Perhaps one of the chief causes of spiritual deterioration in Christians has been that fallacy that one can worship God as well alone as in the congregations of the faithful. “Forget not the assembling of yourselves together” we read in the Book of books. Again the gracious presence of our Lord is especially promised “where two or three are gathered together.”
One of the saddest stories that I ever read is that of two maiden sisters who lived in one large room in Edinburgh. They quarrelled about something, and so bitter was the animosity engendered that they never spoke to each other again, although they continued to live in the same room for many years. Perhaps they were too poor to live in separate apartments; or they may have had that proverbial Scotch decency and reserve that prevented them from publishing their quarrel to their little world, as an open separation would have done.
They drew a chalk line across their joint domain, which ran from the middle of the fireplace to the centre of the doorway, and they cooked and ate their separate miserable meals and went in and out in solitary fashion, and probably grimly observed each other kneel down in prayer (sic) to her Maker. Perhaps in the silence of the night hours one would lie wakeful, with bated breath, listening to the unconscious breathing of her sleeping sister. Could anything be more dreadful? Whether they died thus, the one left alone in a room with lips that were finally sealed in death, the story does not reveal; it is left half told.
“See that ye fall not out by the way,” was Joseph’s wise counsel to his brethren. “Two are better than one.... For if they fall the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up ... and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” So said the preacher in Ecclesiastes iv. The old words are very forcible in their quaint simplicity.
I knew five sisters once very intimately. They had a bad father whom they never saw—though he was living—after the eldest of the five was about twelve, and their mother was very poor. But they clung together and shared the daily labour—pleasure they knew little of—and when two families of richer relatives had become poor, and the members separated, disunion having partly ruined them, the sisters still held a brave and respectable front to the world, being able to do this because they kept together, serving their mother’s God and having a common faith and practice. “Did none of them marry?” I fancy some of you asking mentally. Yes, two have now good husbands and pleasant homes; and God comforts and strengthens the other three in His own way which is always for the best.
(To be continued.)
[VARIETIES.]
The Education of Women.
Few in the present generation know how very modern the real education of women is. Dr. More, in the middle of last century, was frightened at his daughter Hannah’s cleverness, and made her leave off the study of Latin and mathematics.