The Other GirlsWhitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
General
The Other Girls
Whitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
Family life -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
Desire sat with her class; it was her family, she said; her
church-family, at any rate; she had chosen her scholars from those
who had no parents to come with, and sit by; they were all glad of
their home-place weekly, at her side.
Miss Kirkbright and her brother went into the minister's pew. Miss
Kirkbright did not usually come to the service; the school, in which
she taught, met in the afternoon; but this was Mr. Vireo's first
Sunday, and his friend, her brother Christopher, had just come home
with him across the Atlantic.
There was singing, in which nearly every voice joined; there was
praying, in which one voice spoke as to a Presence felt close
beside; and all the people felt at least that _he_ felt it, and that
therefore it must be there. They believed in it through him, as we
all believe in it through Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father.
That they might some time come where he stood now, and know as he
knew, many of them were simply, carefully, daily striving to "do the
Will."
He spoke to them of "journeyings;" of how God was everywhere in the
whole earth; of how Abraham had the Lord with him, as he travelled
up through a land he knew not, as he dwelt in Padan Aram, as he
crossed the desert and came down through the hill-country into
Canaan. Of how the Lord met Jacob at Bethel, when he was on his way
through strange places, to go and serve his uncle Laban; how he went
with Joseph into Egypt, and afterwards led out the children of
Israel through forty years of wandering, showing them signs, and
comforting them all the way; how "He leadeth me" is still the
believer's song, still the heart-meaning of every human life.
"Whether we go or stay, as to place, we all move on; from our
Mondays to our Saturdays; from one experience to another; and before
us and beside us, passes always and abides near that presence
of _the Lord_. Do you know what 'the Lord' means? It is the
bread-giver; the feeder; the provider of every little thing. That is
the name of God when He comes close to humanity. In the beginning,
_God_ created the heavens and the earth; but _the Lord_ spoke unto
Adam; _the Lord_ appeared unto Abraham; _the Lord_ was the God of
Israel.
"God is _our_ Lord; our daily leader; our bread-giver, from meal to
meal, from mouthful to mouthful. The Angel of his Presence saves us
continually. And in these latter days, the 'Lord' is 'Christ;' the
human love of Him come down into our souls, to take away our
sins,--to give us bread from heaven to eat; to fulfill in the inward
kingdom every type and sign of the old leading; through need and
toil, through strange places, through tedious waitings, through the
long wilderness, and over the river into the Land that is beautiful
and very far off."
The four walked away from the church together; they stopped on the
corner of Borden Street. Here Desire and Mr. Vireo would leave
them,--their way lying down the hill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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