WEARY days now in store for Ruth Erskine—far more weary and dispiriting than she had imagined were possible to endure. It was such a strange experience to stand at the window and watch passers-by, hurrying out of the neighborhood of the plague-spotted house; crossing the street at most inconvenient points, to avoid a nearer contact. It was so strange to have day after day pass, and never hear the sound of the door-bell—never see the face of a caller—never receive an invitation. In short, it was a sudden shutting out of the world in which she had always lived, and a shutting down into one narrow circle, which repeated itself almost exactly every twenty-four hours. She and Susan must needs be companions now, whether they would or not. They must sit down together three times a day, at table, and go through the forms of eating—not so repulsive a proceeding, by the way, as it had seemed to Ruth it must of necessity be, with no one to serve. Susan had reduced the matter to a system, and produced, as if by magic, the most appetizing dishes, served in faultless style; and, when the strangeness of sitting opposite each other, and having no one to look at or talk to but themselves, began to wear away, they found it a not unpleasant break in the day’s monotony to talk together while they waited on each other.

Then there was the sick man’s food to prepare, and Susan exhausted her skill, and Ruth contributed of her taste, in graceful adornings. Judge Erskine still adhered to his resolution not to allow his daughter to visit him; so all that could be done for his comfort must be second-handed, but this little was a great relief to heart and brain.

Then there was Judge Burnham, a source of continual comfort. He seemed to be the only one, of all the large circle of friends, who failed to shun the stricken house. He was entirely free from fear, and came and went at all hours, and on all possible errands—market-man, post-man, errand-man in general, and unfailing friend. Not a day passed in which he did not make half a dozen calls, and every evening found him an inmate of the quiet parlor, with a new book, or poem, or, perhaps, only a fresh bouquet of sweet-smelling blossoms, for the sisters. Apparently his tokens of friendship and care were bestowed jointly on the sisters—he not choosing between them by a hair-breadth.

Still despite all the alleviating circumstances, the way was weary, and the time hung with increased heaviness on their hands—long hours of daylight, in which there seemed to be nothing to settle to, and in which there was as effectually nowhere to go, as if they were held in by bolts and bars.

“If we were, either of us, fond of fancy work, I believe it would be some relief,” Ruth said, wearily, one afternoon, as she closed her book, after pronouncing it hopelessly dull. “Flossy Shipley could spend days in making cunning little worsted dogs, with curly tails, and, if there really were nothing else that she felt she ought to do, I believe she could be quite happy in that!”

Susan laughed.

“One of us ought to have developed that talent, perhaps,” she said, brightly. “I don’t know why you didn’t. As for myself, I never had the time, and, if I had, the materials would have been beyond my purse. But I like pretty things. I have really often wished that I knew how to make some. You don’t know how to teach me, I suppose?”

“No, indeed; and, if I did, I’m afraid I shouldn’t do it. Nothing ever seemed more utterly insipid to me, though, of course, I never planned any such life as we are having now.”

“Look here,” Susan said, turning suddenly toward her sister, and dropping the paper which she had been reading. “I have a pleasant thought. We are almost tired of all sorts of books; but there is one Book which never wears out. What if this time of absolute and enforced leisure should have been given us in which to get better acquainted with what it says? What if you and I should begin to study the Bible together?”

Ruth looked gloomy.

“I don’t know much about the Bible,” she said; “and I don’t know how to study it. I read a chapter every day, and, of course, I get some help out of it; but I see so much that I don’t understand, and—well, to be frank, so much that it seems to me strange should have been put into the book at all, when necessarily a great deal that we would like to know was left out, that it worries and disappoints me.”

She half expected to shock Susan, and looked toward her with determined eyes, ready to sustain her position, in case an argument was produced. But Susan only answered, with a quiet—

“I know; I used to feel very much in the same way, until I had a light given me to go by, which shone upon some of the verses that had been so dark before.”

There was no lighting up of Ruth’s face.

“I know what you mean,” she said, gravely “You mean that the Bible was a new book to you after you were converted. I have heard a great many people say that, but it doesn’t help me as much as you might suppose it would. Of course it made a new book for me, because the Bible was never anything to me at all, until I was converted. I have passed years without looking into it; indeed, I may say I never read it. When I was a school-girl, I used to find extracts from it in my parsing-book, and some of them seemed to me very lofty sentiments, and several of them I committed to memory, because of the beauty of their construction; but that was the extent of my acquaintance with the book. One of the first things I noticed a Christian say, after I was converted, was about the Bible—what a wonderful book it was to him, and how, every time he read a verse, it opened a new idea. I thought it would be that way with me; but it hasn’t been. I love the Bible; that is, I love certain things which I find in it; but it doesn’t seem to me as I thought it would. I can’t say that I love to study it; or, rather, perhaps I might say I don’t know how to study it. I can memorize verses, of course, and I do, somewhat, when I find one that pleases me; but—well, I never told anyone about it, but it has disappointed me a little.”

Now she had shocked Susan; anyway, she felt sure of it. She had lived long enough, even now, with this plain, quiet sister, to have discovered that the Bible was a great fountain of help to her. She would not be able to understand why it was not the same to Ruth. Neither did Ruth understand it; and, though perhaps she did not realize even this, it was an undertone of longing to get at the secret of the difference between them which prompted her words. But Susan only smiled, in a quiet, unsurprised way, and said:

“I understand you perfectly; I have been over the same ground.”

“But you are not there, now?”

“Oh, no, I am not.”

“And you learned to love the Bible by studying it?”

“Well, that was the means, of course; but my real help was the revelation which God gave me of himself through the Spirit.”

No face could look blanker and gloomier than Ruth’s. She was silent for a few minutes, then she commenced again, her voice having taken on a certain dogged resoluteness of tone as one who thought, “I will say it.”

“I don’t know why I am talking in this way to you; it is not natural for me to be communicative to any person; but I may as well tell you that my religion has been a disappointment to me. It is not what I thought it was. I expected to live such a different life from any that I had lived before. I expected to be earnest, and successful, and happy; and it seems to me that no way was ever more beset with difficulties than mine has been. When I really wanted to do right, and tried, I was apparently as powerless as though I didn’t care. I expected to be unselfish, and I am just as selfish, so far as I can see, as I ever was. I struggle with the feeling, and pray over it, but it is there just the same. If for one half hour I succeed in overcoming it, I find it present with me the next hour in stronger force than before. It is all a disappointment. I knew the Christian life was a warfare, but someway I expected more to it than there is; I expected peace out of it, and I haven’t got it. I have had my seasons of thinking the whole thing a delusion, so far as I was concerned; but I can not believe that, because in some respects I feel a decided change. I believe I belong to Christ; but I do so shrink from the struggles and trials and disappointments of this world! I feel just as though I wanted to shirk them all. Sometimes I think if He only would take me to heaven, where I could rest, I would be so grateful and happy.”

The hardness had gone out of her face now, and the tears were dropping silently on her closed book.

“Poor girl!” said Susan, tenderly. “Poor, tired heart. Don’t you think that the Lord Jesus can rest you anywhere except by the way of the grave? That is such a mistake, and I made it for so long that I know all about it. Don’t you hear his voice calling to you to come and rest in him this minute?”

“I don’t understand you. I am resting in him. That is, I feel sure at times. I feel sure now that he has prepared a place in heaven for me, and will take me there as he says. But I am so tired of the road; I want to drop out from it now and be at rest.”

“Haven’t you found his yoke easy and his burden light, then?”

“No, I haven’t. I know it is my own fault; but that doesn’t alter the fact or relieve the weariness.”

“Then do you believe that he made a mistake when he said the yoke was easy?”

Ruth arrested her tears to look up in wonder.

“Of course not,” she said, quickly. “I know it is owing to myself, but I don’t know how to remedy it. There are those who find the statement meets their experience, I don’t doubt, but it seems not to be for me.”

“But, if that is so, don’t you think he ought to have said, ‘Some of you will find the burden light, but others of you will have to struggle and flounder in the dark?’ You know he hasn’t qualified it at all. He said, ‘Come unto me and I will give you rest; take my yoke upon you, for it is light.’ And he said it to all who are ‘heavy laden.’”

“Well,” said Ruth, after a thoughtful pause, “I suppose that means his promise to save the soul eternally. I believe he has done that for me.”

“But is that all he is able or willing to do? If he can save the soul eternally can not he give it peace and rest here?”

“Why, of course he could, if it were his will; but I don’t know that he has ever promised to do so.”

“Don’t you? Do you suppose he who hates sin has made us so that we can not keep from constantly grieving him by falling into sin, and has promised us no help from the burden until we get to heaven? I don’t think that would be entire salvation.”

“What do you mean?” Ruth asked, turning a full, wondering gaze on her sister. “You surely don’t believe that people are perfect in this world?”

“Pass that thought, just now, will you? Let me illustrate what I mean. I found my besetting sin to be to yield to constant fits of ill-temper. It took almost nothing to rouse me, and the more I struggled and tossed about in my effort to grow better the worse it seemed to me I became. If I was to depend on progressive goodness, as I supposed, when was I to begin to grow toward a better state; and when I succeeded should I not really have accomplished my own rescue from sin? It troubled and tormented me, and I did not gain until I discovered that there were certain promises which, with conditions, meant me. For instance, there was one person who, when I came in contact with her, invariably made me angry. For months I never held a conversation with her that I did not say words which seemed to me afterward to be very sinful, and which angered her. This after I had prayed and struggled for self-control. One day I came across the promise, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’ Sufficient for what? I asked, and I stopped before the words as if they had just been revealed. I found it to be unlimited as to quantity or time. It did not say, ‘After you have done the best you can—struggled for years and gained a little—then my grace shall be sufficient.’ It did not say, ‘My grace is sufficient for the great and trying experiences of this life, but not for the little every-day annoyances and trials which tempt you—you must look out for yourself.’ It was just an unlimited promise—‘My grace is sufficient—not for my saints, for those who have been faithful and successful, but for thee.’ Having made that discovery, and felt my need, I assure you I was not long in claiming my rights. Now, I want to ask you what that promise means?”

“‘My grace is sufficient for thee,’” Ruth repeated, slowly, thoughtfully. Then she paused, while Susan waited for the answer, which came presently, low-toned and wondering.

“I’m sure I don’t know. I read the verse only yesterday, but it didn’t occur to me that it had any reference to me. I don’t know what I thought about it.”

“But what does it seem to you that it says? Christ meant something by it, of course. What was it?”

“I don’t know,” she said again, thoughtfully. “That is, why it can’t mean what it appears to, for then there would be nothing left to struggle about.”

“Well, has Christ ever told you to struggle? On the contrary, hasn’t he told you to rest?”

“It seems to me,” said Ruth, after revolving that thought, or some other, in silence for several minutes—“it seems to me that one who thought as you do about these things would be claiming perfection; and if there is one doctrine above another that I despise it is just that. I know one woman who is always talking about it, and claiming that she hasn’t sinned in so many months, and all that nonsense; and really she is the most disagreeable woman I ever met in my life.”

“Look here,” said Susan. “Do you rely on the Lord Jesus for salvation? That is, do you believe you are a sinner, and could do nothing for yourself, and he just had to come and do it for you, and present your claim to Heaven through himself?”

“Why, of course there is no other way. I know that I am a sinner; and I know it is wonderful in him to have been willing to save me; but he has.”

“Well, now, aren’t you afraid to claim that, for fear people will think that you saved yourself?”

“I don’t understand,” Ruth said, gravely.

“Don’t you? Why, you fear to claim Christ’s promise to you—that his grace is now sufficient for every demand that you choose to make on it—for fear people will think you consider yourself perfect. Why should they not, just as readily, think that because you relied on Christ for final salvation therefore you relied on yourself?”

“That is a foolish contradiction.”

“Yes; isn’t the other?”

“I never heard anybody talk as you do,” was Ruth’s answer.

“I haven’t a different Bible from yours,” Susan said, smiling. “You admit to me that the promise about which we are talking is in yours, and you read it yesterday. What I wonder is, what you think it means.”