The Chautauqua Girls At Home Part 19

"I have one friend to whom I have tried to talk about this matter, but I have had no success. He is very peculiar in his views and feelings. He agrees to every thing that I say, and admits the wisdom and reasonableness of it all, but he goes no further."

"There are a great many such people," Dr. Dennis said, with a quick sigh. He met many of them himself. "They are the hardest cla.s.s to reach.

Does your friend believe in the power of prayer? I have generally found the safest and shortest way with such to be to use my influence in inducing them to begin to pray. If they admit its power and its reasonableness, it is such a very simple thing to do for a friend that they can hardly refuse."

"I don't think he ever prays," Ruth said, "and I don't believe he would.

He would think it hypocritical. He says as much as that half the praying must be mockery."

"Granting that to be the case, does he think he should therefore not offer real prayer? That would be a sad state. Because I have many hypocrites in my family whose words to me are mockery, therefore no one must be a true friend."

"I know," said Ruth, interrupting. "But I don't know how to reach such people. Perhaps he may be your work, Dr. Dennis, but I don't think he is mine. I don't in the least know what to say to him. I refer to Mr.

Wayne."

"I know him," Dr. Dennis said, "but he is not inclined to talk with me.

I have not the intimacy with him that would lead him to be familiar. I should be very certain, if I were you, that my work did not lie in that direction before I turned from it."

"I am certain," Ruth said, with a little laugh.

"I don't know how to talk to such people. I should feel sure of doing more harm than good."

"But, my dear Miss Erskine, I beg your pardon for the reminder, but since you are thrown much into his society, will it not be necessary for you, as a Christian, to talk more or less about this matter? Should not your talk be shaped in such a way as to influence him if you can?"

"I don't think I understand," Ruth said, doubtfully. "Do you mean that people should talk about religion all the time they are together?"

During this question Dr. Dennis had drawn his Bible toward him and been turning over the leaves.

"Just let me read you a word from the Guide-book on this subject: 'Only let your conversation be as becometh the Gospel of Christ.' 'As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation.'

'Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of person ought ye to be, in all holy conversation and G.o.dliness?' What should you conclude as to Christian duty in the matter of daily conversation?"

Ruth made no answer to this question, but sat with earnest, thoughtful look fixed on her pastor's face.

"Who follows that pattern?" she asked, at last.

"My dear friend, is not our concern rather to decide whether you and I shall try to do it in the future?"

Someway this brought the talk to a sudden lull. Ruth seemed to have no more to say.

"There is another way of work that I have been intending to suggest to some of you young ladies," Dr. Dennis said, after a thoughtful silence.

"It is something very much neglected in our church--that is the social question. Do you know we have many members who complain that they are never called on, never spoken with, never noticed in any way?"

"I don't know anything about the members," Ruth said. "I don't think I have a personal acquaintance with twenty of them--a calling acquaintance, I mean."

"That is the case with a great many, and it is a state of things that should not exist. The family ought to know each other. I begin to see your work clearer; it is the young ladies, to a large extent, who must remedy this evil. Suppose you take up some of that work, not neglecting the other, of course. 'These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone,' I am afraid will be said to a good many of us. But this is certainly work needing to be done, and work for which you have leisure."

He hoped to see her face brighten, but it did not. Instead she said:

"I hate calling."

"I dare say; calling that is aimless, and in a sense useless. It must be hateful work. But if you start out with an object in view, a something to accomplish that is worth your while, will it not make a great difference?"

Ruth only sighed.

"I have so many calls to make with father," she said, wearily. "It is the worst work I do. They are upon fashionable, frivolous people, who cannot talk about _anything_. It is worse martyrdom now than it used to be. I think I am peculiarly unfitted for such work, Dr. Dennis."

"But I want you to try a different style of calls. Go alone; not with your father, or with anyone who will trammel your tongue; and go among a cla.s.s of people who do not expect you, and will be surprised and pleased, and helped, perhaps. Come, let me give you a list of persons whom I would like to have you call on at your earliest opportunity. This is work that I am really longing to see done."

A prisoner about to receive sentence could hardly have looked more gloomy than did Ruth. She was still for a few minutes, then she said:

"Dr. Dennis, do you really think it is a person's duty to do that sort of work for which he or she feels least qualified, and which is the most distasteful?"

"No," said Dr. Dennis, promptly. "My dear Miss Erskine, will you be so kind as to tell me the work for which you feel qualified, and for which you have no distaste?"

Again Ruth hesitated, looked confused, and then laughed. She began to see that she was making a very difficult task for her pastor.

"I don't feel qualified for anything," she said, at last. "And I feel afraid to undertake anything. But at the same time, I think I ought to be at work."

"Now we begin to see the way clearer," he said, smiling, and with encouragement in his voice. "It may seem a strange thing to you, but a sense of unfitness is sometimes one of the very best qualifications for such work. If it is strong enough to drive us to the blessed Friend who has promised to make perfect our weakness in this as in all other efforts, and if we go out armed in His strength we are sure to conquer.

Try it. Take this for your motto: 'As ye have opportunity.' And, by the way, do you know the rest of that verse? 'Especially to them who are of the household of faith.' It is members of the household that I want you to call on, remember."

Ruth laughed again, and shook her head. But she took her list and went away. She had no more that she wanted to say just then; but she felt that she had food for thought.

"I may try it," she said, as she went out, holding up her list, "but I feel that I shall blunder, and do more harm than good."

Dr. Dennis looked after her with a face on which there was no smile.

"There goes one," he said to himself, "who thinks she is willing to be led, but, on the contrary, she wants to lead. She is saved, but not subdued. I wonder what means the great Master will have to use to lead her to rest in his hands, knowing no way but his?"

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CHAPTER XIV

AN UNARMED SOLDIER.

MANY things intervened to keep Ruth Erskine from having much to do with that list which her pastor had given her. She read it over indeed, and realized that she was not familiar with a single name.

"What an idea it will be for me to go blundering through the city, hunting up people whom I shall not know when I find."

This she said as she read it over; then she laid it aside, and made ready to go out to dinner with her father, to meet two judges and their wives and daughters who were stopping in town.

During that day she thought many times of the sentences that had been read to her out of that plain-looking, much-worn Bible on Dr. Dennis'

study-table. The only effect they had on her was to make her smile at the thought of the impossibility of anything like a religious conversation in such society as that!

"How they would stare," she said to herself, "if I should ask them about a prayer-meeting! I have half a mind to try it. If father were not within hearing I would, just to see what these finished young ladies would say."