Family life -- Juvenile fiction; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile fiction
The next day ushered in the most wonderful Sunday Cecile had ever
spent. In the first place, this little girl, who had been so many years
of her little life in our Christian England, went to church. In her
father's time, no one had ever thought of so employing part of their
Sunday. The sweet bells sounded all around, but they fell on unheeding
ears. Cecile's stepmother, too, was far too busy working for Lovedy to
have time for God's house, and when the children went down to Warren's
Grove, though Lydia Purcell regularly Sunday after Sunday put on her
best bonnet, and neat black silk gown, and went book in hand into the
simple village church, it had never occurred to her to take the orphan
children with her. Therefore, when Mrs. Moseley said to Cecile and
Maurice:
"Now come and let me brush your hair, and make you tidy for church,"
they were both surprised and excited. Maurice fretted a little at the
thought of leaving Toby behind, but, on the whole, he was satisfied
with the novelty of the proceeding.
The two children sat very gravely hand in hand. The music delighted
them, but the rest of the service was rather above their comprehension.
Cecile, however, listened hard, taking in, in her slow, grave way, here
a thought and there an idea.
Mrs. Moseley watched the children as much as she listened to the
sermon, and as she said afterward to her husband, she felt her heart
growing full of them.
The rest of the Sunday passed even more delightfully in Maurice's
estimation. Mrs. Moseley's pudding was pronounced quite beyond praise
by the little hungry boy, and after dinner Moseley showed him pictures,
while Mrs. Moseley amused Cecile with some Bible stories.
But a strange experience was to come to the impressionable Cecile later
in the day.
Quite late, when all the light had faded, and only the lamps were lit,
and Maurice was sound asleep in his little bed in Mrs. Moseley's small
closet, that good woman, taking the little girl's hand, said to her:
"When we go to church we go to learn about Jesus. I took you to one
kind of church this morning. I saw by yer looks, my little maid, as you
were trying hard to understand. Now I will take you to another kind of
church. A church wot ain't to call orthodox, and wot many speaks
against, and I don't say as it ha'n't its abuses. But for all that,
when Molly Moseley wants to be lifted clean off her feet into heaven,
she goes there; so you shall come to-night with me, Cecile."
All religious teaching was new to Cecile, and she gave her hand quite
willingly to her kind friend.
They went down into the cold and wet winter street, and presently,
after a few moments' quick walking, found themselves in an immense,
square-built hall. Galleries ran round it, and these galleries were
furnished with chairs and benches. The whole body of the hall was also
full of seats, and from the roof hung banners, with texts of Scripture
printed on them, and the motto of the Salvation Army:
_"Fire and Blood."_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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