“Oh, not yet!” said Grandmamma. “Wait till we see how things turn out. White soils so soon, too: we had much better go on with the black ones, at any rate, till the Prince has passed Bedford.”
It is wicked, I suppose, to despise one’s elders. But is it not sometimes very difficult to help doing it?
I have been reading over the last page or two that I writ, and I came on a line that set me thinking. Things do set me thinking of late in a way they never used to do. It was that about Ephraim’s not being used to the best society. What is the best society? God and the angels; I suppose nobody could question that. Yet, if an angel had been in Grandmamma’s rooms just then, would he not have cared more that Caesar should not fall and hurt himself, and most likely be scolded as well, than that he should be thought to have fine easy manners himself? And I suppose the Lord Jesus died even for Caesar, black though he be. Well, then, the next best society must be those who are going to Heaven: and Ephraim is one of them, I believe. And those who are not going must be bad society, even if they are dressed up to the latest fashion-book, and have the newest and finest breeding at the tips of their fingers. The world seems to be turned round. Ah, but what was that text Mr Whitefield quoted? “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, are not of the Father, but are of the world.” Then must we turn the world round before we get things put straight? It looks like it. I have just been looking at another text, where Saint Paul gives a list of the works of the flesh; (Note: Galatians five 19 to 21.) and I find, along with some things which everybody calls wicked, a lot of others which everybody in “the world” does, and never seems to think of as wrong. “Hatred, variance, emulations, ... envyings, ... drunkenness, revellings, and such like:” and he says, “They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” That is dreadful. I am afraid the world must be worse than I thought. I must take heed to my Aunt Kezia’s rules—set the Lord always before me, and remember that this world passeth away. I suppose the world will laugh at me, if I be not one of its people. What will that matter, if it passeth away? The angels will like me all the better: and they are the best society.
And I was thinking the other night as I lay awake, what an awful thing it would be to hear the Lord Jesus, the very Man who died for me, say, “Depart from Me!” I think I could stand the world’s laughter, but I am sure I could never bear that. Christ could help and comfort me if the world used me ill; but who could help me, or comfort me, when He had cast me out? There would be nothing to take refuge in—not even the world, for it would be done with then.
Oh, I do hope our Saviour will never say that to me!
I seem bound to get into fights with Miss Newton. I do not mean quarrels, but arguments. She is a pleasant, good-humoured girl, but she has such queer ideas. I dare say she thinks I have. I do not know what my Aunt Kezia would say to her. She does not appear to see the right and wrong of things at all. It is only what people will think, and what one likes. If everybody did only what they liked,—is that proper grammar, I wonder? Oh, well, never mind!—I think it would make the world a very disagreeable place to live in, and it is not too pleasant now. And as to people thinking, what on earth does it signify what they think, if they don’t think right? If one person thinking that two and two make three does not alter the fact, why should ten thousand people thinking so be held to make any difference? How many simpletons does it take to be equal to a wise man? I wonder people do not see how ridiculous such notions are.
We hear nothing at all from the North—the seat of war, as they begin to call it now. Everybody supposes that the Prince is marching southwards, and will be here some day before long. It diverts me exceedingly to sit every Tuesday in a corner of the room, and watch the red ribbons disappearing and the white ones coming instead. Grandmamma’s two footmen, Morris and Dobson, have orders to take the black cockade out of their hats and clap on a white one, the minute they hear that the royal army enters Middlesex.
November 22nd.