A Woman of Yesterday

by Caroline Atwater Mason

Then the dear Lord had sweetly spoken in the secret place of her heart, as distinctly as if with an audible voice: “My child, the old life of formalism, of coldness, and of worldly pleasure in which many Christians live is the staff called Bands. The higher life, the life of answered prayer, the life of perfect sanctification and fulness of blessing, is Beauty. Take this message to my dear children in Burlington.”

Oh, how simple! Oh, how sweet! Who would weary heart and brain over the interpretations of rationalistic German commentators, when we could thus have the direct interpretation of his own word by the Lord himself?

Thus Mrs. Westervelt proceeded at some length on this line, and then, with tearful eyes and an added intensity of the personal element, she rehearsed the answers to prayer which her friend, Mrs. Ingraham, had rightly called wonderful. Thus, in carrying on the work of preaching perfect sanctification in Boston, a room had been needed for meetings. Two or three of the little band had prayed, and within a week they had had a most suitable room offered them by a precious sister, but it was unfurnished. The details of securing the equipment of this room were now described. Each piece of furniture, the speaker declared, had been directly given in answer to special prayer and by a marvellous interposition. If any natural means had been at work by which persons in sympathy with their efforts were led to supply their obvious needs, these were not mentioned. Plainly it was Mrs. Westervelt’s conception of a perfect relation to God that the one sustaining it should receive constant miraculous testimony of the divine favour. The privilege of attaining this condition was presented with fervid emphasis. It was the high and perfect life! Who would live on the old plane when this was what God had for them? Oh, how beautiful it was to trust! Why should we ever doubt, when we were so plainly told that whatsoever we ask we shall receive?

As Mrs. Westervelt went on, many of her hearers were moved to tears, and a continuous response of sympathetic looks and subdued exclamations followed her recital of her surprising experiences. The wealthy women present felt that this was certainly a fine thing for those who could not get what they wanted by ordinary business methods, but were, perhaps, secretly glad that they were not themselves called upon to test their relation to God quite so pointedly. The poorer and humbler guests wept profusely, thinking how long they had stumbled on in the dull and inferior practice of working painfully for many needed things, which might all have been miraculously given them, if they had only been favourites of God, like Mrs. Westervelt, or, as she would have said, “had only just stepped out into the fulness.”

Anna Mallison sat and listened in unspeakable astonishment.

This was as absolutely new a gospel to her as the gospel of Christ to a disciple of Buddha. It was her first contact with sentimental religion.

The God of her father had been the immutable and eternal Creator, the high and holy One inhabiting eternity, the Judge of all the earth. Through the Incarnation the just anger of this Holy Being toward sinful men had been appeased. But although in Christ there had been found access to God and an Intercessor, never had it entered into the heart of Samuel Mallison or those whom he led to regard themselves as occupying a position other than of deepest humility, self-distrust, awe, and reverence.

Mrs. Westervelt’s phraseology was almost like a foreign tongue to Anna. The constant use of terms of familiar endearment in speaking of the Almighty; the application of affectionate and flattering adjectives on all sides; the sense of a peculiar and intimate relation established between herself and God; and the free-and-easy conversational, in fact, rather colloquial, style in which she held herself privileged to communicate with him,—were almost amazing to her. And beneath all these superficial marks of a new cult, lay the deeper sense of the inherent disparity. Religion to Anna had been, it has been said earlier, a system of prohibitions, of self-denials, of self-abasement, with only at rare intervals the illumination of a profound sense of the love of God. Here was a religion which held up a species of luxurious spiritual enjoyment, of unrestrained freedom in approaching God, of an indubitable sense of being personally on the best of terms with him, as the privilege of all true believers.

The conception of prayer which Mrs. Westervelt had demonstrated was not less surprising to Anna. She knew that there were wide and sweeping scriptural promises with regard to prayer, but she had always felt a deep mystery attaching itself to them. For herself, she had never ventured to intrude her temporal gratifications and designs upon the attention of her God, but had rather felt a sober silence regarding these things to best befit a sinful creature coming before a holy Creator. Half revolting, but half smitten with compunction, the thought now flashed through her mind that, if she had only prayed after this new sort, her father might have received the oranges for which he had sorely longed in the months before his death. This luxury was not to be obtained in Haran, and had therefore been patiently foregone, heaven and Burlington having seemed equally inaccessible at the time.

Mrs. Westervelt sat down, and the meeting broke up, a swarm of enthusiastic, tearful women rushing to surround her and pour out their effusive appreciation of her wonderful address. Anna stood bewildered and alone, doubting within herself. Had it all been the highest consecration, as it undoubtedly desired to be? or had it been the highest presumption, the old temptation of spiritual pride, assuming a new guise?