But I have spoken hitherto as if these helpless girls whom you
befriend were the sole counterparts of Jairus's daughter. I have
regarded them as only the patients whom Christ's awakening hands raise
from their death-like slumbers. Is this an adequate representation of
the case, think you? Are there not others even more needy than they of
this beneficent movement? Are we not taught on the highest authority
that it is more blessed to give than to receive? But, if so, have we
not a truer antitype of this damsel whom Christ raised in these
befriended girls? Yes, Christ has taken them by the hand, and has
revived them, has awakened them from the heavy, death-like slumber of
a selfish, self-contained being. Christ has shown them the beauty and
the power of sympathy, and it has been to them the throbbing of a new
life. Surely it is not only the daughters of ancestral lineage and of
Norman blood, not only a Clara Vere de Vere, who are sickening with
disease, and who need Christ's healing hand; is there not in the home
of the professional man many a daughter and many a sister on whose
hand time hangs heavily, whose life is wasting away, fretting with
feverish excitement, or sunk in self-indulgence and apathy, weary of
self, and weary of others? How shall they wake up from their barren
monotony and death-like existence? Sympathy, active sympathy for
others; this, and this alone, can restore them. Mothers, train your
daughters early to think for others, to care for others, to minister
to others. Be assured this will be the most valuable part of their
education. This heaven-born charity is the sovereign antidote to all
the ills of womanhood. Is it some secret sorrow gnawing at the heart,
some outraged feeling, or some harrowing bereavement, or some actual
disappointment? Merge and absorb it in active solicitude for others.
Is it some fierce temptation which shamed you, and each fresh struggle
seems to leave you weaker than before? There will be no room for this
if you devote yourself to the needs of others. All sin is selfishness
in some form or other. Forget sloth; this is the best safeguard
against temptation.
I appeal confidently to all those who have made the trial to say
whether this medicine has healed them where all other medicines have
failed? And, why, why? It is Christ's own love constraining them; it
is Christ's own touch thrilling through their veins; hence they mark
the resurrection--"He took the damsel by the hand; and straightway she
arose and walked."
PILATE.[12]
"Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth?"--JOHN xviii. 38.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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