“And have you no acquaintance with that personage?” asked the captain.
“Oh, then you only mean that I am a little timid and nervous,” said Emmie, a good deal relieved. “That is no serious charge; you let me off too easily.”
“Not so fast, my dear child. Let us examine the allegorical personages more closely. Timorous and Mistrust are not only found together, but they are very closely related.”
“You would not have me a Boadicea or a Joan of Arc?” asked Emmie, smiling.
“I would have you—what you are—a gentle English maiden; but I would have you more than you now are,—that is to say, a trustful Christian maiden,” replied Captain Arrows.
“Surely courage is a natural quality, which belongs to some and not to others,” observed Emmie Trevor. “Besides, if it be a virtue at all, it is surely a man’s rather than a woman’s.”
“Mere physical courage, such as ‘seeks the bubble reputation e’en in the cannon’s mouth,’ is not a Christian virtue,” said the captain; “it may be displayed by infidel or atheist. The courage which is a grace, a grace to be cultivated and prayed for, is that childlike trust in a Father’s wisdom and love, by which the feeblest woman may glorify her Maker.”
“Faith in God’s wisdom and love! Oh, you do not surely think that I am so wicked as ever to doubt them! I have many faults, I know, but this one—” Emmie stopped short, startled to find on her tongue almost the very words which had been given as a sign that the bosom sin had been tracked to its lurking-place.
“You remember,” said Captain Arrows, “that a few days ago I listened to your singing that fine hymn which begins with the lines,—
‘Lord, it belongs not to my care
Whether I die or live.’”