Was I right?

by Mrs. O. F. Walton

Another text came into my mind:

"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

These words surely gave me the right to take the other words and make them mine. What Jesus was then, in the yesterday of the past, so He is now, to-day; what He was to the apostles, so He is to me, and so He ever will be—the same in love, the same in sympathy, the same in constancy.

But I am so cold to Him, I thought, so ungrateful, so sinful. My love is so changeable and fluctuating. Surely He will not, He cannot, in spite of all this, go on loving me—loving me unchangeably. And yet, I know that Christ's love for us, if it exists at all, must exist quite independently of anything in us, for what can He see in the very best of men to win His love?

And I remembered that these very apostles, of whom this was written, were very faulty and imperfect in their love to Him. Only the very next day one of them, the one who had professed the most love for Him, denied Him with oaths and curses, saying, again and again, "I know not the man." And every one of them, even the disciple whom Jesus loved, forsook Him in His hour of need and fled.

And yet of these very men, with all their failings and imperfections, it was written:

"Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end."

My heart grew light again, and I went downstairs quite comforted and happy, and without a single wish in my heart to change places with Miss Alice Fitzgerald.

The next morning I left the Manor House soon after breakfast. I was followed to the door by Miss Jane bidding me, in her calm, decided way, to be sure to choose a carriage with at least two elderly ladies in it, "because, my dear, one reads of such awful robberies and murders taking place in railway carriages!" Followed also by Miss Hannah, entreating me to remember what Miss Jane had said, and also to be quite sure that the guard had fastened the door well before the train started. Followed even by Miss Louisa, suggesting the advisability of always having both windows closed, and both ventilators securely fastened, lest any draught should enter the carriage. Followed, not only to the door but as far as the garden gate, by my little Maggie, sobbing as if her heart would break, and refusing to be comforted.

It was very hard to leave them all, and especially to leave my little sister, and to go forth alone into the world; but the words which had been my comfort yesterday were my strength now, and the language of my heart was,—