“I suppose so,” Ruth said, slowly. “At least I don’t see why it should not be; and, indeed, it is very common for people to talk about the change in Flossy Shipley.”
Susan’s voice was very earnest. “I wish I could bear such testimony as that. I believe it would be right to be ambitious in that direction; to live so that when people spoke of me at all, the most marked thing they could say about me would be, not, how I dressed, or appeared, or talked, but how strong my faith in the Lord Jesus was, and how it colored all my words and acts. Wouldn’t that be a grand ambition?”
“And of the love which ye have to all the saints,” Ruth repeated, half aloud, half to herself; her eye had caught the words again. Suddenly she started, and the blood flowed in ready waves into her cheeks. She had caught a new and personal meaning to the words—“love to all the saints.” Suppose this usurper of home and name, who sat near her—this objectionable sister—suppose she were one of the saints!—and I verily believe she is, Ruth said to her beating heart—then, would it be possible so to live, that people would ever say, “She loves that sister of hers, because she recognizes in her one of the Lord’s own saints?” Nothing looked less probable than this! She could not bring her heart to feel that she could ever love her. A sort of kindly interest, she might grow to feel, an endurance that would become passive, and, in a sense, tolerable, but could she ever help paling, or flushing, when she heard this new voice say “father,” and realized that she had a right to the name, even as she herself had? She had been the only Miss Erskine so long; and she had been so proud of the old aristocratic name, and she had felt so deeply the blot upon its honor, that it seemed to her she could never come to look with anything like love upon one connected with the bitterness. Yet, it did flash over her, with a strange new sense of power, that Susan Erskine held nearer relation to her than even these human ties. If she was indeed a daughter of the Most High, if the Lord Jesus Christ was her Elder Brother, then was this girl her sister, a daughter of royal blood, and perhaps—she almost believed it—holding high position up there, where souls are looked at, instead of bodies.
A dozen times, during the evening which followed this conversation, did the words of this Bible verse, and the thoughts connected there with, flash over Ruth. It was the evening of the social gathering. Now, that Susan had called her attention to it, she was astonished over the number of times that those words: “I heard,” were on people’s lips. They had heard of contemplated journeys, and changes in business, and changes in name, and reverses, and good fortunes, and contemplated arrangements for amusement, or entertainment, or instruction; everything they had heard about their friends or their acquaintances. Yet, no one said, during the whole evening—so far as she knew—that they had heard anything very marked about the religious life of anyone. In fact, religious life was one of the things that was not talked of at all; so Ruth thought. If she had stood near Judge Burnham and her sister, at one time, she would have heard him saying:
“He is a man of mark in town; one prominent on every good occasion; noted for his philanthropy and generosity, and is one of the few men whom everybody seems to trust, without ever having their confidence jarred. I have heard it said, that his word would be taken in any business transaction as quickly as his bond would be.”
“Is he a Christian man?” Susan had asked; and a half-amused, half-puzzled look had shadowed Judge Burnham’s face, as he answered: “As to that, I really don’t know. I have never heard that he made any professions in that direction, though it is possible that he may be connected with some church. Why, Miss Erskine, do you think it impossible for a man to be honest and honorable and philanthropic, unless he has made some profession of it in a church?”
Then Susan had looked at the questioner steadily and thoughtfully a moment before she answered: “I was not thinking of possible morality; I was simply wondering whether the man who was building so fair and strong a house had looked to it, that it was founded upon a rock, or whether he really were so strangely improvident as to build upon the sand. You know I think, that, ‘other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone.’”
So there was some religious conversation at the Erskines’ party, and it sent Judge Burnham home thinking. And now, though the fruits of that evening’s gathering will go on growing and ripening and being gathered in, from human lives, so far as we personally are concerned, we are done with that party.