“I understand you perfectly; I have been over the same ground.”
“But you are not there, now?”
“Oh, no, I am not.”
“And you learned to love the Bible by studying it?”
“Well, that was the means, of course; but my real help was the revelation which God gave me of himself through the Spirit.”
No face could look blanker and gloomier than Ruth’s. She was silent for a few minutes, then she commenced again, her voice having taken on a certain dogged resoluteness of tone as one who thought, “I will say it.”
“I don’t know why I am talking in this way to you; it is not natural for me to be communicative to any person; but I may as well tell you that my religion has been a disappointment to me. It is not what I thought it was. I expected to live such a different life from any that I had lived before. I expected to be earnest, and successful, and happy; and it seems to me that no way was ever more beset with difficulties than mine has been. When I really wanted to do right, and tried, I was apparently as powerless as though I didn’t care. I expected to be unselfish, and I am just as selfish, so far as I can see, as I ever was. I struggle with the feeling, and pray over it, but it is there just the same. If for one half hour I succeed in overcoming it, I find it present with me the next hour in stronger force than before. It is all a disappointment. I knew the Christian life was a warfare, but someway I expected more to it than there is; I expected peace out of it, and I haven’t got it. I have had my seasons of thinking the whole thing a delusion, so far as I was concerned; but I can not believe that, because in some respects I feel a decided change. I believe I belong to Christ; but I do so shrink from the struggles and trials and disappointments of this world! I feel just as though I wanted to shirk them all. Sometimes I think if He only would take me to heaven, where I could rest, I would be so grateful and happy.”
The hardness had gone out of her face now, and the tears were dropping silently on her closed book.
“Poor girl!” said Susan, tenderly. “Poor, tired heart. Don’t you think that the Lord Jesus can rest you anywhere except by the way of the grave? That is such a mistake, and I made it for so long that I know all about it. Don’t you hear his voice calling to you to come and rest in him this minute?”
“I don’t understand you. I am resting in him. That is, I feel sure at times. I feel sure now that he has prepared a place in heaven for me, and will take me there as he says. But I am so tired of the road; I want to drop out from it now and be at rest.”