The Elect Lady. George MacDonald
promise is the Lord of all true parables and all good fairy tales.
Andrew prayed:
“Oh, Lord, tell Sandy and me what to ask for. We’re unanimous.”
They got up from their knees. They had said what they had to say: why say more!
They felt rather dull. Nothing came to them. The prayer was prayed, and they could not make the answer! There was no use in reading more! They put the Bible away in a rough box where they kept it among rose-leaves—ignorant priests of the lovely mystery of Him who was with them always—and without a word went each his own way, not happy, for were they not leaving Him under the elder-tree, lonely and shadowy, where it was their custom to meet! Alas for those who must go to church to find Him, or who can not pray unless in their closet!
They wandered about disconsolate, at school and at home, the rest of the day—at least Andrew did; Sandy had Andrew to lean upon! Andrew had Him who was with them always, but He seemed at the other end of the world. They had prayed, and there was no more of it!
In the evening, while yet it was light, Andrew went alone to the elder-tree, took the Bible from its humble shrine, and began turning over its leaves.
“And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” He read, and sunk deep in thought.
This is the way his thoughts went:
“What things? What had He been saying? Let me look and see what He says, that I may begin to do it!”
He read all the chapter, and found it full of tellings. When he read it before he had not thought of doing one of the things He said, for as plainly as He told him! He had not once thought He had any concern in the matter!
“I see!” he said; “we must begin at once to do what He tells us!”
He ran to find his brother.
“I’ve got it!” he cried: “I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“What we’ve got to do”
“And what is it?”
“Just what He tells us.”
“We were doing that,” said Sandy, “when we prayed Him to tell us what to pray for!”
“So we were! That’s grand!”
“Then haven’t we got to pray for anything more?”
“We’ll soon find out; but first we must look for something to do!”
They began at once to search for things the Lord told them to do. And of all they found, the plainest and easiest was: “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” This needed no explanation! it was as clear as the day to both of them!
The very next morning the school-master, who, though of a gentle disposition, was irritable, taking Andrew for the offender in a certain breach of discipline, gave him a smart box on the ear. Andrew, as readily as if it had been instinctively, turned to him the other cheek.
An angry man is an evil interpreter of holy things, and Mr. Fordyce took the action for one of rudest mockery, nor thought of the higher master therein mocked if it were mockery: he struck the offender a yet smarter blow. Andrew stood for a minute like one dazed; but the red on his face was not that of anger; he was perplexed as to whether he ought now to turn the former cheek again to the striker. Uncertain, he turned away, and went to his work.
Stops a reader here to say: “But do you really mean to tell us we ought to take the words literally as Andrew did?” I answer: “When you have earned the right to understand, you will not need to ask me. To explain what the Lord means to one who is not obedient, is the work of no man who knows his work.”
It is but fair to say for the school-master that, when he found he had mistaken, he tried to make up to the boy for it—not by confessing himself wrong—who could expect that of only a school-master?—but by being kinder to him than before. Through this he came to like him, and would teach him things out of the usual way—such as how to make different kinds of verse.
By and by Andrew and Sandy had a quarrel. Suddenly Andrew came to himself, and cried:
“Sandy! Sandy! He says we’re to agree!”
“Does He?”
“He says we’re to love one another, and we canna do that if we dinna agree!”
There came a pause.
“Perhaps after all you were in the right, Sandy!” said Andrew.
“I was just going to say that; when I think about it, perhaps I wasn’t so much in the right as I thought I was!”
“It can’t matter much which was in the right, when we were both in the wrong!” said Andrew. “Let’s ask Him to keep us from caring which is in the right, and make us both try to be in the right We don’t often differ about what we are to ask for, Sandy!”
“No, we don’t.”
“It’s me to take care of you, Sandy!”
“And me to take care of you, Andrew!”
Here was the nucleus of a church!—two stones laid on the foundation-stone.
“Luik here, Sandy!” said Andrew; “we maun hae anither, an’ syne there’ll be four o’ ‘s!”
“How’s that?” asked Sandy.
“I won’er ‘at we never noticed it afore! Here’s what He says: ‘For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.’ In that way, wharever He micht be walkin’ aboot, we could aye get Him! He likes twa, an’ His Father ‘ill hear the ‘greed prayer, but He likes three better—an’ that stan’s to rizzon, for three maun be better ‘n twa! First ane maun lo’e Him; an’ syne twa can lo’e Him better, because ilk ane is helpit by the ither, an’ lo’es Him the mair that He lo’es the ither ane! An’ syne comes the third, and there’s mair an’ mair throwin’ o’ lichts, and there’s the Lord himsel’ i’ the mids’ o’ them! Three maks a better mids’ than twa!”
Sandy could not follow the reasoning quite, but he had his own way of understanding.
“It’s jist like the story o’ Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!” he said. “There was three o’ them, an’ sae He made four! Eh, jist think o’ Him bein’ wi’ ‘s His verra sel’!”
Here now was a church indeed: the idea of a third was the very principle of growth! They would meet together and say: “Oh, Father of Jesus Christ, help us to be good like Jesus;” and then Jesus himself would make one of them, and worship the Father with them!
The next thing, as a matter of course, was to look about for a third.
“Dawtie!” cried both at once.
Dawtie was the child of a cotter pair, who had an acre or two of their father’s farm, and helped him with it. Her real name has not reached me; Dawtie means darling, and is a common term of endearment—derived, Jamieson suggests, from the Gaelic dalt, signifying a foster-child. Dawtie was a dark-haired, laughing little darling, with shy, merry manners, and the whitest teeth, full of fun, but solemn in an instant. Her small feet were bare and black—except on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings—but full of expression, and perhaps really cleaner, from their familiarity with the sweet all-cleansing air, than such as hide the day-long in socks and shoes.
Dawtie’s specialty was love of the creatures. She had an undoubting conviction that every one of them with which she came in contact understood and loved her. She was the champion of the oppressed, without knowing it. Every individual necessity stood on its own merits, and came to her fresh and sole, as if she had forgotten all that went before it. Like some boys she had her pockets as well as her hands at the service of live things; but unlike any boy, she had in her love no admixture of natural history; it was not interest in animals with her, but an individual love to the individual animal, whatever it might be, that presented itself to the love-power