You think that the progress in the Morgan family has been unusual; that the fruit has been more than the earnest Christian has a right to expect? Have you ever tried it—ever given one year of patient endeavour and constant prayer to the work which lay all around you? If not, how can you possibly know what the results of such a year might be?
I do not say that Louise Morgan had faith equal even to a grain of mustard seed; if she had, she would have seen greater mountains than these removed. I have told you frequently of her discouraged questioning, "Why?" but such faith as she had the Lord honoured, and as much real prayer as she was able to send up into the golden vials he kept before him.
I desire you to distinctly understand that from the hour when Mrs. Morgan kneeled before the little rocker in Louise's room and gave herself unconditionally to God she was a different woman. I am not in sympathy with those who say that conversion makes no radical change in character; that a person who is selfish or passionate or penurious before conversion is selfish or passionate or penurious after conversion in the same degree. Conversion is change of heart; and a heart given up to the reign of Christ, the supreme desire being to please him, will, at the outset, be a very different heart from one that was given up to the reign of self.
Mrs. Morgan's changed heart showed in her life; showed promptly and decisively. On that very next evening, after tea, with Nellie among the pillows in the rocking-chair that had been brought from Louise's room for her use, the mother said: "Now, Lewis, I have made up my mind that I want family prayers in this house after this, and on Nellie's account we will have them right after tea, if it is just as well for you.—Dorothy, get mother's Bible. Sing a hymn, if you like, before reading. I like singing, if I can't help; and your father used to be a good singer when he was young." Farmer Morgan made no remark upon this change in the family arrangements. If he was surprised, he gave no sign. It is probable that she had been talking with him about it—his wife was a straightforward woman—but Lewis's voice was very unsteady as he commenced the solemn hymn:—
"Now I resolve with all my heart,
With all my powers, to serve the Lord."
It seemed to him almost too wonderful and blessed a thing to be true, that those words should actually embody the resolve of his mother's heart! Besides, he had another reason for unsteadiness of voice: in his heart was an absorbing desire to have his father understand and adopt that language. I have not had a chance to say much about Lewis Morgan during these latter days; but I can give you the history of his life in brief. He had reached that point where the history of each day was in the morning, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" and in the evening a note of triumph,—
"How sweet the work has been!
'Tis joy, not duty,
To speak this beauty:
My soul mounts on the wing!"
And then the consecration,—
"Lord, if I may,
I'll serve another day."
And when a Christian reaches such a plane as that, it is what a blessed saint of God describes as "the graded road."