Chapter XVIII: Birds of Promise

"ONE moment, Mr. Butler," said Louise, detaining the minister, as, having given her cordial greeting in the church-aisle, and bowed to Dorothy, and shaken hands with Father Morgan, he was turning away; "we have something to tell you, something that will make you glad; our sister Dorrie has decided for Christ."

Simple words enough; I suppose even Dorothy, though her cheeks glowed, and her eyes were bright with joy, did not recognize the tremendous import of their meaning; and Louise was surprised at their effect on Mr. Butler. He was a young minister, you will remember; and while he had not been doing all that he could, he had scarcely realized that he could do more—at least not until very lately. This was really his first experience in greeting a new-born soul among his flock. It came to him with all the joy of a glad, an almost overwhelming, surprise. True, he had prayed that he might have "souls for his hire." Yet he had prayed, as many another does, without realizing that possibly his prayer would be answered, and actually souls would come into the kingdom, whom he could welcome to his Father's table!

There was an instant flush over his handsome face, an eager flash in his eyes, and he turned to Dorothy again, and held out his hand.

"Welcome!" he said.

Not a word more, but the quiver in his voice told that words were beyond him just then; and Dorothy turned from him with the belief that it certainly meant a great deal to the minister to have a person "decide for Christ." She was very much surprised, and not a little confused. It had not occurred to her that others, outside of Lewis and Louise, would ever know about her new hopes and intentions. I am not sure that it had before occurred to her that any one would care! She had seen very little demonstration of this sort in her life. So it was another surprise to her when Deacon Belknap shook her hand heartily, as he said,—

"So you have experienced religion, have you? Well, now, that's good, that's good!"

And his face shone, and he shook the hand until it ached.

Poor Dorothy did not really know whether to laugh or cry. She had always been a good deal afraid of Deacon Belknap; he was a solemn-faced, slow-toned man, and she had not known that his face could shine, or that he believed anything anywhere was good. Moreover, she was not sure that she had "experienced religion;" indeed, she was by no means sure what those words meant. It was true that she had decided for Christ, or—no, was that it? It almost seemed to Dorothy that, instead, it should be said that Christ had decided for her! How wonderfully he had called her. How almost she had heard his voice. How tenderly he had waited. How he loved her. And how sure was she that she loved him. But to "experience religion" was some wise and solemn thing that it did not seem to her she understood. But Deacon Belknap had something further to say,—

"You are very happy now, I suppose? Yes. Well, young converts always are. But I want to warn you: you mustn't expect to have that feeling last. It is like 'the morning cloud and the early dew.' You must expect trials and crosses and disappointments and unhappiness. It is a hard world. Some people expect to be 'carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.' But I tell you it is a 'straight and thorny road, and mortal spirits tire and faint."

And Deacon Belknap either forgot, or had never learned, the very next line in that grand old hymn; but with an assurance that the sooner she realized that this world was full of troubles and conflicts the easier it would be for her, went away to his waiting class.

Then Dorothy's brow clouded; she was troubled. She felt so innocently glad and happy, so sure of a Friend, so certain that he loved her and that she loved him. Was it possible that she must lose this feeling, and be lonely and dreary and unsatisfied, as she had been ever since she could remember? Was that what was the trouble with Christians, that the feeling didn't last? Almost Dorothy felt as though, somehow, she had been deceived! Her face was not nearly so bright as before when Carey Martyn came toward her.

He had been introduced at the church social, and had not seen her since, but he grasped her hand as eagerly as Deacon Belknap had.

"I hear good news of you," he said simply, with a glad look on his face. Something in his tones made Dorothy understand what he meant.

"Is it good news?" she asked him doubtfully.

"Is it? The very best in the world. You don't doubt it, I hope? Are you going to stay to Sunday school? Come over and join our class. We are getting-up a new class, and we are going to ask Mr. Butler to take it. I never thought I should care to have him; but it seems to me now just as though he would be a good teacher. Do you believe he will take a class?"

Then Dorothy, remembering his hand-clasp and the light in his eyes, said,—

"Yes; I should think he would. But I can't stay, I suppose. Oh, how I should like to!"

"Like to what?" Louise questioned, just at her side. "Oh, you are talking about Sunday school. I think we can manage it. Lewis has been asked to take a class, and I am wanted to supply a vacancy; and father said stay if we wanted to—he was in no hurry."

Then Dorothy went over to the new class that was forming; and the minister came presently and shook hands with them all, and said he felt honoured by being chosen as their teacher, and wondered that none of them had ever thought of it before. And to Dorothy it seemed as though the millennium were coming, or it would have so seemed had she known anything about that word or its meaning. It was a matter of surprise to many where that new class suddenly came from, or who started it; but the simple truth was, that what had been lingering in a sort of homesick way in Carey Martyn's heart for weeks took shape and form along with the hand-clasp of his pastor at that church social. He was used to Sabbath school, and his old class had been taught by his old pastor.

Taken all in all, it was a white day to Dorothy Morgan. Her first Sunday in a new world; a Sunday in which she had received greetings from the brethren and sisters of the kingdom, and been counted in; a Sunday in which she had actually joined in the hymns and the prayers and the readings, and attempted to follow the sermon, though, truth to tell, Dorothy had gotten very little from the sermon. Try as she would to become interested, her thoughts would wander; but they wandered constantly to the hymn that had just been sung, the words of which she felt, and to the prayer of the pastor, the spirit of which she understood.

"Why can't ministers preach just as they pray?" wondered Dorothy.

The ride home in the brightness of the winter day was not unpleasant. Father Morgan, whether subdued by his long waiting, or by the white world glistening in the sunlight, certainly had nothing to say that was jarring, and seemed not dissatisfied with the condition of things. Dorothy stole little glances at him from under her wrappings, and wondered whether he would ever know that everything was different to her from what it had been last Sunday, and what he would say if he ever did know. And then suddenly, like the leap of a new emotion into her heart, came the desire that he knew for himself what it all meant. Oh, how she wished that father was a Christian!

Where did the sudden, intense desire come from? She had never felt anything like it before. Sometimes, indeed, she had drearily wished that they were more like other people—went to church regularly, even went occasionally of an evening as the Stuarts did, who lived no farther away, and had the social appointed at their house. But it had been a dreamy, far-away sort of wish, little desire about it, nothing in the least like this sudden longing.

Then there rolled over Dorothy the sweetness of the thought that she could actually pray for her father, and that may be—oh, may be!—because of her prayer, the father would, some day, when she had prayed for him a great many years, come to know of this experience by personal knowledge. Will there ever be more happiness put into Dorothy's life than surged over her with the possibilities involved in that thought? Still, Deacon Belknap troubled her. When was she to expect all this brightness to go away? And, also, why must it go? Why had not Lewis said something to her about it—warned her, when she frankly admitted to him this morning that she had never been happy before in her life? And oh, how long had the feeling stayed with him? He knew about it, for he had told her that he understood just how she felt; he remembered well his own experience. Then a sudden, bewildering doubt of Deacon Belknap's theories came over Dorothy, for she was confronted with the thought that she did not believe the feeling ever left Louise; it was this which made her different from others. Still, Deacon Belknap ought to know. And, besides, what might not Louise have had to go through before the joy came to stay? Dorothy's brain was in a whirl. Well for her that Louise, standing at one side, had heard every word of Deacon Belknap's well-meant and honest caution. She saw the instant clouding of Dorothy's face, and watched for her chance to remove the thorn. It came to her just after dinner, when Dorothy was upstairs hunting for her apron. Louise, meeting her in the hall, said,—

"So Deacon Belknap thought he ought to caution you against being happy in Christ?"

"What did he mean?" Dorothy asked, her cheeks glowing. "Does the happy feeling all go away? Must it?"

"What does it spring from, Dorrie dear?"

"Why, I think," said Dorothy, hesitating and blushing violently, "it seems to me that it comes because I love Jesus and because he loves me."

"Yes. Well, if Deacon Belknap had told me that I must not expect to be as happy with my husband in the future as I am now, because there would be trials and difficulties of one sort and another to encounter, and that therefore his love and mine would not burn as brightly, I think I should have considered myself insulted."

"I should think so! Do you mean—O Louise, I mean do you think they are a little alike?"

"He calls the Church his bride, dear; it is his own figure; but of course it falls far below the real, vital union that there may be between us and Christ."

"Then what did Deacon Belknap mean?"

"Why, if I should treat Lewis very coldly and indifferently, forget to notice him sometimes, go for days without talking with him, neglect his suggestions, disregard his advice, and all that sort of thing, I imagine that we should not be very happy together."

"Well?" said Dorothy, in bewilderment.

"Well, don't you know, dear, that that is just the way in which many Christians actually treat Christ? And then Satan blinds their hearts into thinking that it is not their own fault that their joy in him is gone, but a necessity, because of this troublesome world. If I were you I would not tolerate any such insinuations; it is an insult to Jesus Christ, who deliberately says he will keep you in 'perfect peace,' if your mind is stayed on him."

"Then all that isn't necessary?"

"No more necessary than that I should have days of gloom and disappointment over my husband. Oh, it is lowering the power and love of Christ to make that comparison, because, Dorrie, his love is infinite, and he says everlasting."

Dorothy went through the hall below singing,—

"Mine is an unchanging love;
Higher than the heights above,
Deeper than the depths beneath;
Free and faithful—strong as death."

She had found that hymn in the morning, while Mr. Butler was preaching, and had rejoiced in it for a little until Deacon Belknap had banished it from her heart. Now it came back in strength, and it will take more than Deacon Belknap to shake it, for it has taken root.

That Sabbath day had one more experience to be remembered. If Louise's little plan for the walk home from the social had been made with a view to rousing Lewis, she could not more successfully have accomplished it.

He had walked ever since in a new atmosphere; he had risen to the glory of the possibilities of his life; he had heard Dorothy say—she had said it that very morning, when he met her early, out in the back kitchen woodshed, where the kindlings were kept—that he had shown her the way to Jesus, and now she had found rest in him. Was a man ever to forget the sweetness of words like that?—a Christian, honoured of God in showing another soul the entrance-way! Shall he sink to the level of common things after that, and forget that he has a right to work with God, on work that will last to all eternity? Lewis Morgan, Christian man though he had been for years, had never heard those words before; but do you think that something of the honour which he had lost, and something of the shame of having tamely lost such honours, did not sweep over him? Surely it should not be the last time that he should hear such words—at least it should be through no fault of his if it were.

Low motive, do you say? I am not sure of that. There is a higher one, it is true; and every Christian who can feel the lower will, sooner or later, grasp the higher. But since God has called us to honourable positions, even to be "co-labourers," shall we not rejoice in the honour?

Well, Lewis Morgan had worked all day in the light of this new experience. He thirsted for more of it; he felt roused to his very finger-tips; he longed to be doing; he had taught that class of girls put into his care as he had not supposed that he could teach. Now he walked up and down their room, while the Sabbath twilight gathered, thinking.

Louise, who had been reading to him, kept silence, and wondered what was the question which he was evidently deciding. She knew his face so well, that she felt sure there was being made a decision. At last he came to her side.

"Louise, I believe in my soul that we ought to go downstairs and try to have prayers with the family. Father might object to it; he thinks all these things are a species of cant, and I have been especially anxious to avoid anything that looked in the least like it. I have been too much afraid of what he would think. I believe I ought to try. What do you say?"

Of course he knew just what she would say, and she said it. Soon after that they went downstairs. Lewis possessed one trait worthy of imitation; when he had fairly determined on a course, he went straight toward it with as little delay as possible. So, directly they were seated in the clean and orderly kitchen, Nellie cuddled in Louise's lap—a spot which was growing to be her refuge—Lewis commenced,—

"Father, we have been thinking that perhaps you would have no objection to our having family worship together downstairs. We would like it very much, if it would not be unpleasant."

Mrs. Morgan seemed suddenly seized with the spirit of uncontrollable restlessness. She hopped from her chair, drew down the paper shade with a jerk, then, finding that she had made it disagreeably dark, drew it up again, set back two chairs, opened and shut the outer kitchen door, and took down a towel and hung it on another nail; then she came back to her seat. As for Father Morgan, he sat, tongs in hand, just as he had been when Lewis addressed him, and gazed unwinkingly into the glowing fire for the space of what seemed to Lewis five minutes, but, in reality, was not more than one; then he said, slowly and impressively,—

"I'm sure I have no manner of objections, if it will do you any good."

It was Dorothy who rushed into the other room, before her father's sentence was concluded, and brought therefrom Grandmother Hunt's old family Bible; and in the Morgan household, after forty years of life together, father and mother met for the first time at the family altar. Howbeit, neither father nor mother bowed the knee, but sat bolt upright in their chairs. But Dorothy knelt and prayed, and dropped some happy tears on her wooden-seated chair the while.

As for John, he would not go to church; would not come to dinner with the family, but took what he called a "bite" by himself when he chose to come for it; would not stay in the room during the reading and the prayer, but strode off toward the barn the moment the subject was suggested by Lewis.

Yet, despite these drawbacks, the voice of prayer went up from the Morgan kitchen from full and grateful hearts.