Saved as by Fire! CHAPTER 3.
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"Mrs. Granger was in church this morning," said my wife, on coming home, a few Sundays afterward.
"Ah! How did she look?"
"The sight of her brought tears into my eyes. How much she has changed. And she looked so poor and humbled."
"Was anyone with her?"
I did not put the question that was in my thought; but the one I asked would bring, I doubted not, the answer I wished to hear.
"Yes; a sweet young girl — her oldest daughter Amy, I presume. The beautiful child has grown almost to a woman since I saw her last."
"No one else?"
"No."
Though I had not been to church myself, and had not much faith in Sunday religious services, judging of them by their influence on a majority of my church-going acquaintances — I could not help feeling regret at the fact of Mr. Granger's absence. Somehow, the impression took hold of me, that it would have been better and safer for him to have gone to church; and the fact that he had not accompanied his wife, left on my mind a vague sense of uneasiness. Where had he gone; and what were the influences which had been around him on this day of freedom from daily work and the thought and care of business?
"Mr. Granger was not there?" said I, wishing to be altogether sure about the matter.
"No." Then, after a little silence, Mrs. Lyon said, "I was sorry not to have seen him with his wife."
It was on my tongue to express the regret I was myself feeling, but as my wife and I were not wholly in agreement on the subject of church-going, I did not care to commit myself so far as to give an assent to her view of the case; and as I did not respond, the subject was dropped.
After dinner I took a walk, and as I could not get Granger out of my mind, nor rid myself of a certain feeling of responsibility in regard to him, I concluded to extend my ramble as far as the neighborhood in which he lived, and make him a call. My ring brought his wife to the door.
"Is Mr. Granger at home?" I asked.
I saw a slight shadow drop across her face as she answered: "No, he has gone to take a walk in the Park." Then, after a moment, "Won't you come in, Mr. Lyon?"
I accepted the invitation. As I took a seat in the plain little parlor, and looked at Mrs. Granger, I was painfully impressed with the changes a few years had wrought in her appearance. Such lines of suffering as had been cut into her brow and around her lips! Such wasting and exhaustion! It was very sad.
"I met your husband a few days ago," said I, speaking at once, so that there might be no embarrassing pause, "and was glad to see him looking so well."
She smiled faintly; but not with the bright, almost radiant smile I was hoping to see.
"Yes, he is doing very well." Her voice lacked heartiness, I imagined.
"And is going to stand this time," said I, speaking confidently.
"God grant it!" A reverent earnestness coming into her manner.
"He has found a new element of strength."
She met my remark with a look of inquiry, keen and searching.
"A true faith in himself — in his manhood — in the native force of his own strong will."
"There is no sure help but in God, Mr. Lyon."
I seem to hear now her slow utterance of this sentiment, and the strong emphasis given to the words, "No sure help but in God."
"God is in every manly effort to do right," I answered. "He gives strength to the will that sets itself against evil enticement. We trust in Him when we trust in the power He gives us."
"That's what my husband says; and it may all be so in some way that I do not clearly understand."
I made an effort to explain myself more clearly; but, when I was done, she answered with simple earnestness: "It is better to look to God, than to ourselves, Mr. Lyon. I am sure of that. Every hour, every moment, even, we need His help and care, for the enemies who are against us are very malignant, very subtle, and very strong. I would have a safer feeling about my husband if he had a little less confidence in the strength of his own will, and more in that Divine power which I believe can only be had for the asking."
"As if God would stand away, coldly indifferent, and let a striving soul perish because there was no formal asking. Such a thought, in my view, dishonors Him. Would a father wait for his child to call for help if he saw him drowning?"
"No; and I do not think that God ever holds back from saving in the sense you seem to mean, Mr. Lyon. If a father were reaching after his drowning child, and calling to him, 'Give me your hand, my son!' and his child were to refuse the offered help, and trust to his own strength — how could the father save him?"
She waited for my reply, looking at me steadily. What answer could I make? The question seemed to open a window in my soul, and let in beams of light; but they were not yet strong enough to make her full meaning clear.
"Well, what more?" I queried. "Our Heavenly Father is all the while reaching out to save His perishing children, and His voice, tender with compassion, and earnest with love, is forever crying, 'Son, give me your heart!' And if the heart is not given, how can the soul be saved?"
Mrs. Granger's further question almost startled me. It gave a deeper significance to "being saved" than I had yet comprehended.
She went on: "Those who dwell in God, dwell in safety. Of that we may be sure. Can this be said, confidently, of any others? Ah! sir, where so much is at stake, it will not do to risk anything in doubtful trusts. A man's will may be very strong; but if the Spirit of God is within him, he will be far stronger — nay, invincible in the face of legions of enemies. God is as a walled city about his people, and as a rock of defense. He is a sure refuge in the day of trouble."
Her face had kindled, and there was something in the earnestness of her manner, and in the assured tones with which she spoke, that seemed to bear me away and set me adrift. I had nothing to say in opposition. What could I say? There was truth in every word she had uttered; and if I had questioned or caviled in anything, it would only have been as to the exact meaning and practical application of the truths she had spoken. And after all, might she not have a clearer insight than myself into the mystery of God's ways with man?
"You must try to get Mr. Granger to go to church with you. It will he best for him, I am sure," said I, speaking with a stronger conviction of the truth of what I said, than I was willing to admit even to myself.
"If you would only urge him to go, Mr. Lyon. He has great confidence in your judgment, and will be influenced by what you say. You have helped him greatly; helped not only to lift him to his feet again, but to set them going in the right way. Only, Mr. Lyon — and you will excuse me for saying it — you are leading him, I greatly fear, into a state of false security. We may differ about this. But, sir, the safest way is the best way; and I am sure that he who goes to God under a sense of personal weakness, and prays for strength — will be stronger in the hour of temptation, and safer under the assaults of his enemies, than ho who relies solely upon himself."
"Not solely upon himself," I returned. "I did not mean that he should so understand me. We have no life that is absolutely our own; and no strength that is absolutely our own; all are from God. Still, the life and strength that God is perpetually giving — we must take and use as if it were our own. I meant no more and no less. God gives the strength to fight; but we must overcome. He does not work for us, nor fight for us, nor save us; for doing so would be to destroy what makes our very life. We must do all this for ourselves; using the power He is forever giving to all who will use it."
"And especially to all who call upon Him in truth," said Mrs. Granger. "It may be very clear to you, sir," she added, "how one may stand fast in the strength God is always giving. But, if I read my Bible aright, there is a sphere of safety higher and surer than this — a more absolute getting, as it were, into the everlasting arms; and I shall never feel at ease in regard to my husband, until I feel sure that these everlasting arms are round about him."
I left the house more thoughtful and serious than when I went in, and took my way to the Park, hoping that I might meet Mr. Granger; for, somehow, his wife's sense of insecurity in regard to him, had left a like impression on my own mind. The afternoon was clear and bright, and many thousands of people were in the Park, walking, driving and refreshing themselves in many ways; some, I regret to say, making too free use of the restaurants at which, in defiance of Sunday laws, but under license from the Park Commissioners, some of them church-going men, all kinds of intoxicating drinks were dispensed to the people.
I was sitting on the lawn near the largest of these restaurants, from which could be seen the beautiful river, as placid as a lake, and the city with its spires and domes in the distance, when I saw Granger in company with two men, one of whom I recognized as a lawyer of some standing at the bar, and the other as a respectable merchant. They were crossing the lawn at the distance of twenty or thirty yards from where I was sitting, and going in the direction of one of the small refreshment tables that stood in front of the restaurant. On reaching this table, they all sat down and one of them beckoned to a waiter, who, on receiving his order, went away. In a little while he returned with two glasses of some kind of mixed liquor and a bottle of soda water. My relief was great when I saw this, for I naturally inferred that the soda water was for Granger; and in this I was right. When they had finished their glasses, one of them took from his pocket a cigar-case, and after each had lighted a cigar and smoked for a little while, they got up and went leisurely strolling down one of the avenues, taking a homeward direction.
Two or three times I had been on the point of joining them, but the fear lest it should prove to Granger an embarrassing intrusion, restrained me from doing so. I was troubled at the occurrence. This was going into danger; taking unguarded rest on the enemy's ground; inviting temptation. It was scarcely possible, I saw, for Granger to sit drinking with his friends, though he took only soda water himself, without the odor of their glasses drifting to his nostrils with its enticing allurement for his denied appetite. Nor could he do so, without a mental contrast of their freedom, with his restraint. In any view of the incident that I could take, it gave me only regret and concern; and I felt grieved almost to anger with the two friends who, knowing as they did the man's weakness, and the great depth out of which he had just struggled, should so set temptation in his way, as to make his fall again not only possible, but imminent.
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