Lizbeth of the Dale

by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor

Elizabeth shrank back closing the door softly. Here was a predicament indeed! The approaching swish of silken skirts sounded along the hall, and she ran noiselessly up the carpeted stairway looking for some place of concealment. The door leading into the auditorium confronted her, and shaking with silent laughter she pushed it open and slipped noiselessly within. A soft hushed movement like one breathing in sleep filled the great space. She paused, startled—the church was crowded.

Away up in the dim pulpit at the other end a man was speaking. Elizabeth dropped breathlessly and embarrassed into the pew nearest the door. She had no idea what this gathering was for or who the speaker was. Mrs. Jarvis attended the regular Sunday morning services in St. Stephen's, whenever a headache did not prevent, and Elizabeth accompanied her. But beyond this the girl had not the slightest connection with any of the activities of this religious body of which she was a member. Otherwise she might have known that this was a great gathering of students, many of whom were young volunteers for the army of the King that was fighting sin far away in the stronghold of heathenism. She would have heard, too, that the man up there in the pulpit, with every eye set unwaveringly upon him, was one who had stirred the very pulses of her native land by his call to the laymen of the church to a wider vision of their duty to the world. But poor Elizabeth knew very little more about this great movement than if she had been one of the heathen in whose behalf it was being made.

And perhaps because she had been so long shut away from the great things of life, for which her heart vainly cried, her very soul went out to the words of the speaker. He was nearing the end of his address, and was making his appeal to those young people to invest their lives in this great work for God and humanity.

Looking back upon that scene afterwards, it almost seemed miraculous to Elizabeth, that the first words of his message she heard were from that prophetic poem that had always moved her to tears in her childhood days when her father read them at family worship.

"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, even with joy and singing." This was the promise to those who responded to their Master's call. The wildernesses of the earth, the sad and solitary places, were to be made glad and beautiful at their coming.

And then Elizabeth grasped the purpose of the gathering. She read it as much in the sea of eager upturned faces as in the speaker's words. She knew, too, that he was not speaking to her. She had no part nor lot in this great onward march of the world. She belonged to those who were clogging the wheels of progress. A feeling of intense envy seized her, all her old yearning for love and service came over her with twofold strength, and with it the bitter remembrance that she had wasted her life in worse than idleness.

The low, deep, appealing voice went on, and she bowed her head in humiliation. But surely he was speaking to her now. "Do you want to find Jesus Christ?" he was asking. "Have you lost your hold on Him? Then go out where the drunkard and the orphan and the outcast throng in their sin and misery—you will find Him there!"

For a brief space Elizabeth heard no further word. That message was especially for her. For she had lost her hold upon Him, and with Him, she realized it for the first time, she had lost the joy and power of life. She had been very near Him many times—when her father read of His love and sacrifice, or Mother MacAllister showed her the beauty of His service. The Vision Beautiful had been hers, and she had refused to go out at the call of the hungry, and so it had not stayed.

And now a new vision—the tormenting picture of what she might have made of her life was being shown her through the magic of the speaker's words. "The King's Highway," he called his address. "And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." He pictured to their eager young eyes, what that Way would be for the world, when they prepared it for the coming of their King.

"Would they make this way of holiness accessible to someone?" he asked. "To those wayfaring men who were sure to err unless guided thereto."