Lighting a lantern, he hurried out to his strawberry bed, to find the plants and unripe berries uninjured, but every ripe berry picked as clean as if he had done it himself.
"It is that Ray Branford and his crew!" he ejaculated, wrathfully. "I know it as well as if I'd seen 'em; but it is another thing to prove it."
The story reached Mr. Carleton and Miss Squire before another Sunday, and, as they talked it over, they said: "How confident we were that he was already impressed with a desire to do better! and yet, if it was he, no good impression can have been made upon him, and he is as far from the kingdom as ever."
But they only made another mistake, and revealed how little they knew of God's way of working, after all; for the Holy Spirit was already striving with that boy, and was leading him surely toward the kingdom. But the devil never yet gave up a soul without a struggle, and that thieving exploit was one of his wiles to drown out the Spirit's pleadings, and, if possible, to tighten his own hold upon the boy's soul. He, like many of his followers, grows more and more desperate when he finds he is losing his power.
CHAPTER III.
ONE NIGHT'S WORK.
On a cold, stormy day, six months later, Mr. Carleton sat at his study table, his head bowed upon his hands his whole attitude that of dejectedness, if not of grief. What was the matter?
Has it ever occurred to you, dear reader, that ministers are human, just as other men, and that when the visible results of their labors are not as great as they have hoped for and looked for and prayed for, they sometimes lose faith in themselves and their people, and, alas! too often in God? When this time comes, to whom shall the pastor turn for consolation? His people must never see the despondency of his heart, his poor wife has more than her share of burdens already; and so there is but one thing he can do: shut himself in his study and lay his burdens upon God.
Things he would readily see were he trying to comfort others are hid from his eyes; promises so rich and full and sure when recalled to console others have an empty sound to his ears; faith strong and steadfast when he has been striving to cheer other hearts has grown feeble in his own soul. This, too, many times when there is not the slightest need of it. God is really leading and blessing the work done for him; but it is in his way, and not in man's way—and there is where the trouble lies.
This was the only trouble with Mr. Carleton now. He had arranged for so much and expected so much, along certain lines and in certain ways, that, now it had not come, he at once jumped to the conclusion that God was not honoring his ministry at all. Through his lack of faith he failed to see that the Lord in his own way was accomplishing a work infinitely beyond that which he had expected.