Mrs. Everidge lifted her face tenderly and kissed the quivering lips. "It is 'not I but Christ,' dear child. That makes it possible." Then she drew her over to the lounge and began to undress her as if she had been a baby. "My dear little sister. You are utterly exhausted. You are not strong enough to suffer so."
"Oh, will you let me be your sister and help you bear your burdens?" cried Evadne, unconscious that all the time the skilful hands were keeping up their sweet ministry and that her burden was being lifted for her by the one who had the greater burden to bear.
When she was comfortably settled for the night Mrs. Everidge drew her low chair up beside the bed. Evadne caught her hand in hers and kissed it reverently. "I wish I could make you understand how I honor you!" she said.
"You must not do it, dear!" said Aunt Marthe quickly. "Honor the King."
After a pause she began to speak slowly and her voice was sweet and low. "When, the first night you came, you asked me if I knew Jesus Christ, I told you he was my life. That explains it all. It is very sweet of you to say the kind things that you have about me but they are not true. In and of herself, Marthe Everidge is nothing. The moment she tries to live her own life she utterly fails. If there is anything good about her life, it is only as she lets Christ live it for her."
"I do not understand," said Evadne with a puzzled look. "How is it possible for any one else to live our lives for us?"
"No one can but Jesus," said Aunt Marthe with a smile. "He does the impossible. Take that exquisite fifteenth chapter of St. John and study it verse by verse. 'Abide in me, and I in you.' There you have the two abidings. We are in Christ when we believe in him and are accepted through the merit of his blood and brought by adoption into the family of God, but not until he abides in our hearts shall our lives become as beautiful as God means them to be. Fruitfulness,—that is the cry everywhere. Men are calling for intellectual fruitfulness and mechanical fruitfulness, and are bending their energies to find the soil which will develop at once the best quality and greatest amount of fruit. Take a tree, to make my meaning clearer. The tree may abide in the soil and be just alive, but it is not until the essence of the soil enters into and abides in the tree, that it really grows and bears fruit. Growers of the finest varieties will show you plums that look as if they had been frosted with silver, and peaches with cheeks like the first blush of dawn. The 'fruits of the Spirit,' have a wondrous bloom and an exquisite fragrance."
"'Love, joy, peace,'" Evadne repeated slowly, "'long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith.' But those belong to the Spirit, Aunt Marthe."
"Yes, dear child, the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit whom he sent to comfort his people when he took his bodily presence from the earth. The holy, indwelling presence which is to reveal the Christ to us and prepare us for the abiding of the Father and the Son. It is the beautiful mystery of the Trinity."
"But we cannot have the Trinity abiding in our hearts!" said Evadne in an awestruck voice.