If we had not the prospect of so soon going north, I should certainly press for medical advice for Elfie. I do not feel satisfied about the child. Her little hands are transparently thin, and her eyes look bigger than ever in the tiny brown face, while this constantly recurring neuralgia shows weakness. "Oh, it is only Elfie," Maggie says, if I speak to her, and Elfie fights on bravely. I do not like the state of things, however.
July 9. Thursday.—Mr. Slade Denham has been to dinner here this evening, an unusual event, for he detests society.
It strikes me that I have written little or nothing in my journal hitherto about the Church we attend. There is always so much to say about these girls.
St. John's is only five minutes distant, a graceful little Gothic Chapel-of-Ease to the Parish Church, built by Sir Keith himself to meet the growing needs of Glynde. The Rector of Glynde, Mr. Wilmington, is an elderly man, with two curates; one of the two, the Rev. Slade Denham, having sole charge of St. John's. We go there regularly, the Parish Church being too far off.
Mr. Denham is a first-cousin of Sir Keith's, and about the same age, but not in the least like him,—very plain, shy and brusque in manner, and rather odd in his ways. He is a thorough "study-man," a hard reader, a hater of platforms, and a busy organiser of Parish work,—characteristics not always found in juxtaposition. He is rarely to be seen out of his study, except in the cottages of the poor, in the sickrooms of either poor or rich, and in needful Parish gatherings. Tennis is not in his line; and his one recreation takes the shape of long lonely walks in the country,—hardly sufficient recreation, perhaps, in the case of so severe a brain-toiler. He looks like a burner of midnight oil.
The poor are devoted to Mr. Denham,—and the rich are not. Easily explained, for to the poor he is all gentleness, and to the rich he is all shy curtness. It is a pity; since he loses influence thereby. Yet one does not know how to regret the hermitage-loving turn of mind which results in such sermons as his,—no strings of platitudes strung together in a hurry, and spun out to fill up a stereotyped twenty minutes or half-hour, but real downright teaching, Sunday after Sunday, in a full and systematic course. Surely our Church means us to have such systematic teaching, declaring to us throughout the year the "whole counsel of God," and not merely to be fed upon stray scraps of that "counsel," gathered up almost at random without plan or method. But I have never had it before.
The services too are full of help and refreshment, bright, hearty, reverent, with a good choir and congregational singing. Everybody seems to join. There is no lounging or lolling, and scarcely any staring about. It is wonderful how infectious in a Church is a spirit of deep earnestness and intense reverence.
I often think of Sir Keith's words on any journey here,—of the responsibility involved in greater privileges. For I do feel that such a Church as St. John's near at hand is a real privilege, and ought to be a real and practical help. And that means that I ought to advance more quickly, that I ought to become more Heavenly-minded, that I ought to live more nearly such a life as Christ my Master lived, that I ought to walk more fully as He walked.
Is it so, indeed? The question is a very serious one. For if not—better far that greater privileges and means of spiritual advance were not mine, than that having I should fail to use them!
"Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the Way everlasting."