"What?" asked Rose, curiously. Auntie always had something pleasant to say.
"'I can't see the way, grannie, it's so dark!' he complained; and then a gentle voice came out of the gloom, and I heard these words: 'If you keep close behind, and follow me, we shall soon get into the light!'"
"And I thought, children, that here was our promised twilight talk about 'following' all ready to our hand!"
"Now it seems to me that little Ted Jones is a picture of us."
"There are often places in our everyday lives which are dark and mysterious to us ignorant ones; sorrows, or trials, misunderstandings, difficulties, sins, temptations—you can all put your own special difficulty into the story, and call it 'darkness.' The question often comes to each of us, how are we to get out of this dilemma, or this difficulty, or this bad temper, or temptation?"
"I know well that it seems very real and large and overwhelming to us. But the Lord Jesus bids us follow Him closely, assuring us with tenderness that is wonderful, 'He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life!'"
"But," said Oswald, pressing closer to her side, "there are so many things that are so small, Auntie, and yet they worry you no end! Perhaps you've had a lesson to learn, and you've had a headache, or somebody has thrown you over, and made it ache, and so your lesson isn't half prepared, and you get up in the morning feeling that the world is dark and you cannot see any way out of the bother. Oh, there are heaps of things! That's only one! What can we do in such a case?"
There was a pause for an instant. Aunt Ruth was trying to put herself into Oswald's circumstances, and thinking how to bring her great Remedy down to his need. To make him understand that Jesus Christ is a remedy for all ills.
"I think," she said, slowly, "the best plan would be to go to God, our Father, and tell Him just how the difficulty came, and then ask Him definitely 'in the name of Jesus,' to make some way out of it—"
"And then?" asked Oswald, eagerly.