“Well, after that, something happened. I’m afraid I can’t tell it so that you will understand. It seems very little just to speak about, but it made a great difference to me. I went to the kirk one day when a stranger preached. I can’t just mind the words he said, at least I can’t repeat them. And even if I could I dare say they would seem just common words to you. I had heard them all before, many a time, but that day my heart was opened to understand them, I think. The way that God saves sinners seemed so plain and wise and sure, that I wondered I had never seen it so before. I seemed to see it in a new way, and that it is all His work from beginning to end. He pardons and justifies and sanctifies, and keeps us through all; and it seemed so natural and easy to trust myself in His hands. I have never been very unhappy since that day, and I don’t believe I shall ever be very unhappy again.”
There was a long silence. Miss Gertrude was repeating to herself, over and over again:
“His work, from beginning to end! He pardons, justifies, sanctifies, and saves at last.”
So many new and strange thoughts crowded into the young girl’s mind that for the moment she forgot Christie and her interest in all she had been saying. Word by word she repeated to herself, “pardons,” “justifies,” “sanctifies,” “saves.”
“I cannot understand it.” And in a little while, bewildered with her own speculations, she turned from the subject with a sigh.
“Well, and what else?” she said to Christie.
“Oh, there is no more. What were we speaking about? Oh, yes; about having patience. Well, when one has a great good to fall back upon, something that cannot be changed or lost or taken from us, why, it is easy to have patience with common little things that cannot last long and that often change to good. Yes, I do think I am more patient than I used to be. Things don’t seem the same.”
It filled Gertrude with a strange unhappiness to hear Christie talk in this way. The secret of the little maid’s content appeared so infinitely desirable, yet so unattainable by her. She seemed at once to be set so far-away from her—to be shut out from the light and pleasant place where Christie might always dwell.
“I don’t understand it,” she repeated to herself. “If it were anything that could be reasoned out or striven for, or even if we could get it by patient waiting. But we can do nothing. We are quite helpless, it seems.”
In her vexed moments Gertrude sometimes took pleasure in starting objections and asking questions which Christie found it difficult to answer.