Mr. Hogarth's Will

by Catherine Helen Spence

"I should like my cousin to accompany me to my unfashionable chapel," said Francis. "Will you either join us or excuse us for the evening, as it is the only opportunity I may have for a long time to take Miss Melville there? Miss Rennie, you are the only one likely to have curiosity enough to try a new church."

"I am sorry I cannot go this evening, for I have promised to go to St. George's, to hear Mr. C——, with Eleanor Watson and her brother. You had better come with me; it is the last Sunday he is to preach in Edinburgh," said Miss Rennie.

"You must excuse me this once," said Mr. Hogarth; "I have a great wish that Miss Melville should hear my minister. At any other time I will be at your command."

Miss Rennie could not disappoint either Eleanor or Herbert Watson, or herself; so Francis and Jane went alone to the little chapel.

"It will do you good to hear a good sermon, and I expect that you will hear one."

The idea of getting any good at church was rather new to Jane; but on this occasion, for the first time in her life, she felt real meaning in religious worship. Never before had she felt the sentiment of dependence, which is the primary sentiment of religion. She had been busy, and prosperous, and self-reliant; all she said and did had been considered good and wise; her position was good, her temper even, and her pleasures many. Now she was baffled and defeated on every side—disappointed in the present, and fearful of the future.

Prayer acquired a significance she had never seen in it before; the tone of the prayer, too, was different from the set didactic utterances too often called prayer, in which there is as much doctrine and as little devotion as extempore prayer is capable of. It was not expostulatory either, as if our Heavenly Father needed much urging to make Him listen to our wants and our aspirations, but calm, trusting, and elevated, as if God was near, and not far off from any one of His creatures—as if we could lay our griefs and our cares, our joys and our hopes, at His feet, knowing that we are sure of His blessing. Was this union with God, then, really possible? Was there an inner life that could flow on smoothly and calmly heavenward, in spite of the shocks, and jars, and temptations of the outer life? Could she learn to see and acknowledge God's goodness even in the bitterness of the cup that was now at her lips?

It was no careless or preoccupied listener who followed point after point of the sermon on the necessity of suffering for the perfecting of the Christian character. The thoughts were genuine thoughts, not borrowed from old books, but worked out of the very soul of the preacher; and the language, clear, vigorous, and modern, clothed these thoughts in the most impressive manner. There were none of the conventionalisms of the pulpit orator, who often weakens the strongest ideas by the hackneyed or obsolete phraseology he uses.

"Thank you, cousin Francis," said Jane, as they walked back to Mr. Rennie's together. "This is, indeed, medicine to a mind diseased. I will make my inquiries as I ought to do tomorrow; but if I fail I will send in my application; and if I succeed there, I will go to this asylum in a more contented spirit. It appears as if it were to be my work, and with God's help I will do it well."

Jane began her next day's work by calling on her Edinburgh acquaintances, and then went to the registry offices; but Monday's inquiries were no more successful than Saturday's; so she dropped her letter in the post, and felt as many people, especially women, do when an important missive has left them for ever to go to the hands to which it is addressed. It seems so irrevocable, they doubt the wisdom of the step and fear the consequences.