Every eye was turned towards Ella; every ear anxiously listened for her reply; for every young heart was conscious of some sin, and felt the difficulty which Giles had started.
“It would have been so,” replied Ella, “had not the Saviour died for sinners like us. His blood washes us quite clean from all guilt—that is, if we really believe on him and love him. Let us look upon our sins as chains now, and struggle hard to burst them, and pray for grace to help us: then, if we are Christ’s people, we shall rise joyfully in that great day when ‘the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God’” (1 Thess. iv. 16).
“I think,” said Giles, after a pause, “that sins are like chains, and very hard to break too. There is temper, now! I know that I’ve a bad temper; I determine over and over again that I will get rid of it; but the harder I struggle, the tighter the chain seems to grow.”
“And mother is trying to cure me of saying bad words,” cried little Robert; “but it’s no use—they will come; I say them when I’m not thinking about it.”
“Have you tried prayer?” inquired Ella. “Do you not know the precious promises, ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him’ (James i. 5). ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you’ (Luke xi. 9). These words have often been such a comfort to me, when I felt how heavy my chain was, and how weak my efforts to get rid of it. And now, my young friends, I must leave you; will you think over what I have said?”
“Yes, miss, and thank you for it,” said Giles, touching his cap.
Ella paused as she was turning to depart, and gazed upon the sky, all bright with the evening sun, setting amidst clouds of crimson and gold.
“How glorious!” she cried, “how beautiful that work of God! He, too, speaks of the resurrection; he sinks to rise again!
‘Just so is the Christian; his course he begins,
Like the sun in a mist, when he mourns for his sins,