"I believe that the promise, 'He shall teach you all things,' will be fulfilled to all who claim it," said Mrs. Lewis.
"You recollect," said Mrs. Parker, "how Luther loved the Bible after that wonderful light shone into his soul? I have read somewhere that the cxixth Psalm was his favourite, because in all its one hundred and seventy-six verses the Bible is mentioned in every one except two. I have also heard that it is a favourite with Ruskin because he has the same love for the Word that David and Luther possessed. 'How sweet are Thy words unto my taste,' was the burden of David's song."
"I have had just one thought following me the whole week," said Mrs. Mills. "It came to me with such power last Sabbath, when I took my Bible to look out some texts for the meeting to-day, that I almost felt as if I had never known it before. It is so wonderful that God and the Holy Spirit have written a Book and we have it! and, what is stranger still, that we dare to neglect it. One would suppose that a superstitious fear would make people read it, if nothing else. I believe that the Lord himself sent that solemn realisation to me; it has seemed a different Book to me ever since. If an angel should come down and bring me ever so short a letter from the Lord, with some expressions of favour, I should be consumed with joy; and here I have not only one, but so many, and never took it in before."
"My heart standeth in awe of thy word," repeated Mrs. Lewis; then, turning to one who sat near her, said, "We want a word from you, Mrs. Barnes." Mrs. Barnes had slipped into the most obscure seat in the room, almost behind Mrs. Lewis' chair. She was one of Mrs. Lewis' most intimate friends, and herein was another proof of "queerness" in the eyes of some of Mrs. Lewis' neighbours, "because she made so much of that Mrs. Barnes." No one had ever thought of calling such a dignified, intelligent-looking woman a "washer-woman," and yet she did take some of her neighbours' clothes to her home and wash and iron them—why not? since she was strong and they were not, and she wanted money and they wanted clean clothes. However it was, these two women saw eye to eye. It was no uncommon thing when Mrs. Barnes' snowy wash was flapping in the wind, and she had slipped on her clean gingham, and stepped over to Mrs. Lewis' a minute, to have the minute lengthen to an hour or more, they had so much in common to talk about. Their absent Lord—His work, and how to further it, were themes they did not weary of.
So Mrs. Barnes put on her glasses and opened her old Bible and read, "As new born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby."
"I find here," she said, "that the Bible is to be our food, and that it is intended to make us grow. Now one can't grow without the right kind of food. The verse makes me think of my dear little grandson Neddie. His mother was taken away, and he was left a wee baby for us to bring up. We had such a hard time to find anything to agree with him. We tried milk and water, and arrowroot, and cracker-water, but he didn't thrive, he was nothing but skin and bone; finally he got sick and we called the doctor, and he said, 'Why this child is starving to death! What do you feed him? Don't give him any more such stuff,' he said. 'Try another cow, and give him pure milk.' So we got a new milch cow and fed him fresh milk, and I can't begin to tell you what a wonderful change it made in that child in less than three weeks' time; the dear little fellow got just as plump, his hands were like cushions, and he was well and happy as a robin. Maybe that's the reason there are so many weakly Christians. I shouldn't wonder if souls need the right sort of food as well as bodies in order to be healthy. I have some neighbours that my heart just aches for; all their reading is yellow-covered books, such as 'The Pirate's Bride,' and 'The Fatal Secret.' Such food is worse than cracker-water, and arrowroot, for they are starving souls instead of bodies, and the Word can't find any place to take root, much less to grow, when the mind is filled up with such trash."
"Joseph Cook thinks," said Mrs. Lewis, "that even Bunyan, Jeremy Taylor, Pascal, and Thomas a'Kempis himself, work mischief, if these books shut out the Bible from daily and almost hourly use.'
"Is it possible," said Mrs. Etheridge, "that anybody can make out what Joseph Cook thinks? I know everybody is running wild over him, so I just took one of his lectures the other day after dinner, and sat down by the fire. But dear me! I couldn't make anything out of it. Now, I can take one of Mrs. Henry Wood's lovely books and read from dinner to tea, without being tired or sleepy."
Mrs. Lewis smiled as she answered:
"I admit that, like Paul, Joseph Cook writes some things hard to be understood, and it often takes considerable thought to get at his meaning, but when you have studied it out it is something worth having. He speaks to Boston people mostly, you know, and perhaps they would not understand very plain English. Here is a sentence from him, though, that is clear enough: 'Do you know a book that you are willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying? Very well, that is the book you want to study while you are living.'"