“Yes; I shall be happier even here, trying to please my heavenly Master, than at Castle Lestrange, with the feeling ever arising that I am seeking to please self alone.”
It was this thought that made Isa Gritton bear patiently the dull monotony of the home to which she had returned, and the wayward fretfulness of him whose society now replaced that in which she had found such delight. Though Gaspar’s temper was more than usually trying, not once did a peevish tone betray irritation, not once did a frown furrow Isa’s fair brow. For hours, on the evening after her return, Isa sat reading aloud to her brother a work upon commercial statistics, in which she herself took not a shadow of interest. Certainly her mind wandered much from the book, and when at length she wearily closed it, Isa could not have recalled a single sentence which it contained. But she had been serving an invalid brother and not pleasing herself; and if this duty was less attractive than that of feeding the Saviour’s lambs, it was equally that which He had assigned her, and it was fulfilled for His sake.
Mankind applaud great acts of munificence, costly offerings presented like those of Solomon in open day, in the sight of all; but by far the greater number of the sacrifices which God accepts are made, as it were, like Gideon’s, in the night-time, in the obscurity of domestic life, where no praise is looked for from man. There is deep truth in the well-known lines of Keble,—
“The trivial round, the common task,
Afford us all we ought to ask—
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To lead us daily nearer God.”
