“Tell my girls, then,—for I may never have the opportunity of telling them myself,—that there is no real happiness in such a life as mine has lately been. It is really purely for self is this struggle after distinction; God put us into this world for something far different. I know, of course, that my scholars are not any of them likely to be snared exactly in the same way that I have been. Still, they might be tempted to think what a grand thing it would be to have the advantages for getting knowledge and distinction that I have had. Ah, but what has been my life, after all? Why, like that group of wax flowers under the glass shade. Don’t they look beautiful? But you see they are not real; they have no life and no sweetness in them, and they can never make the sick and the suffering happy as real flowers do. My life, with all its advantages, and what people call accomplishments, has been as unreal, as lifeless, as scentless as those wax flowers. It has not pleased God; it has not made others happy; there has been nothing to envy in it, but oh, quite the other way: it should rather be a warning. Tell my girls so, for they have their temptations even in this direction; there is so much attention paid now to head knowledge in all ranks and classes, and such a danger of neglecting heart knowledge and Christ knowledge. Show them how it has been with me. Tell them how I feel now on looking back.
“What have I really gained by this eager pursuit after earthly fame? Nothing. I have strained body and mind in seeking it—strained them, probably, past recovery. And what have I lost in the pursuit? I have lost peace; I have lost a thousand opportunities of doing good which can never be recalled; I have lost the happy sense of Jesus’ love and presence.—Dear father, would you give me that open book?—These words just suit my life, Thomas:—
“‘Nothing but leaves! The Spirit grieves
Over a wasted life;
O’er sins indulged while conscience slept,
O’er vows and promises unkept;
And reaps from years of strife—
Nothing but leaves! Nothing but leaves!’”
She paused, and hiding her face in her mother’s breast, wept long and bitterly.
Thomas Bradly had listened with deep emotion to every word, but had not yet been able to command himself sufficiently to speak. But now he stretched his hand forward, and took up the little hymn-book from which Clara Maltby had been reading, and, as he turned over its pages, said—“I don’t doubt, dear Miss Clara, but you’ve just said the plain truth about yourself; I’ve grieved over it all, and prayed about it. But that’s all past and gone now, and the Lord means to bring good out of the evil, I can see that, and you’ll let me read you these lines out of your book, as I’m sure it ain’t going to be ‘nothing but leaves’ after all. Listen, miss, to these blessed words, for they belong to you:—
“There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold;
But one was out on the hills away,
Far-off from the gates of gold,—
Away on the mountains wild and bare,
Away from the tender Shepherd’s care.
“‘Lord, thou hast here thy ninety and nine:
Are they not enough for thee?’
But the Shepherd made answer: ‘This of mine
Has wandered away from me;
And although the road be rough and steep,
I go to the desert to find my sheep.’
“And all through the mountains, thunder-riven,
And up from the rocky steep,
There rose a cry to the gate of heaven,
‘Rejoice! I have found my sheep!’
And the angels echoed around the throne,
‘Rejoice, for the Lord brings back his own!’”
“Thank you, Thomas, thank you most sincerely,” cried the sick girl, raising herself again. “Yes, I trust that these beautiful words do apply to me. Jesus has gone after me, a poor wandering and rebellious sheep, and brought me back again. Do then, kind friend, tell my dear class for me that I have found all out of Christ to be emptiness, and that there can be no true happiness here unless we are working for him.
“Of course, I might have pursued my studies innocently had I given to them leisure hours when other duties had been done, and then they would have been a delight to me, and a source of real improvement. But instead of that I made an idol of them, and they became a snare to me. I lived for them, and in them, and all else was as good as forgotten. Yes, even my Bible, that was once so precious,—it might as well have lain on the shelf, and indeed, latterly, it has seldom been anywhere else. I had no time for reading it; earthly studies absorbed every moment. But now it has become to me again truly my Bible; it has shown me, and shows me more and more plainly every day, my sin and my neglect. Ah! It is an awful thing when the struggle after this world’s honours and prizes makes us thrust aside thoughts of God and of the crown of glory. It has been so with me. I have been chasing an illuminated shadow until it has suddenly vanished, and left me in a darkness that might be felt.
“Tell my girls, then, dear friend, to take warning from me. Tell them how I mourn over my wasted life; but tell them also that I have a good hope that God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven me, and ask them to pray for me. The great lesson I want you to impress upon them from my case is just this, that no knowledge can be worth having that interferes with our following our Saviour; that no pursuit, though it may not be outwardly sinful or manifestly worldly, which unfits us in body or mind for doing our duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call us, can be innocent, for it robs Jesus of that service which we all owe to him.
“And now I am going to ask you to give these photographs, one a piece, to my girls: they will value them, I know, as the likeness of one who was once happy in being their teacher, and who hopes, should God spare her, to be their teacher again; a better instructed teacher far, I hope, because taught in the school of bitter but wholesome experience to know herself.”