Weighed and Wanting

He was silent. They were on the top of the ridge. A little beyond stood the dusky group of their companions. And the world lay beneath them.

"Who would live in London who might live here?" said the major.

"No one," answered Hester and Christopher together.

The major turned and looked at them almost in alarm.

"But I may not," said Hester. "God chooses that I live in London."

Said Christopher,—

"Christ would surely have liked better to go on living in his father's house than go where so many did not know either him or his father! But he could not go on enjoying his heaven while those many lived only a death in life. He must go and start them for home! Who in any measure seeing what Christ sees and feeling as Christ feels, would rest in the enjoyment of beauty while so many are unable to desire it? We are not real human beings until we are of the same mind with Christ. There are many who would save the pathetic and interesting and let the ugly and provoking take care of themselves! Not so Christ, nor those who have learned of him!"

Christopher spoke so quietly there seemed even a contrast between his manner and the fervour of his words.

"I would take as many in with me," he said, turning to Hester, "as I might, should it be after a thousand years I went in at the gate of the sunset—the sunrise rather, of which the sunset is a leaf of the folding door! It would be sorrow to go in alone. My people, my own, my own humans, my men, my women, my little ones, must go in with me!"

Hester laboured, and Christopher laboured. And if one was the heart and the other the head, the major was the right hand. But what they did and how they did it, would require a book, and no small one, to itself.

It is no matter that here I cannot tell their story. No man ever did the best work who copied another. Let every man work out the thing that is in him! Who, according to the means he has, great or small, does the work given him to do, stands by the side of the Saviour, is a fellow-worker with him. Be a brother after thy own fashion, only see it be a brother thou art. The one who weighed, is found wanting the most, is the one whose tongue and whose life do not match—who says, "Lord! Lord!" and does not the thing the Lord says; the deacon who finds a good seat for the man in goodly apparel, and lets the poor widow stand in the aisle unheeded; the preacher who descants on the love of God in the pulpit, and looks out for a rich wife in his flock; the missionary who would save the heathen, but gives his own soul to merchandize; the woman who spends her strength for the poor, and makes discord at home.