“Yes,” replied Emmie Trevor; “and you told me that, much as you admired that hymn, you did not think it suited for my singing. I supposed that you thought it too low for my voice.”
“No, I thought it too high for your practice. Could it be consistently sung by one who that morning had been in nervous terror at the scratch of a kitten; one who owned that she would scarcely dare to nurse her best friend through the small-pox; one who, even with my escort, could not be persuaded to cross a field in which a few cows were grazing?”
“Oh, uncle, how can you take such trifles seriously!” cried Emmie, a good deal hurt.
“Because I wish you to take them a little more seriously,” replied Captain Arrows. “You have hitherto regarded unreasonable fear as an innocent weakness, perhaps as something allied with feminine grace, and not as a foe to be resisted and conquered. I see that fear is at this time throwing a shadow over your path; that you would be happier if you had the power wholly to cast it aside.”
“I have not the power,” said Emmie. The words had scarcely escaped her lips when she wished them unspoken, for she was ashamed thus to plead guilty to a feeling of superstitious alarm.
“Let us then trace the parentage of unreasonable fear,” said Captain Arrows. “I use the adjective advisedly. There are cases where the nerves are so shattered by illness, or enfeebled by age, that fears come on the mind, as fits on the body, not as a fault but as a heavy affliction. There are also times of extreme and awful danger, such as that of the Indian Mutiny, when faith must indeed have had a dread struggle with fear; though even then, in the hearts of tender women, faith won the victory still. But I am speaking of that fear which common sense would condemn. Such fear is, must be, the offspring of mistrust, and its effects show it to be a tempter and an enemy of the soul.”
“What effects do you mean?” said Emmie.
“These three at least,” answered the captain. “Unreasonable fear hinders usefulness, destroys peace, and prevents our glorifying God.”
“I do not quite see how it should do so,” murmured Emmie.
“It hinders usefulness,” said her uncle; “like indolence, fear is ever seeing ‘a lion in the street.’ Does not fear hang like a clog on the spirit, making ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’ even when duty to God and mercy to man is in question?”