o further.
And to do that you will find requires quite sufficiently that you
should not please yourself. And now how shall we do all this?--how
shall we be all this?"
"You are asking the very question!" said Eleanor gravely.
"We must come to the root and spring of all this service and
following--it is our love of the Lord himself. That will do it, and
nothing else will. 'What things were gain to me, those I counted loss
for Christ.'"
"But suppose," said Eleanor, with some difficulty commanding her
voice,--"suppose one is deficient in that very thing? suppose one wants
that love?"
"Ay!" he said, looking into her face with his eyes of light,--"suppose
one does; what then?"
Eleanor could not bear them; her own eyes fell. "What is one to
do?"--Mr. Rhys had risen up before he answered, in his deliberate
accents,
"'Seek him, that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the
shadow of night into morning.'"
He paced slowly up and down before Eleanor; then went off upon a
rambling search through the wood again; seeming to be busy with little
things in his way. Eleanor sat still. After a little he came and stood
before her with a bunch of ferns and Melic grass and lilies of the
valley, which he was ordering in his hands as he spoke.
"The effect of our following Christ in this way, Miss Powle, will be,
that we shall bear testimony to the world that He is our King, and what
sort of a king he is. We shall proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father. We shall have the invisible army of angels
for our fellow-servants and co-workers; and we shall be passing on with
the whole redeemed world to the day of full triumph and final
restoration; when Christ will come to be glorified in his saints and to
be admired in them that believe--because our testimony among you was
believed. But now our business is to give the testimony."
He walked up and down, up and down, before Eleanor for some minutes, in
a thoughtful, abstracted way. Eleanor felt his manner as much as his
words; the subject had clearly gone home to himself. She felt both so
much that she did not like to interrupt the silence, nor to look up. At
last he stopped again before her and said in quite a different tone,
"What are the next words, Miss Powle?"
"'Called to be an apostle.'"
"We shall not get home to dinner, if we go into that," he said smiling.
"You have preached a sermon to me, Mr. Rhys."
"I do that very often to myse
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