Katharine's Yesterday (3 page)

As she had read over what she had written, Satan, leaning over her shoulder, whispered in her ear that it sounded very well; and I am sure that if her good angel had not put the thought into her heart to take out the little poem once more and read it over, she would have gone to bed that night with too high an estimate of herself.

I can find my resting places
In the promises of God.

These two lines of the poem kept saying themselves over after she had lain down. What were some of the promises of God? She tried to think of one. “I will give you rest.” The words seemed to speak themselves to her. She had not realized that this was a promise in which she could have sure confidence. She fell asleep with a feeling that she could and would find that rest somewhere.

It seemed a strange thing to Katharine that the next Sunday morning the minister should take for his text those very verses about which she had thought so much during the week. She looked up at him with startled eyes when he announced it, as though he must surely have been reading her thoughts. She had not wanted to go to church at all that morning. Indeed, she never was fond of going; and today it seemed lonely to go and miss the bright faces of her various friends. She had tried to think up a good excuse me, but none was forth coming, and so she went. She was not in the habit of giving much heed to the sermon, but this morning her attention was caught and fixed before she was aware of it; indeed, she scarcely took her eyes from the minister’s face until he had finished.

He spoke forcibly and clearly about the way to “come”; dwelt for a few moments on the wonderful rest that God could give; but the main part of his sermon was about the thoughts in the last verse, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.” He made it appear that it was the duty of everyone who had come to Christ to take his yoke. Then he told how a yoke was something to make work easier, and that Christ’s putting this sentence right after the other one about coming to him, showed that he wanted and expected everyone who came to him to go to work immediately. Some yokes were made for two, he said, with one end heavier than the other. Christ’s yoke was like this and he would work with us and bear the heavy end of the yoke, so that our work might not be too great for our strength. That work could not help but be easy and beautiful with Jesus Christ to help and to go with us, wearing the same yoke. He closed with the words, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” And Katharine felt that she had never known what those words meant before.

It was a simple sermon, perhaps might have been called common place by some; but either Katharine’s eyes were getting opened to see new things in the words of truth, or else she had never listened before, for she thought it a wonderful sermon. She looked about on the congregation when it was finished, and felt surprised to find Deacon Ewing yawning, and Mrs. Moffat evidently awaking from a refreshing nap, while her brother John’s eyes were just returning from a trip over the ceiling.

John Bowman did not often go to church. This had been one of the mornings when he did not exactly know what to do with himself, and, not enjoying his own company well enough to stay at home without something interesting to read, had gone, just because he did not know what else to do. He had not listened to the sermon. Not he. He had thought of a thousand different schemes for employing that hour since he had been in church, and he wished with all his heart that he had stayed at home and carried some of them out. He resolved that it would be some time before he came again.

Katharine, wondering if she had a work, and how she could begin to put on that yoke, glanced at her brother and in some way connected him with the sermon. She remembered her father’s sentence at the dinner table some days before, “If you would devote a little more time to your brother, he might turn out more to your liking,” and, sighing, wished she could do something in that direction. She watched him not a little during the closing hymn, and tried to think up some way of helping him. Nothing occurred to her except the evening service. She remembered having heard among the announcements of a young people’s prayer meeting. She had a vague idea that it was by prayer meetings and churchgoing that people were made different; and perhaps John would get some good from attending. Anyway, it would keep him to go that evening. To be sure, she had never been to the young people’s meeting herself, and had an idea that it was a very dull affair; but the whole service that morning had been so in harmony with the little poem she was growing fond of, that she was seized with a longing to go herself, and see if she could get some help. Having made the resolve to try and do something for John, she felt very meritorious; but when the afternoon came, and the evening drew on, and she met John in the hall on his way to his room, she found it was easier to resolve than to put into practice. Somehow, it was a very awkward thing for this sister to ask her brother to accompany her to prayer meeting. It was strange that all the cross, sharp words which she had ever spoken to him seemed to troop up and stand around now to listen. Perhaps it was their mocking, scornful presence that made Katharine’s voice sound unnatural and her face take on a severe cast, as she finally mustered up courage and said, “John, I wish you would go down to the young people’s meeting with me tonight.”

John stopped short on the top stair, turned around, looked down on her, and drew a long whistle. “The dickens, you do!” said he in a surprised tone; then as he caught the severity of her face his own grew dark, his voice changed, and he said in quite a different tone, “How long since you’ve had to take up with your brother’s company? You must be hard up if you can’t scratch around and find someone else. Not much I won’t! T
o prayer
meeting? The idea! I didn’t know you were fond of that sort of thing yourself.” He gave a scornful laugh, and went to his room.

Of course it made Katharine very angry to have what she considered sisterly advances treated in this way, and she made up her mind never to try again. She went to her room in a fit of what she thought was righteous indignation, and treated her brother with a frigid dignity at the tea table. At the close of the meal, as he left the table, he said to her in an off-hand way, “I’m goin’ down past the church, Kate; and if you want to go to that meeting, you can come along with me. There’ll be plenty of folks for you to come home with. The Moffats always go, you know.”

It was quiet condescension for John to say this; but Katharine was too much on her dignity to accept it. She
spoke coldly, “Thank you; I can get there in the same way, then, if I care to go, without troubling you.”

“All right!” John said, with a careless shrug of his shoulders, as he went out of the room.

Katharine did not go to the meeting that night. Instead, she shut herself into her room, and began thinking. She was very unhappy. At first the unhappiness vented itself in anger toward her brother, and a self-righteous feeling that she had done her duty; but this did not satisfy her. There seemed an emptiness about everything in which she tried o interest herself. She read the little poem over line by line, and tried to imagine herself saying it truly from her heart.

So peace and joy and love

Through all my being flow.

Why, peace was clam and deep and restful; and joy was uplifting; and love-why, love was the best, the sweetest, the greatest, the happiest thing in all the world! What would it be like to have them flow through all her being?

Do you know this blessed difference?
Do you long for this better way?
He will come to you as he came to me,
With the joy of an endless day.

Yes, she did long for this better way with all her heart. Oh, would he come to her? She bowed her head in her hands, and burst into tears, wondering why she felt so miserable. She had never felt so before. She had never known these intense longings for something better, and could not understand it now. She did not know that at that very moment, away in a western city, Cousin Hetty knelt in prayer, pouring out her heart to God for her with an earnestness and faith that would not be denied. Neither could she know that in one of the rooms of an eastern college a young man also knelt and prayed for her. Such earnest, united prayers could not fail to bring an answer. Katharine would have been surprised to know that Frank Warner was praying for her; for although she knew he was one of the divinity students, and expected to become a minister, yet he had never said or done anything to make her think he took a special interest in her personal salvation or that of anyone else. But since Frank had returned to college he had met with some earnest souls who had put new life into his own heart, and his conscience began to reproach him for the long summer spent in idleness in the Lord’s vineyard. As he grew nearer to the Master he began to have a great longing for his friends to come; and he thought of the bright girl who had been the life of their little company all summer, and wished that she, too, might find the Savior.

If Katharine had known all this, it might have hastened her decision. While she sat in her room desolate and perplexed, her mind went back to the morning sermon, and a few sentences of it came clearly before her: “Christ says, ‘Come unto me.’ The first duty of a sinner is to come. One must not seek to appease an offended God by doing good works. Your works are not accepted by him until you have obeyed him and ‘come’. How shall you come? Kneel down before him. Tell him to save you; that you wish to give up all sin, and belong to him.” “How simple that is!” Katharine said to herself. “Why should I not do what he has told me to? If he wants me to come, why should I not? I will.”

God’s promise is here. When Katharine arose from her knees she was surprised to discover what a new feeling of peace had come into her heart. She went to her window, and looked out upon the clear, starlit October sky. The bright lights shining there so steadily and kindly seemed to look down on her like the eye of God; and there came to her a sudden realization that now she could repeat the poem, and feel that she meant every word of it.

I was tired yesterday, but not today.
I could run and not be weary,
This is blessed way;
For I have this strength to stay me,
With his might my feet are shod.
I can find my resting places
In the promises of God.

She turned from the window with a joy in her heart that had never been there before.

While Katharine was getting breakfast Monday morning, old Andy came in with wood to fill the box behind the stove. He dusted his hands off, after laying the wood nicely in the box, and stood a moment with his rough fingers spread out before the fire. It was a chilly morning, and the warmth was grateful to those worn, hard worked hands.

“Oh, an’ wasn’t that a sermon, Miss Katharine?” he said, as he moved his hands to let the warmth reach every part of them. “It just did my heart good. It just do seem that the preacher have the truth hid in his heart, and he know how to tell it out too! And that is a wonderful text, that is. I’ve been a-thinking about it greatly since you spoke of it last week. I have been a-thinkin’ how we just ought to get right down on our knees and thank the Lord every day that he be so kind an’ willin’ as to let us take his yoke upon us, an’ that he will bear it with us. Instead o’ that, we some of us go on every day, an’ never so much as try to get the yoke to make the work easy. Why, Miss Katharine, I’ve many a time laid out to do a piece of work which I thought would benefit the Lord a great deal. I jus’ went ahead and tried it, an’ ’twouldn’t work – o’ course ’twouldn’t. People, when they do those things without consulting the Lord to see if it’s what he would have ’em do, has jus’ got to make up their minds that ’twon’t work. They ain’t a-wearin’ his yoke when they off on that line. Why, you see the verse goes on to say. ‘And learn of me,’ an
’
if they ain’t a-learning of him they ain’t got on his yoke, that’s all
. There’s a heap of work a-lyin’
round, ready cut out and basted, for us to go at; and if we prefer to go ahead and cut out our own work, without even asking him for his pattern and getting his advice, we kin decide it’ll be a failure and a botch; that’s the whole story. That’s why my mother used to tell the girls when they wanted to make their own dresses before they was old enough and wise enough; and they tried it once or twice, and they see it was just as she said. It don’t pay to go to work ‘thout learn’ of him.” And the old man shook his head thoughtfully, and looked at the glowing coals.

“How can you learn of him, Andy?” asked
Katharine
. She was interested in this subject. It struck home. She thought of her own small attempt at work yesterday, and its failure, and wondered if here were not the secret of her difficulty.

“Learn o’ him? Why, jus’ go an’ get acquainted with him. You want to read the Book about him, an’ get so well acquainted with him as he was, that you know jus’ what he’d do if he was in your place. Then you have to ask him to help, you know; an’ he always do that. He allus carry the heavy end of the yoke himself.”

“But it would take a long time to find out all about him,” said
Katharine
, “and Mr. Richards said that people ought to go right to work as quick as they belong to know all about him, and they couldn’t remember half they read.”

“Oh, but, Miss
Katharine
, you do not need to wait. You go to our Father, an’ he takes you, and you ask him to put you to work, an’ he says, ‘I will, my child’; an’ you ask him to take your wicked, sinful heart away, an’ give you a good heart, and he puts his Spirit in your heart, an’ then you keep your eyes wide open, an’ begin
to learn about him, an’ love him as fas’ as you can, an’ begin to love everybody else, an
d you’ll see plenty to do fer ’em. You grow so you find the work popping up at every turn. You may set it down as pretty sure that when you find a place you can’t work in, or when you do something where you can’t see a bit of work to do for him, then you better get out of it. It ain’t the vineyard if there ain’t any work in it for you, and his children has no business anywhere outside of the vineyard for a minute.”