“Gay, gaudy clothing always gives me a feeling of pain when I look upon it,” observed Ella; “I believe that with so many it has been the first step to misery here and hereafter.”
“It is like the gay bait on the hook,” said her mother, “not in itself deadly, but covering a fatal snare. Oh, ‘love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever’” (1 John ii. 15, 17).
WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP
X.
CROSSES.
There was unusual silence in the little Sunday school when Ella Claremont, its gentle teacher, entered it for the first time in deep mourning. All had known of her sorrow; all had heard that her brave young brother had died of wounds received in battle in a far distant land. They thought of him whom they had seen some few months before so bright and happy, with a smile and a kind word for all, now lying cold in his bloody grave; and there was not a heart in the school-room which did not feel sorrow and sympathy.
Ella could not at first address her school; her words seemed choked; the tears gathered slowly in her eyes; but she found strength in silent prayer, and spoke at length to her pupils, but in a trembling voice.