“I am trying, Christie.”
“I should think you’d have to try about a hundred million years!” said Christie. “I feel as if I should be as glad as could be, if a big bear would just come and eat him up!—or a great lion, I would not mind which it was, if it wouldn’t leave the least bit of him.”
“But if Christ died for Uncle Edward, my child?”
“I don’t see how He could. I wouldn’t.”
“No, dear heart, I can well believe that. ‘Scarce will any man die for a righteous man... But God setteth out His love toward us, seeing that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ And He left us ‘an ensample,’ my Christie, ‘that we should follow His steps.’”
“I can’t, Father; I can’t!”
“Surely thou canst not, without the Lord make thee able. Thou canst never follow Christ in thine own strength. But ‘His strength is made perfect through weakness.’ I know well, my dear heart, ’tis vastly harder to forgive them that inflict suffering on them we love dearly—far harder than when we be the sufferers ourselves. But God can enable us to do even that, Christie.”
Christie’s long sigh, as she turned on her cushion, said that it was almost too hard for her to believe. But before she had found an answer, the door opened, and Mrs Tabitha Hall appeared behind it.
“Well, Roger Hall, how love you your good brother-in-law this morrow?” was her greeting. “I love not his action in no wise, sister.”
“What mean you by that? Can you set a man’s action in one basket, and himself in another? It’s a strain beyond E-la, that is.” (See note.)