But better thoughts were in the mind of Agnes on that Sunday night, as she sat silently brushing her hair. Sweet and comforting was the reflection that she was not left to fight her battle alone, that there was One who would not only hear her prayer, but who would Himself pray for His feeble child—who would both watch her struggle against sin, and give her strength in that struggle. It was sweet to poor Agnes, when she afterwards knelt down to pray by the side of her bed, to feel that if she was, like an Israelite, bitten by the serpent of sin, she knew where to look for a cure; that if she was like Naaman the leper, there was the Fountain open to her, in which she could wash and be clean. Hope had sprung up in the young girl’s heart, and with hope came increase of courage. Agnes remembered that the Lord who had supplied all the need of the Israelites could supply hers also; and when temptations assailed her, as the enemy assailed that people, make her also more than conqueror through the power of His Holy Spirit.
Very, very different were the thoughts passing through the mind of Dora, though outwardly she was doing exactly the same things as were done by her twin sister. Dora was not making a brave battle against inward sin, but was, like a coward and traitor, going over to the enemy’s side. It is true that she still intended to unpick on the Monday morning all that she had sewn on the Sunday afternoon; but this resolve was made on the false principle of punishing herself for the sin she would not honestly confess, and of which she had never truly repented. This idea of self-inflicted punishment was merely Dora’s contrivance for quieting conscience, that conscience which had been very uneasy during the conversation on the subject of leprosy, the terrible type of sin. But Dora was trying, and with tolerable success, to banish from her mind all thought of that conversation. It was far more pleasant to think of the pattern of the Tabernacle curtains than of the holy things of which that Tabernacle should remind us.
A great many persons—even grown-up persons—act, alas! like Dora. They so fix their attention on outward things in religion that they quite overlook the inward meaning. Such self-deceivers are ready enough to work at what pleases the eye and amuses the fancy, and believe that they are making an offering to God; but the cleansing of the heart, the giving up sin—these are duties which they shrink from, and which they willingly put off to “a more convenient season.”
XIV.
Work.
ALMOST every inmate of Cedar Lodge was up very early on Monday morning, Agnes being the only member of the family who did not rise till her usual hour. The first crow of the cock, strutting about in the yard behind the house, roused little Elsie from sleep. The child was restless and impatient in her white-curtained cot, until she was suffered to rise, dress, and set about her Turkey-red work for the model. Amy was bending over her strip of white linen almost before there was sufficient light for her to see how to thread her fine needle, for the morning was dark and rainy; indeed the sun never showed his face during the whole of that cheerless day.