LOOKING FOR WORK.
R. DENNIS had just gone into his study to make ready for the evening prayer-meeting, when he heard his door-bell ring. He remembered with a shade of anxiety that his daughter was not yet out of school, and that his sister and housekeeper was not at home. It was more than likely that he would be interrupted.
"What is it, Hannah?" he asked, as that person appeared at his door.
"It is Miss Erskine, sir. I told her that Miss Dennis was out of town, and Miss Grace was at school, and she said it was of no consequence, she wanted to see the minister himself. Will I tell her that you are engaged?"
"No," said Dr. Dennis, promptly. The sensation was still very new, this desire on the part of any of the name of Erskine to see him. His preparation could afford to wait.
Two minutes more and Ruth was in the study. It was a place in which she felt as nearly embarrassed as she ever approached to that feeling. She had a specific purpose in calling, and words arranged wherewith to commence her topic; but they fled from her as if she had been a school girl instead of a finished young lady in society; and she answered the Doctor's kind enquiries as to the health of her father and herself in an absent and constrained manner. At last this good man concluded to help her.
"Is there any thing special that I can do for you to-day?" he asked, with a kindly interest in his tone, that suggested the feeling that he was interested in her plans, whatever they were, and would be glad to help.
"Yes," she said, surprised into frankness by his straightforward way of doing things; "or, at least, I hope you can. Dr. Dennis, ought not every Christian to be at work?"
"Our great Example said; 'I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day.'"
"I know it; that very verse set me to thinking about it. That is what I want help about. There is no work for me to do; at least, I can't find any. I am doing just nothing at all, and I don't in the least know which way to turn. I am not satisfied with this state of things; I can't settle back to my books and my music as I did before I went away; I don't enjoy them as I used to; I mean, they don't absorb me; they seem to be of no earthly use to anyone but myself, and I don't feel absolutely certain that they are of any use to me; anyway, they are not Christian work."
"As to that, you are not to be too certain about it. Wonderful things can be done with music; and when one is given a marked talent for it, as I hear has been the case with you, it is not to be hidden in a napkin."
"I don't know what I can do with music, I am sure," Ruth said, skeptically. "I suppose I must have a good deal of talent in that direction; I have been told so ever since I can remember; but beyond entertaining my friends, I see no other special use for it."
"Do you remember telling me about the songs which Mr. Bliss sang at Chautauqua, and the effect on the audience?"
"Yes," said Ruth, speaking heartily, and her cheeks glowing at the recollection "but he was wonderful!"
"The same work can be done in a smaller way," Dr. Dennis said, smiling. "I hope to show you something of what you may do to help in that way before another winter passes; but, in the meantime, mere entertainment of friends is not a bad motive for keeping up one's music. Then there is the uncertain future ever before us. What if you should be called upon to teach music some day?"
A vision of herself toiling wearily from house to house in all weathers, and at all hours of the day, as she had seen music teachers do, hovered over Ruth Erskine's brain, and so utterly improbable and absurd did the picture seem, when she imagined it as having any reference to her, that she laughed outright.
"I don't believe I shall ever teach music," she said, positively.
"Perhaps not; and yet stranger things than that have happened in this changeful life."
"But, Dr. Dennis," she said, with sudden energy, and showing a touch of annoyance at the turn which the talk was taking, "my trouble is not an inability to employ my time; I do not belong to the class of young ladies who are afflicted with ennui." And a sarcastic curve of her handsome lip made Ruth look very like the Miss Erskine that Dr. Dennis had always known. She despised people who had no resources within themselves. "I can find plenty to do, and I enjoy doing it; but the point is, I seem to be living only for myself, and that doesn't seem right. I want Christian work."
To tell the truth Dr. Dennis was puzzled. There was so much work to do, his hands and heart were always so full and running over, that it seemed strange to him for anyone to come looking for Christian work; the world was teeming with it.
On the other hand he confessed to himself that he was utterly unaccustomed to hearing people ask for work; or, if the facts be told, to having any one do any work.
Years ago he had tried to set the people of the First Church to work; but they had stared at him and misunderstood him, and he confessed to himself that he had given over trying to get work out of most of them. While this experience was refreshing, it was new, and left him for the moment bewildered.
"I understand you," he said, rallying. "There is plenty of Christian work. Do you want to take a class in the Sunday-school? There is a vacancy."
Ruth shook her head with decision.
"That is not at all my forte. I have no faculty for teaching children; I am entirely unused to them, and have no special interest in them, and no sort of idea how they are to be managed. Some people are specially fitted for such work; I know I am not."
"Often we find our work much nearer home than we had planned," Dr. Dennis said, regarding her with a thoughtful air. "How is it with your father, Miss Erskine?"
"My father?" she repeated; and she could hardly have looked more bewildered if her pastor had asked after the welfare of the man in the moon.
"Are you trying to win him over to the Lord's side?"
Utter silence and surprise on Miss Erskine's part. At last she said:
"I hardly ever see my father; we are never alone except when we are on our way to dinner, or to pay formal calls on very formal people. Then we are always in a hurry. I cannot reach my father, Dr. Dennis; he is immersed in business, and has no time nor heart for such matters. I should not in the least know how to approach him if I had a chance; and, indeed, I am sure I could do no good, for he would esteem it an impertinence to be questioned by his daughter as to his thoughts on these matters."
"Yet you have an earnest desire to see him a Christian?"
"Yes," she said, speaking slowly and hesitatingly; "of course I have that. To be very frank, Dr. Dennis, it is a hopeless sort of desire; I don't expect it in the least; my father is peculiarly unapproachable; I know he considers himself sufficient unto himself, if you will allow the expression. In thinking of him, I have felt that a great many years from now, when he is old, and when business cares and responsibilities have in a measure fallen off, and given him time to think of himself, he might then feel his need of a Friend and be won; but I don't even hope for it before that time."
"My dear friend, you have really no right to set a different time from the one that your Master has set," her pastor said, earnestly. "Don't you know that his time is always now? How can you be sure that he will choose to give your father a long life, and leisure in old age to help him to think? Isn't that a terrible risk?"
Ruth Erskine shook her decided head.
"I feel sure that my work is not in that direction," she said. "I could not do it; you do not know my father as well as I do; he would never allow me to approach him. The most I can hope to do will be to hold what he calls my new views so far into the background that he will not positively forbid them to me. He is the only person I think of whom I stand absolutely in awe. Then I couldn't talk with him. His life is a pure, spotless one, convincing by its very morality; so he thinks that there is no need of a Saviour. I do pray for him; I mean to as long as he and I live; but I know I can do nothing else; at least not for many a year."
How was Dr. Dennis to set to work a lady who knew so much that she could not work? This was the thought that puzzled him. But he knew how difficult it was for people to work in channels marked out by others. So he said, encouragingly:
"I can conceive of some of your difficulties in that direction. But you have other friends who are not Christians?"
This being said inquiringly, Ruth, after a moment of hesitation, answered it:
"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 class 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 godliness?' 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 class 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?"
