University of Virginia Library

48. CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE PEARL CROSS.

EVERY thoughtful person who exercises the least
supervision over what goes on within, is conscious
of living two distinct lives—the outward and the inward.

The external life is positive, visible, definable; easily
made the subject of conversation. The inner life is shy,
retiring, most difficult to be expressed in words, often
inexplicable, even to the subject of it, yet no less a positive
reality than the outward.

We have not succeeded in the picture of our Eva
unless we have shown her to have one of those sensitive
moral organizations, whose nature it is to reflect deeply,
to feel intensely, and to aspire after a high moral ideal.

If we do not mistake the age we live in, the perplexities
and anxieties of such natures form a very large
item in our modern life.

It is said that the Christian religion is losing its hold
on society. On the contrary, we believe there never
was a time when faith in Christianity was so deep and
all-pervading, and when it was working in so many
minds as a disturbing force.

The main thing which is now perplexing modern society,
is the effort which is making to reduce the teachings
of the New Testament to actual practice in life and
to regulate society by them. There is no skepticism as
to the ends sought by Jesus in human life. Nobody
doubts that love is the fulfilling of the law, and that to

do as we would be done by, applied universally, would
bring back the golden age, if ever such ages were.

But the problem that meets the Christian student,
and the practical person who means to live the Christian
life, is the problem of redemption and of self-sacrifice.

In a world where there is always ruin and misery,
where the inexperienced are ensnared and the blind
misled, and where fatal and inexorable penalties follow
every false step, there must be a band of redeemers,
seekers and savers of the lost. There must be those
who sacrifice ease, luxury and leisure, to labor for the
restoration of the foolish and wicked who have sold
their birthright and lost their inheritance; and here is
just the problem that our age and day present to the
thoughtful person who, having professed, in whatever
church or creed, to be a Christian, wishes to make a
reality of that profession.

The night that Eva had spent in visiting the worst
parts of New York had been to her a new revelation of
that phase of paganism which exists in our modern city
life, within sound of hundreds of church bells of every
denomination. She saw authorized as a regular trade,
and protected by law, the selling of that poisoned liquor
which brings on insanity worse than death; which engenders
idiocy, and the certainty of vicious propensities
in the brain of the helpless unborn infant; which is the
source of all the poverty, and more than half the crime,
that fills alms-houses and prisons, and of untold miseries
and agonies to thousands of families. She saw woman
degraded as the minister of sin and shame; the fallen
and guilty Eve, forever plucking and giving to Adam
the forbidden fruit whose mortal taste brings death into
the world; and her heart had been stirred by the sight
of those multitudes of poor ruined wrecks of human
beings, men and women, that she had seen crowding in

to that midnight supper, and by the earnest pleadings of
faith and love that she had heard in the good man's
prayers for them. She recalled his simple faith, his undaunted
courage in thus maintaining this forlorn hope
in so hopeless a region, and she could not rest satisfied
with herself, doing nothing to help.

In talking with Mr. James on his prospects, he had
said that he very much wished to enlarge this Home so
as to put there some dormitories for the men who were
willing to take the pledge to abandon drinking, where
they could find shelter and care until some kind of work
could be provided for them. He stated further that he
wished to connect with the enterprise a farm in the
country where work could be found for both men and
women, of a kind which would be remunerative, and
which might prove self-supporting.

Eva reflected with herself whether she had anything
to give or to do for a purpose so sacred. Their income
was already subject to a strict economy. The little
elegancies and adornments of her house were those that
are furnished by thought and care rather than by money.
Even with the most rigorous self-scrutiny, Eva could
not find fault with the home philosophy by which their
family life had been made attractive and delightful, because
she said and felt that her house had been a ministry
to others. It had helped to make others stronger,
more cheerful, happier.

But when she brought Maggie away from the Home,
she longed to send back some helpful token to those
earnest laborers.

On revising her possessions, she remembered that,
once, in the days when she was a rich and rather self-indulgent
daughter of luxury, she had spent the whole
of one quarter's allowance in buying for herself a pearl
cross. It cost her not even a sacrifice, for when with a

kiss or two she confessed her extravagance to her father,
he only pinched her cheek playfully, told her not to do
so again, and gave a check for the amount. There it
lies, at this moment, in Eva's hands; and as she turns it
abstractedly round and round, and marks the play of
light on the beautiful pearls, she thinks earnestly what
that cross means, and wonders that she should ever have
worn it as a mere bauble.

Does it not mean that man's most generous Friend,
the highest, the purest, the sweetest nature that ever
visited this earth, was agonized, tortured, forsaken, and
left to bleed life away, unpitied and unrelieved, for love
of us and of all sinning, suffering humanity? Suddenly
the words came with overpowering force to her mind:
“He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth
live unto themselves.”

Immediately she resolved that she would give this
cross to the sacred work of saving the lost. She resolved
to give it secretly—without the knowledge even of her
husband. The bauble was something personal to herself
that never would be missed or inquired for, and she felt
about such an offering that reserve and sacredness which
is proper to natures of great moral delicacy. With the
feeling she had at this moment, it was as much an expression
of personal loyalty and devotion to Jesus Christ
as was the precious alabaster vase of Mary. It satisfied,
moreover, a kind of tender, vague remorse that she
had often felt; as if, in her wedded happiness and her
quiet home, she were too blessed, and had more than
her share of happiness in a world where there were such
sufferings and sorrows.

She had always had a longing to do something towards
the world's work, and, if nothing more, to be a
humble helper of the brave and heroic spirits who press
on in the front ranks of this fight for the good.

She did not wish to be thanked or praised, as if the
giving up of such a toy for such a cause were a sacrifice
worth naming; for, in the mood that she was in, it was
no sacrifice—it was a relief to an over-charged feeling,
an act of sacramental union between her soul and the
Saviour who gave himself wholly for the lost. So she
put the velvet case in its box, and left it at Mr. James's
door, with the following little note:

We have seen the question raised lately in a religious
paper, whether the sacrifice of personal ornaments for
benevolent objects was not obligatory; and we have seen
the right to retain these small personal luxuries defended
with earnestness.

To us, it seems an unfortunate mode of putting a
very sacred subject.

The Infinite Saviour, in whose hands all the good
works of the world are moving, is rich. The treasures

of the world are his. He is as able now as he was when
on earth to bid us cast in our line and find a piece of
silver in the mouth of the first fish. Our gifts are only
valuable to him for what they express in us.

Had Mary not shed the precious balm upon his head,
she would not have been reproved for the omission; yet
the exaltation of love which so expressed itself was
appreciated and honored by him.

It is written, too, that he looked upon and loved the
young man who had not yet attained to the generous
enthusiasm that is willing to sacrifice all for suffering
humanity.

Religious offerings, to have value in his sight, must
be like the gifts of lovers, not extorted by conscience,
but by the divine necessity which finds relief in giving.

He can wait, as mothers do, till we outgrow our love
of toys and come to feel the real sacredness and significance
of life. The toy which is dear to childhood will
be easily surrendered in the nobler years of maturity.

But Eva's was a nature so desirous of sympathy that
whatever dwelt on her mind overflowed first or last into
the minds of her friends; and, an evening or two after
her visit to the mission home, she told the whole story at
her fireside to Dr. Campbell, St. John, and Angie, Bolton,
Jim, and Alice, who were all dining with her. Eva had
two or three objects in this. In the first place, she
wanted to touch the nerve of real Christian unity which
she felt existed between the heart of St. John and that of
every true Christian worker—that same Christian unity
that associated the Puritan apostle Eliot with the Roman
Catholic missionaries of Canada. She wished him to
see in a Methodist minister the same faith, the same
moral heroism which he had so warmly responded to in
the ritualistic mission of St. George, and which was his
moral ideal in his own work.

She wished to show Dr. Campbell the pure and simple
faith in God and prayer by which so effective a work
of humanity had already been done for a class so hopeless.

“It's all very well,” he said, “and I'm glad, if anybody
can do it; but I don't believe prayer has anything
to do with it.”

“Well, I do,” said Bolton, energetically. “I would n't
think life worth having another minute, if I did n't think
there was a God who would stand by a man whose whole
life was devoted to work like this.”

“Well,” said Campbell, “it is n't, after all, an appeal
to God; it's an appeal to human nature. Nobody that
has a heart in him can see such a work doing and not
want to help it. Your minister takes one and another to
see his Home, and says nothing, and, by-and-by, the
money comes in.”

“But in the beginning,” said Eva, “he had no money,
and nothing to show to anybody. He was going to do
a work that nobody believed in, among people that
everybody thought so hopeless that it was money thrown
away to help him. To whom could he go but God? He
went and asked Him to help him, and began, and has
been helped day by day ever since; and I believe God
did help him. What is the use of believing in God at
all, if we don't believe that?”

“Well,” said Jim, “I'm not much on theology, but
we newspaper fellows get a considerable stock of facts,
first and last; and I've looked through this sort of thing,
and I believe in it. A man don't go on doing a business
of six or seven or eight thousand a year on prayer,
unless prayer amounts to something; and I know, first
and last, the expenses of that concern can't be less than
that.”

“Well,” said Harry, “we have a lasting monument

in the great orphan house of Halle—a whole city square
of solid stone buildings. I have stood in the midst of
them, and they were all built by one man, without fortune
of his own, who has left us his written record how,
day by day, as expenses thickened, he went to God and
asked for his supplies, and found them.”

“But I maintain,” said Dr. Campbell, “that his appeal
was to human nature. People found out what he
was doing, their sympathies were moved, and they sent
him help. The very sight of such a work is an application.”

“I don't think that theory accounts for the facts,”
said Bolton. “Admitting that there is a God who is
near every human heart in its most secret retirement,
who knows the most hidden moods, the most obscure
springs of action, how can you prove that this God did
not inspire the thoughts of sympathy and purposes of
help there recorded? For we have in this Franke's
journal, year after year, records of help coming in when
it was wanted, having been asked for of God, and obtained
with as much regularity and certainty as if checks
had been drawn on a banker.”

“Well,” said Dr. Campbell, “do you suppose that, if
I should now start to build a hospital without money,
and pray every week for funds to settle with my workmen,
it would come?”

“No, Doctor, you 're not the kind of fellow that such
things happen to,” said Jim, “nor am I.”

“It supposes an exceptional nature,” said Bolton,
“an utter renunciation of self, an entire devotion to an
unselfish work, and an unshaken faith in God. It is a
moral genius, as peculiar and as much a gift as the genius
of painting, poetry, or music.”

“It is an inspiration to do the work of humanity,
and it presupposes faith,” said Eva. “You know the

Bible says, `He that cometh to God must believe that HE
IS, and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek
him.'”

The result of that fireside talk was not unfruitful.
The next week was a harvest for the Home.

In blank envelopes, giving no names, came various
sums. Fifty dollars, with the added note:

This was from Dr. Campbell.

A hundred dollars was found in another envelope,
with the note:

This was from Bolton.

Mr. St. John sent fifty dollars, with the words:

And, finally, Jim Fellows sent fifty, with the words:

None of these consulted with the other; each contribution
was a silent and secret offering. Who can
prove that the “Father that seeth in secret” did not inspire
them?