“Carry shall copy it for you then. This little volume is my vade mecum. You may always find my Bible in my right pocket, and this in my left. It is rather too dear for the poor, which I regret; but its circulation is already very extensive.”
I found that it was the “Invalid’s Hymn-book,” and that my favourite Sabbath hymn, which I had erroneously attributed to Hugh White, was, as well as this, by Miss Elliott.
“Will you let me offer you a glass of wine?” said I.
“Thank you, I shall like a glass of wine-and-water and a biscuit very much, if you will have the same.”
“I will, then.”
I believe it was partly on my account he had it. As we partook of our refreshment, he spoke so pleasantly and interestingly, that I was completely lured away from all my sad thoughts; and, after offering up a short, fervent prayer, which was full of tempered thanksgiving for life, and faith in the life to come, he left me quite composed and cheerful. And here have I been living the happy half-hour over again.
I must just note down something else that he said to me.
“I sometimes hear people,” said he, “deplore their living in vain. No one lives in vain who does or bears the will of God. Where there is little or nothing to perform, there may be something to endure. A baby can do nothing, and is only the object of solicitude to others, but I suppose no one with any sense or feeling will say that babies live in vain. Even if they answer no other purpose, they are highly useful in creating sympathy, watchfulness, and unselfishness in others. A paralyzed person, a person shut up in a dark cell, may, by patient endurance, eminently glorify God. And, as long as He thinks it worth while we should live, we may always find it worth while to fulfil the purposes of living in things however small. Only the bad, the slothful, the selfish, live in vain. We may have our good and evil tempers without speaking a word. We may nourish holy or unholy wishes, contented or discontented dispositions, without stirring from our place. ‘Since trifles make the sum of human things,’ even a bit of liquorice given to a servant-girl with an irritable throat, going out in a cutting wind, shall not be in vain.
“No one can say, my dear Mrs. Cheerlove, that that good and great man, Sir Isambard Brunel, lived in vain. Towards the close of his life, however, days of weakness and helplessness supervened, when he was drawn about his son’s garden in a Bath chair, on sunshiny mornings. Well, Lady Brunel told me that on those occasions he would often bid them bring him one of his favourite blue and white minor convolvuluses, and he would then examine it with his magnifying glass, till he espied the minute black insect which he was sure to find in it, soon or late. ‘See here,’ he would exclaim, ‘this little creature is so small as scarcely to be discernible, and yet the Almighty has thought it worth while to give it every function requisite for life and happiness.’ He did not think it lived in vain.”