r service
enough to _choose_; were it laid upon her, she would hasten to it; for
necessity is the push, gentle or strong, as the man is more or less
obedient, by which God sends him into the path he would have him take.
But to help to the birth of a beautiful Psyche, enveloped all in the
gummy cerecloths of its chrysalis, not yet aware, even, that it must
get out of them, and spread great wings to the sunny wind of God--that
was a thing for which the holiest of saints might well take a servant's
place--the thing for which the Lord of life had done it before him. To
help out such a lovely sister--how Hesper would have drawn herself up
at the word! it is mine, not Mary's--as she would be when no longer
holden of death, but her real self, the self God meant her to be when
he began making her, would indeed be a thing worth having lived for!
Between the ordinarily benevolent woman and Mary Marston, there was
about as great a difference as between the fashionable church-goer and
Catherine of Siena. She would be Hesper's servant that she might gain
Hesper. I would not have her therefore wondered at as a marvel of
humility. She was simply a young woman who believed that the man called
Jesus Christ is a real person, such as those represent him who profess
to have known him; and she therefore believed the man himself--believed
that, when he said a thing, he entirely meant it, knowing it to be
true; believed, therefore, that she had no choice but do as he told
her. That man was the servant of all; therefore, to regard any honest
service as degrading would be, she saw, to deny Christ, to call the
life of creation's hero a disgrace. Nor was he the first servant; he
did not of himself choose his life; the Father gave it him to
live--sent him to be a servant, because he, the Father, is the first
and greatest servant of all. He gives it to one to serve as the rich
can, to another as the poor must. The only disgrace, whether of the
counting-house, the shop, or the family, is to think the service
degrading. If it be such, why not sit down and starve rather than do
it? No man has a right to disgrace himself. Starve, I say; the world
will lose nothing in you, for you are its disgrace, who count service
degrading. You are much too grand people for what your Maker requires
of you, and does himself, and yet you do it after a fashion, because
you like to eat and go warm. You would take rank in the kingdom of
hell, not the kingdom of heaven. But