LOVE'S HOSPITAL
There often came back to Phebe's mind the prayer she offered just after her engagement, "Dear Lord, make me a true Christian, and help me to be perfectly willing to let Thee do it in whatever way Thou thinkest will be best for me." It was one of the few-remembered prayers; they are but few in anybody's experience. Our prayers are too often to us but as yesterday's faded rose-petals.
She was not quite so sure to-day she could pray that prayer truthfully as when it was first framed. But there was this comfort, she had no desire to take herself from beneath the moulding Hands.
Nanna was inwardly very indignant at the treatment Phebe had received, not that her teaching and her own private experiences did not agree, but she was one of those women who have to do a certain amount of boiling over and exploding before a calm level is obtained. She was, however, mostly wise enough to let this exciting process be carried on in private. She was a perfect tower of strength to Phebe; indeed, it would be impossible to reckon up all Phebe owed to her, and Phebe was quite aware of this, often saying that Nanna was the clever one who made the plans, while she was only the humble one who carried them out.
"Look here, dearie," Nanna said, when she could trust herself to speak with calmness, "I say, and say it with all deliberateness, it was wicked to shut that door on you like that. If that man thought you were unfit to mix with those girls he should have first been quite sure of the grounds he was acting on. But, never you mind; mark this, and mark it well, man never shuts one door, but God opens another, and a bigger one, too. Men shut the door of the Ephesus Church against John, but look what a mighty big one God opened for him into Heaven! And it's the same to-day. So, you be on the look-out—I mean to—and see who sees it first. I told Bessie this, and she says she'll buy a spy-glass for one eye and a telescope for the other. I wonder if that girl will ever sober down!"
"She will make a fine woman some day."
"There's the making of a fine woman in her, and she's certainly on the mend."
Bessie overheard Phebe one day referring to Mrs. Colston's leadership, whereupon that young lady remarked she ought to be called "teacher," and all the others in the house "disciples."
It was at the tea-table. David Jones quietly observed, "You never hear of women disciples."
"Yes, you do," snapped Bessie; "if you had ever read Grecian history, you would never have made that remark. Besides, women deserved the name of 'disciple' more than those men did who followed Jesus; they saw to His wants, if they did nothing more; it only mentions once that the men ever did so, and then it took the whole twelve of them to go and buy a meal, leaving the tired Jesus all alone, not even one there to get a drink for Him."