University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
FRIEND AND SAVIOUR.

KNOWING of no other source of help save an
earthly one, her thoughts reverted to the old
Scotch people that she had recently visited. Their
sunlighted garden, and happy, homely life, their
simple faith, seemed the best antidote for her present
morbid tendencies.

“If the worst comes to the worst, I think they
would take us in for a little while, till some way
opened,” she thought. “Oh, that I had their belief
in a better life, then it wouldn't seem so dreadful to
suffer in this one. Why have I never read the
`Gude Book,' as they call it? But I never seemed
to understand it; still, I must say, that I never
really tried to. Perhaps God is angry with us, and
is punishing us for so forgetting Him. I would
rather think that, than to feel so forgotten and lost
sight of. It seems as if God didn't see or care. It
seems as if I could cling to the harshest father in the
world, if he would only protect and help me. A God
of wrath, that I have heard clergymen preach of, is
not so dreadful to me as a God who forgets, and
leaves his creatures to struggle alone. Our minister
was so cold and philosophical, and presented a God
that seemed so far off, that I felt there could never

be anything between Him and me. He talked about
a holy, infinite Being, who dwelt alone in unapproachable
majesty; and I want some one to stoop
down and love and help poor, little me. He talked
about a religion of purity and good works, and love
to our fellow-men. I don't know how to work for
myself, much less for others, and it seems as if
nearly all my fellow-creatures hated and scorned me,
and I am afraid of them; so I don't see what chance
there is for such as us. If we had only remained
rich, and lived on the Avenue, such a religion
wouldn't be so hard. It seems strange that the
Bible should teach him and old Malcom so differently.
But I suppose he is wiser, and better understands
it. Perhaps it's the flowers that teach Malcom,
for he always seems drawing lessons from
them.”

Then came the impulse to get the Bible and read
it for herself. “The impulse!” from whence did it
come?

When Edith felt so orphaned and alone, forgotten
even of God, then the Divine Father was nearest
his child. When, in her bitter extremity, at this
lonely midnight hour she realized her need and
helplessness as never before, her great Elder Brother
was waiting beside her.

The impulse was divine. The Spirit of God was
leading her as He is seeking to lead so many. It
only remained for her to follow these gentle impulses,
not to be pushed into the black gulf that despairing
Laura dreaded, but to be led into the deep

peace of a loving faith. She was about to be taught
the blessed truth that God is “not far from every
one of us, if haply we might feel after Him and find
Him.”

She went down into the parlor to get the Bible
that in her hands had revealed the falseness and
baseness of Gus Elliott, and the thought flashed
through her mind like a good omen, “This book
stood between me and evil once before.” She took
it to the light and rapidly turned its pages, trying to
find some clue, some place of hope, for she was sadly
unfamiliar with it.

Was it her trembling fingers alone that turned
the pages? No; He who inspired the guide she consulted,
guided her, for soon her eyes fell upon the
sentence:

“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.”

The words came with such vivid power and meaning
that she was startled, and looked around as if
some one had spoken to her. They so perfectly
met her need that it seemed they must be addressed
directly to her.

“Who was it that said these words, and what
right had He to say them?” she queried eagerly,
and keeping her finger on the passage as if it might
be a clue out of some fatal labyrinth, she turned the
leaves backward and read more of Him with the
breathless interest that some poor burdened soul
might have listened eighteen centuries ago to a
rumor of the great Prophet who had suddenly appeared

with signs and wonders in Palestine. Then
she turned and read again and again the sweet
words that first arrested her attention. They seemed
more luminous and hope-inspiring every moment, as
their significance dawned upon her like the coming
of day after night.

Her clear, positive mind could never take a vague,
dubious impression of anything, and with a long-drawn
breath she said, with the emphasis of perfect
conviction:

“If He was a mere man, as I have been taught
to believe, He had no right to say these words.
It would be a bitter, wicked mockery for man or
angel to speak them. Oh, can it be that it was
God himself in human guise? I could trust such a
God.”

Again, with glowing cheeks and parted lips, she
commenced reading, and in her eyes was the growing
light of a great hope.

The upper room of that poor little cottage was
becoming a grand and sacred place. Heaven, that
honors the deathless soul above all localities, was
near. The God who was not in the vast and gold-incrusted
temple on Mount Moriah, sat in humble
guise at “Jacob's well,” and said to one of His poor,
guilty creatures: “I that speak unto thee am He.”
Cathedral domes and cross-tipped spires indicated
the Divine presence on every hand in superstitious
Rome, but it would seem that he was only near to
a poor monk creeping up Pilate's staircase. Though
the wealth of the world should combine to build a

colossal church, filling it with every sacred emblem
and symbol, and causing its fretted roof to resound
with unceasing choral service, it would not be such
a claim upon the great Father's heart as a weak,
pitiful cry to Him from the least of his children.
Though Edith knew it not, that Presence, without
which all temples are vain, had come to her as freely,
as closely, as truly as when it entered the cottage
at Bethany, and Mary “sat at Jesus' feet and heard
His word.” Even to her, in this night of trouble,
in this stony wilderness of care and fear, as to
God's trembling servant of old, a ladder of light was
let down from heaven, and on it her faith would
climb up to the peace and rest that is above, and
therefore undisturbed by the storms that rage on
earth.

But it is God's way to make us free through
truth. Christ, when on earth, did not deal with
men's souls as with their bodies. The latter he
touched into instantaneous cure; to the former
He appealed with patient instruction and entreaty.
To the former revealed Himself by word and deed,
and said: In view of what I prove myself to be
will you trust me? Will you follow me?

In words which, though spoken so long ago, are
still the living utterances of the Spirit to every
seeking soul, He was now speaking to Edith, and
she listened with the wonder and hope that might
have stirred the heart of some sorrowing maiden
like herself, when His voice was accompanied by the
musical chime of waves breaking on the shores of

Galilee, or the rustle of winds through the dark
olive leaves.

Edith came to the source of all truth with a mind
as fresh and unprejudiced as that of one who saw
and heard Jesus for the first time, as, in his mission
journeys, he entered some little town of the Holy
Land. She had never thought much about Him,
and had no strong preconceived opinions. She was
almost utterly ignorant of the creeds and symbols
of men, and Christ was not to her, as He is to so
many, the embodiment of a system and the incarnation
of a doctrine—a vague, half realized truth.
When she thought of him at all, it had been as a
great, good man, the most famous religious teacher
of the past, whose life had nobly “adorned a tale
and pointed a moral.” But this would not answer
any more. “What could a man, dead and buried
centuries ago, do for me now?” she asked, bitterly.
“I want one who can with right speak these
words,

“`Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.'”

And as, with finger still clinging to this passage,
she read of miracle and parable, now trembling
almost under the “Sermon on the Mount,” now
tearful under the tender story of the prodigal, the
feeling came in upon her soul like the rising tide,
“This was not mere man.”

Then, with an awe she had never felt before, she
followed him to Gethsemane, the High Priest's
palace, to Pilate's judgment-hall, and from thence

to Golgotha, and it seemed to her one long “Via
Dolorosa.” With white lips she murmured, with the
centurion, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”

She was reading the wonderful story for the first
time in its true connection, and the Spirit of God
was her guide and teacher. When she came to
Mary “weeping without at the sepulchre,” her own
eyes were streaming, and it seemed as if she were
weeping there herself.

But when Jesus said, in a tone perhaps never
heard before or since in this world, “Mary,” it
seemed that to herself He was speaking, and her
heart responded, “Rabboni—Master.”

She started up and paced the little room, thrilling
with excitement.

“How blind I have been,” she exclaimed—“how
utterly blind! Here I have been struggling alone
all these weary weeks, with scarcely hope for this
world and none for the next, when I might have
had such a friend and helper all the time. Can I be
deceived? Can this sweet way of light out of our
thick darkness be a delusion?”

She went to where her little Bible lay open at the
passage, “Come unto me,” and bowing her head
upon it, pleaded as simply and sincerely as the Syro-Phœnician
mother might have pleaded for her child
in the very presence of the human Saviour,

“O Jesus, I am heavily laden. I labor under
burdens greater than I can bear. Divine Saviour,
help me.”

In answer she expected some vague exaltation of

soul, or an exquisite sense of peace, as the burden
was rolled away.

There was nothing of the kind, but only an impulse
to go to Laura. She was deeply disappointed.
She seemed to have climbed such a lofty height
that she might almost look into heaven, and confirm
her faith forever, and only a simple earthly
duty was revealed to her. Her excited mind, that
had been expanding with the divinest mysteries,
was reacting into quietness, and the impression was
so strong that she must go to Laura, that she thought
her sister had been calling her, and she, in her intense
preoccupation, had heard her as in a dream.

Still keeping the little Bible in her hand, she went
to Laura's room. Through the partially open door
she saw, with a sudden chill of fear, that the bed
had not been slept in. Pushing the door open, she
looked eagerly around with a strange dread growing
upon her. Laura was writing at a table with her
back towards the entrance. There was a strong
odor of laudanum in the room, and a horrible thought
blanched Edith's cheek. Stealing with noiseless
tread across the intervening space, with hand pressed
upon her heart to still its wild throbbings, she looked
over her sister's shoulder, and followed the tracings
of her pen with dilating eyes.

Every sentence was written with a sigh that
might seem the last that the burdened soul could give,
and every line was blotted with tears that fell from
her dim eyes. Edith saw that the poor, thin face
was pinched and wan with misery, and that the pallor
of death had already blanched even her lips,
and, with a shudder of horror, her eyes fell on a
phial of laudanum at Laura's left hand, and from
which she was partially turned away, in the act of
writing.

With an ecstatic thrill of joy, she now understood
how her prayer had been answered. How could
there have been rest—how could there have been
peace—if this awful tragedy had been consummated?

With one devout, grateful glance upward, she

silently took away the fatal drug, and laid her Bible
down in its place.

Laura finished her letter, leaned back, and murmured
a long, trembling, “Farewell!” that was like
a low, mournful vibration of an Æolian harp, when
the night-breeze breathes upon it. Then she
pressed her right hand over her eyes, shuddered,
and tremblingly put out her left for that which
would end all. But, instead of the phial which she
had placed there but a little before, her hand rested
upon a book. Startled, she opened her eyes, and saw
not the dreaded poison, but in golden letters that
seemed luminous to her dazzled sight:

Holy Bible.

Though all had lasted but a brief moment,
Edith's power of self-control was gone. Dashing
the bottle on the floor, where it broke into many
fragments, she threw herself on her sister's neck and
sobbed:

“Oh, Laura, Laura! your hand is on a better
remedy. It has saved me—it can save you. It has
shown me the Friend we need. He sent me to
you;” and she clung to her sister in a rapture of
joy, murmuring, with every breath,

“Thanks, thanks, eternal gratitude! I see how
my prayer is answered now.”

Laura, in her shattered condition, was too bewildered
and feeble to do more than cling to Edith,
with a blessed sense of being rescued from some
great peril. A horrid spell seemed broken, and for
some reason, she knew not why, life and hope were

still possible. A torrent of tears seemed to relieve
her of the dreadful oppression that had so long
rested on her, and at last she faltered:

“Who is this strange friend?”

“His name is Jesus—Saviour,” said Edith, in a
low, reverential tone.

“I don't quite understand,” said Laura, hesitatingly.
“I can only cling to you till I know
him.”

“He knows you, Laura, and loves you. He has
never forgotten us. It was we who forgot Him. He
sent me to you, just in time. Now put your hand
on this book, and promise me you will never think
of such an awful thing again.”

“I promise,” said Laura, solemnly; “not if I am
in my right mind. I don't understand myself. You
seem to have awakened me from a fearful dream. I
will do just what you tell me to.”

“O Laura, let us both try to do just what our
Divine Friend tells us to do.”

“Perhaps, through you, I will learn to know Him.
I can only cling to you to-night,” said Laura,
wearily. “I am so tired,” and her eyes drooped as
she spoke.

With a sense of security came a strong reaction in
her overtaxed nature. Edith helped her to bed as
if she were a child, and soon she was sleeping as
peacefully as one.