Growing Up: A Story of the Girlhood of Judith Mackenzie — John Shaqi
Growing Up: A Story of the Girlhood of Judith MackenzieConklin, Nathaniel, Mrs.
General
Growing Up: A Story of the Girlhood of Judith Mackenzie
Conklin, Nathaniel, Mrs.
Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
“I saved your custard—it’s on the hanging shelf in the cellar,” she
said, opening the door of the chimney cupboard to set the glass in its
own space in the row of jelly glasses.
“Aunt Affy,” lifting her tumbled head, and with grave eyes asking her
question: “what is—who is a disciple?”
“A disciple is one who learns. You are my disciple when you learn of
me. The disciple of Christ is the man, or woman, or child who learns
of him. When you are about the farm with Cephas, you are his disciple,
in sewing and mending you are Aunt Rody’s, in housekeeping generally
you are my disciple.”
Aunt Affy went out, and the tumbled head dropped back to the hard
sofa-arm again. Would Christ let her be a “disciple” a little while,
and then be a Christian when she grew up, she pondered.
She wanted to learn of him; she would read the Gospels through and
through and through. She would learn them by heart. For her lesson
to-day she would learn these seven verses he had spoken to his own,
real, grown-up disciples.
That afternoon in Sunday-school, after the lesson was ended, the new
minister left his class of boys and came to the pulpit stairs and
stood and talked to the children; his opening sentence thrilled one
small listener:—
“_The disciples were called Christians_ first at Antioch.”
If you were a disciple, only a disciple, learning and loving, you were
called a Christian. Then he spoke of the Holy Spirit; he was the very
heart and will of Christ; he spoke in a low, sweet voice to children,
a constraining voice, making known the things Christ the Lord would
have them do; he showed them the things of Christ.
Had she dared she would have stepped out of her pew and gone up the
aisle to the new minister and told him that she _did_ want to be a
Christian, and she would not be afraid to ask the Holy Spirit to tell
her all the things Christ wanted her to do. Miss Kenney, her teacher
and the minister’s sister, noticed the start and flush, the hesitancy,
the eager look, as the minister came down the aisle and paused to
speak to her girls; she saw Judith’s eyes drop as he took her hand,
and then her shy withdrawal of herself.
Suddenly the girl turned, and with the flash of decision in her voice,
said bravely, detaining the minister with her trembling little hand:—
“I am sorry I read in church this morning; I will never do it again,
even if I don’t understand. Please excuse me.”
“I saw you,” he said, smiling, and taking the brave little hand into
both his own; “I will try to talk to _you_ next Sunday. Thank you for
the lesson.”
Then shy Judith slipped away, and never told even Aunt Affy that she
had apologized to the new minister.
That evening in the twilight, sitting on the piazza alone, she wrote
on the fly-leaf of her small Bible, in pencil:—
Judith Grey Mackenzie; A Disciple.
And the date, May 15, 18—.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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