The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss Part 43

_Father_. I am. And that is the reason I am so grieved when some such boys refuse to let me become their father.

_Boy_. Refuse? Oh, how can they? Refuse to become your own dear sons?

Refuse to have such a dear, kind, patient father? Refuse _love?_

_Father_. My poor blind boy, don't you now begin to see that I do not wait for these adopted sons of mine to wash and clothe themselves, to become good, and obedient, and affectionate, but loved them _because_ they were such dest.i.tute, wicked, lost boys? I did not go out into the streets to look for well-dressed, well-cared-for, faultless children, who would adorn my house and shine in it like jewels. I sought for outcasts; I loved them as outcasts; I knew they would be ungrateful and disobedient, and never love me half as much as I did them; but that made me all the more sorry for them. See what pains I am taking with them, and how beautifully some of them are learning their lessons. And now tell me, my son, in seeing this picture gallery, do you not begin to see me? Could anything less than love take in such a company of poor beggars?

_Boy_. Yes, my father, I do begin to see it. I do believe that I know you better now than I ever did before. I believe you love even me. And now I _know_ that I love you!

_Father_. Now, then, my dear son, let that vexing question drop forever, and begin to act as my son and heir should. You have a great deal to learn, but I will myself be your teacher, and your mind is now free to attend to my instructions. Do you find anything to love and admire in your brothers?

_Boy_. Indeed I do.

_Father_. You shall be taught the lessons that have made them what they are. Meanwhile I want to see you look cheerful and happy, remembering that you are in your father's heart.

_Boy_. Dear father, I will! But oh, help me to be a better son!

_Father_. Dear boy, I will.

[1] In Union Theological Seminary, New York.

[2] The Baptism of the Holy Ghost, by Rev. Asa Mahau, D.D., p. 118.

[3] Dr. L. H. Hemenway.

[4] Some of the charades referred to will be found in appendix E, p.

556.

[5] Referring to the following hymn composed by Madame Guyon in prison:

A little bird I am, Shut out from fields of air, And in my cage I sit and sing To Him who placed me there.

Well-pleased a prisoner to be, Because, my G.o.d, it pleaseth Thee.

Naught have I else to do; I sing the whole day long; And He, whom most I love to please, Doth listen to my song.

He caught and bound my wandering wing, But still He bends to hear me sing.

[6] Mrs. De Witt was the wife of the Rev. Thomas De Witt, D.D., a man of deep learning, an able preacher in the Dutch language as well as the English, and universally revered for his exalted Christian virtues. He was a minister of the Collegiate Church, New York, for nearly half a century. He died May 18, 1874, in the eighty-third year of his age. Here are other sentences uttered by him at the grave of his wife: "Farewell, my beloved, honored, and faithful wife! The tie that united us is severed. Thou art with Jesus in glory; He is with me by His grace. I shall soon be with you. Farewell!"

[7] Prof. Smith had been suddenly stricken down by severe illness and with difficulty removed to the well-known Sanitarium at Clifton Springs.

[8] Referring to the book in a letter to a friend, written shortly after its publication, she says: "Of course it will meet with rough treatment in some quarters, as indeed it has already done. I doubt if any one works very hard for Christ who does not have to be misunderstood and perhaps mocked."

[9] One of the best notices appeared in The Churchman, an Episcopal newspaper then published at Hartford, but since transferred to New York.

Here is a part of it:

"For purity of thought, earnestness and spirituality of feeling, and smoothness of diction, they are all, without exception, good--if they are not great. If no one rises to the height which other poets have occasionally reached, they are, nevertheless, always free from those defects which sometimes mar the perfectness of far greater productions.

Each portrays some human thirst or longing, and so touches the heart of every thoughtful reader. There is a sweetness running through them all which comes from a higher than earthly source, and which human wisdom can neither produce nor enjoy."

[10] _Golden Hours_.

[11] The name given to the Dorset home.

[12] Afterwards changed to _Urbane and His Friends_.

[13] The pa.s.sage from Coleridge is as follows: "The feeling of grat.i.tude which I cherish towards these men has caused me to digress further than I had foreseen or proposed; but to have pa.s.sed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and opinions, would have seemed like the denial of a debt, the concealment of a boon; for the writings of these mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any dogmatic system. They contributed to keep alive the _heart_ in the _head_; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment that all the products of the mere _reflective_ faculty partook of DEATH, and were as the rattling of twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter. If they were too often a moving cloud of smoke to me by day, yet they were always a pillar of fire throughout the night, during my wanderings through the wilderness of doubt, and enabled me to skirt, without crossing, the sandy desert of utter unbelief."

[14] See her translation of the hymn in _Golden Hours_, p. 123. The original will be found in appendix C, p. 540.

[15] I in them and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.--V.

23.

[16] There should be no greater comfort to Christian persons, than to be made like unto Christ, by suffering patiently adversities, troubles, and sicknesses. For He himself went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain; He entered not into His glory, before He was crucified. So truly our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ.--(The Book of Common Prayer.)

[17] Ascribed to St. Patrick, on the occasion of his appearing before King Laoghaire.

CHAPTER XIV.

WORK AND PLAY.

1875-1877.

I.

A Bible-reading in New York. Her Painting. "Grace for Grace." Death of a young Friend. The Summer at Dorset. Bible-readings there. Encompa.s.sed with Kindred. Typhoid Fever in the House. Watching and Waiting. The Return to Town. A Day of Family Rejoicing. Life a "Battle-field."

Her time and thoughts during 1875 were mostly taken up by her Bible- readings, her painting, the society of kinsfolk from the East and the West, getting her eldest son ready for college, and by the dangerous illness of her youngest daughter. Some extracts from the few letters belonging to this year will give the main incidents of its history.

_To a young Friend, Jan. 13, 1875._

I have had two Bible-readings, and they bid fair to be more like those of last winter than I had dared to hope. There are earnest, thoughtful, praying souls present, who help me in conducting the meeting, and you would be astonished to see how much better I can do when not under the keen embarra.s.sment of delivering a lecture, as at Dorset.... I have a young friend about your age who is dying of consumption, and it is very delightful to see how happy she is. She used to attend the Bible-readings last winter.

About the painting? Well, I have dug away, and Mrs. Beers painted out and painted in, till I have got a beautiful great picture almost entirely done by her. Then I undertook the old fence with the clematis on it here at home, and made a _horrid_ daub. She painted most of that out, and is having me do it at the studio. Meanwhile, I have worked on another she lent me, and finished it to-day, and they all say that it is a success. In my last two lessons Mrs. B. contrived to let some light into my bewildered brain, and says that if I paint with her this winter and next summer I shall be able to do what I please. My most discouraging time, she says, is over. Not that I have been discouraged an atom! I have great faith in a strong will and a patient perseverance, and have had no idea of saying die.... Some lady in Philadelphia bought forty copies of Urbane. It was very discriminating in you to see how comforting to me would be that pa.s.sage from Robertson. G.o.d only fully knows how I have got my "education." The school has at times been too awful to talk about to any being save Him. [1]

_To Mrs. Humphrey, New York, April 6, 1875._

My point about "Grace for Grace" [2] is this: I believe in "growth in grace," but I also believe in, because I have experienced it and find my experience in the Word of G.o.d, a work of the Spirit subsequent to conversion (not necessary in all cases, perhaps, but in all cases where Christian life begins and continues feebly), which puts the soul into new conditions of growth. If a plant is sickly and drooping, you must change its atmosphere before you can cure it or make it grow. A great many years ago, _disgusted_ with my spiritual life, I was led into new relations to Christ to which I could give no name, for I never had heard of such an experience. When we moved into this house, I found a paper that had long been buried among rubbish, in which I said, "I am one great long sunbeam"; and I don't know any words, that, on the whole, could better cover most of my life since then. I have been a great sufferer, too; but that has, in the main, nothing to do with one's relation to Christ, except that most forms of pain bring Him nearer.

Now, one can not read "Grace for Grace" without loving and sympathising with the author, because of his deep-seated longing for, and final attainment of, holiness; but it seemed to me there was a good deal of needless groping, which more looking to Christ might have spared him. It is, as you say, curious to see how people who agree in so many points differ so in others. I suspect it is because our degrees of faith vary; the one who believes most gets most.

The subject of sin _versus_ sinlessness is the vexed question, on which, as fast as most people get or think they get light, somebody comes along and snuffs out their candles with unceremonious finger and thumb. A dearly-beloved woman spent a month with me last spring. She thinks she is "kept" from sin, and certainly the change from a most estimable but dogmatic character is absolutely wonderful.... There was this discrepancy between her experience and mine, with, on all other points, the most entire harmony. She had had no special, joyful revelations of Christ to her soul, and I had had them till it seemed as if body and soul would fly apart. On the other hand she had a sweet sense of freedom from sin which transcended anything I had ever had consciously; although I really think that when one is "looking unto Jesus," one is not likely to fall into much noticeable sin. Talking with Miss S. about the two experiences of my dear friend and myself, she said that it could be easily explained by the fact that _all_ the gifts of the Spirit were rarely, if ever, given to one soul. She is very (properly) reticent as to what she has herself received, but she behaved in such a beautiful, Christlike way on a point where we differed, a point of practice, that I can not doubt she has been unusually blest.

Early in May of this year she was afflicted by the sudden death in Paris of a very dear friend of her eldest daughter, Miss Virginia S. Osborn.

[3] During the previous summer Miss...o...b..rn had pa.s.sed several weeks at Dorset and endeared herself, while there, to all the family. The following is from a letter of Mrs. Prentiss to the bereaved mother:

I feel much more like sitting down and weeping with you than attempting to utter words of consolation. Nowhere out of her own home was Virginia more beloved and admired than in our family; we feel afflicted painfully at what to our human vision looks like an unmitigated calamity. But if it is so hard for us to bear, to whom in no sense she belonged, what a heartrending event this is to you, her mother! What an amazement, what a mystery. But it will not do to look upon it on this side. We must not a.s.sociate anything so unnatural as death with a being so eminently formed for life. We must look beyond, as soon as our tears will let us, to the sphere on which she has been honored to enter in her brilliant youth; to the society of the n.o.blest and the best human beings earth has ever known; to the fulness of life, the perfection of every gift and grace, to congenial employment, to the welcome of Him who has conquered death and brought life and immortality to light. If we think of her as in the grave, we must own that hers was a hard lot; but she is not in a grave; she is at home; she is well, she is happy, she will never know a bereavement, or a day's illness, or the infirmities and trials of old age; she has got the secret of perpetual youth.