I should have talked of "performing my
religious duties" as if they were a sort of toll or custom to be paid
to God, not as if one's whole life ought to be one religious duty.
That sudden loss, which left me alone in the world, made me, as it
were, realise who and what my Heavenly Father was to me; and I had in
my loneliness thought more of these things, and was learning more
every day as I taught Dora; but it was dreadfully shallow, untried
knowledge, and, unfortunately, I was the only person to whom Harold
would talk. Mr. Smith's having been a clergyman had given him a
distaste and mistrust of all clergy; nor do I think he was quite
kindly treated by those around us, for they held aloof, and treated
him as a formidable stranger with an unknown ill repute, whose very
efforts in the cause of good were untrustworthy.
I thought of that mighty man of Israel whom God had endowed with
strength to save His people, and how all was made of little avail
because his heart was not whole with God, and his doings were self-
pleasing and fitful. Oh! that it might not be thus with my Harold?
Might not that little child, who had for a moment opened the gates to
him, yet draw him upwards where naught else would have availed?
As to talking to me, he did it very seldom, but he had a fashion of
lingering to hear me teach Dora, and I found that, if he were absent,
he always made her tell him what she had learnt; nor did he shun the
meeting me over Percy's picture in my sitting-room in the twilight
Sunday hour.
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