“A disciple is one who learns. You are my disciple when you learn of me. The disciple of Christ is the man, or woman, or child who learns of him. When you are about the farm with Cephas, you are his disciple, in sewing and mending you are Aunt Rody’s, in housekeeping generally you are my disciple.”
Aunt Affy went out, and the tumbled head dropped back to the hard sofa-arm again. Would Christ let her be a “disciple” a little while, and then be a Christian when she grew up, she pondered.
She wanted to learn of him; she would read the Gospels through and through and through. She would learn them by heart. For her lesson to-day she would learn these seven verses he had spoken to his own, real, grown-up disciples.
That afternoon in Sunday-school, after the lesson was ended, the new minister left his class of boys and came to the pulpit stairs and stood and talked to the children; his opening sentence thrilled one small listener:—
“The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”
If you were a disciple, only a disciple, learning and loving, you were called a Christian. Then he spoke of the Holy Spirit; he was the very heart and will of Christ; he spoke in a low, sweet voice to children, a constraining voice, making known the things Christ the Lord would have them do; he showed them the things of Christ.
Had she dared she would have stepped out of her pew and gone up the aisle to the new minister and told him that she did want to be a Christian, and she would not be afraid to ask the Holy Spirit to tell her all the things Christ wanted her to do. Miss Kenney, her teacher and the minister’s sister, noticed the start and flush, the hesitancy, the eager look, as the minister came down the aisle and paused to speak to her girls; she saw Judith’s eyes drop as he took her hand, and then her shy withdrawal of herself.
Suddenly the girl turned, and with the flash of decision in her voice, said bravely, detaining the minister with her trembling little hand:—
“I am sorry I read in church this morning; I will never do it again, even if I don’t understand. Please excuse me.”
“I saw you,” he said, smiling, and taking the brave little hand into both his own; “I will try to talk to you next Sunday. Thank you for the lesson.”