There was no regular service that Sunday in the church where she usually
attended, and as the day was fine and she was far too restless to remain
at home, she proposed to her mother that they walk to a little chapel
about a mile away, where a young Presbyterian clergyman was to preach.
She had heard much of his eloquence, and as his name was McDonald, he
might possibly be some distant relative, inasmuch as her father was of
Scotch descent, and she felt a double interest in him, and with her
mother was among the first who entered the little humble building, and
took a seat upon one of the hard, uncomfortable benches near the pulpit.
The speaker was young,—about Tom’s age,—and with a look on his florid
face and a sound in his voice so like that of the dead man that Daisy
half started to her feet when he first took his stand in front of her,
and announced the opening hymn. His text was, "Why stand ye here all the
day idle?" and so well did he handle it, and so forcible were his
gestures and eloquent his style of delivery, that Daisy listened to him
spell-bound, her eyes fixed intently upon his glowing face, and her ears
drinking in every word he uttered.
After dwelling a time upon the loiterers in God’s vineyard, the idlers
from choice, who worked not for lack of an inclination to do so, he
spoke next of the class whose whole life was a weariness for want of
something to do, and to these he said, "Have you never read how, when
the disciples rebuked the grateful woman for wasting upon her Master’s
head what might have been sold for three hundred pence, and given to the
poor, Jesus said unto them, ’The poor ye have with you always,’ and is
it not so, my hearers? Are there no poor at your door to be fed, no
hungry little ones to be cared for out of the abundance which God has
only loaned for this purpose? Are there no wretched homes which you can
make happier, no aching hearts which a kind word would cheer? Remember
there is a blessing pronounced for even the cup of cold water, and how
much greater shall be the reward of those who, forgetting themselves,
seek the good of others and turn not away from the needy and the
desolate. See to it, then, you to whom God has given much. See to it
that you sit not down in idle ease, wasting upon yourself alone the
goods designed for others; for to whom much is given of him much shall
be required."
Attracted, perhaps, by the deep black of Daisy’s attire, or the
something about her which marked her as different from the mass of his
hearers, the speaker seemed to address the last of his remarks directly
to her, and had the dead Tom risen from his grave and spoken with her
face to face, she could hardly have been more affected than she was. The
resemblance was so striking and the voice so like her cousin’s, that she
felt as if she had received a message direct from him; or, if not from
him, she surely had from God, whose almoner she henceforth would be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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