But talking meant speaking about the neighbours or the children, or of what was going on at Rutherford's. Any and everything except the "one thing needful." Truly Adam was called upon to climb the hill Difficulty without going beyond the threshold of his cottage door.
"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?"
Adam was sometimes almost ready to give up, so many and constant were the petty hindrances against which he had to contend. But he thought, "If it be hard to bear and to forbear, with the help of prayer and the comfort and strength that comes from knowing that God sees and loves and cares for me, what would it be without these things?"
So the trustful soul got new courage, and Adam, thinking about the trials of Bunyan's pilgrim, said to himself, "Christian had to start for Zion, leaving wife and children behind him. But they followed him after all. Maybe poor Margaret will be like her. Still, it would be sweet if we could travel together."
Thus Adam's faith was tried, whilst it was but as that of a little child clinging to a father's hand, and knowing nothing of the way by which it is led. But from the depths of his awakened soul, he cried, "Lord, help me to bear and forbear. What I know not, teach Thou me. By Thy Holy Spirit's help I have got to know something about my own need, and been guided to the feet of Jesus to find a Saviour in Him. O God, let that same blessed Spirit teach my poor Maggie. I am slow at speaking, and I don't know what is best to say to her, for I seem to have tried all ways that were plain to me. Send her the same Teacher and the same light that showed me my sinfulness and need. Help me to be very patient, for she's a good wife and mother, according to what she knows, and would give the last penny or the last bit for me or the children. I'll try to wait Thy time. O God help me not to murmur, but to be sure that time and way of Thy ordering must be best!"
[CHAPTER XX.]
BY THE PATH OF SUFFERING.
"AND we know that all things work together for good to them that love God."
An easy text to adopt when the "all things" suit our inclinations and are in accord with what we think should be.
Adam Livesey learned to make the text his own, and humbly acknowledged that even the little provocations which, added together, took most of the comfort out of his domestic life, drove him to seek to know more of that "love of God which passeth knowledge." He was wonderfully patient with Margaret, and, if she would have told the truth, she must have owned that she found it as hard to persevere in her course of conduct as Adam did in his.