“Oh dear!” cried Rhoda again. “Why, Mrs Dolly, I can’t bear to think of it. It would be an end of everything I care about.”
“My dear,” said the old lady, gravely and yet tenderly, “if the Lord’s coming will put an end to everything you care about, that must be because you don’t care much for Him.”
“I don’t know anything about Him, except what we hear in church,” answered Rhoda uneasily.
“And don’t care for that?” softly responded her old friend.
Rhoda fidgeted for a moment, and then let the truth out.
“Well, no, Mrs Dolly, I don’t. I know it sounds very wicked and shocking; but how can I, when ’tis all so far off? It doesn’t feel real, as you do, and Madam, and all the other people I know. I can’t tell how you make it real.”
“He makes it real, my child. ’Tis faith which sees God. How can you see Him without it? But I am not shocked, my dear. You have only told me what I knew before.”
“I don’t see how you knew,” said Rhoda uncomfortably; “and I don’t know how people get faith.”
“By asking the Lord for it,” said Mrs Dolly. “Phoebe, my child, is it a sorrowful thing to thee to think on Christ and His coming again?”
“Oh no!” was Phoebe’s warm answer. “You see, Madam, I haven’t anything else.”