, my hearer? I can tell you why you may. If you will receive it, the angel's message is to you personally; unto you is born a Saviour who will forgive your past sin, and shield you from its consequences,--who will ennoble your future life, and sustain and comfort you under the inevitable sorrow and suffering awaiting,--and who will receive you into an eternal and a happy home at the end of your brief sojourn here. May not this Christmas pass until each one has received the abiding peace and joy of the angel's message into the depths of his heart." After the service, Miss Martell, with glistening eyes, said to Harcourt, "I am glad you heard that sermon." "I admit," he replied, with bowed head, "that it is better than my old philosophy. I think Hemstead must have written it for me." As the young clergyman helped Lottie into the sleigh, she whispered, "You wrote that sermon for me." Both were right. Hemstead had preached Christ, who is God's embodied truth, meant alike for every human hearty and alike adapted to all. _ |
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