You would take rank in the kingdom of
hell, not the kingdom of heaven. But obedient love, learned by
the meanest Abigail, will make of her an angel of ministration,
such a one as he who came to Peter in the prison, at whose touch
the fetters fell from the limbs of the apostle.
"What forced, overdriven, Utopian stuff! A kingdom always coming,
and never come! I hold by what _is._ This solid, plowable
earth will serve my turn. My business is what I can find in the
oyster."
I hear you, friend. Your answer will come whence you do not look
for it. For some, their only answer will be the coming of that
which they deny; and the _Presence_ will be a very different
thing to those who desire it and those who do not. In the mean
time, if we are not yet able to serve like God from pure love,
let us do it because it is his way; so shall we come to do it
from pure love also.
The very next morning, as she called it--that is, at four o'clock
in the afternoon--Hesper again entered the shop, and, to the
surprise and annoyance of the master of it, was taken by Mary
through the counter and into the house. "What a false
impression," thought the great man, "will it give of the way
_we_ live, to see the Marstons' shabby parlor in a
warehouse!" But he would have been more astonished and more
annoyed still, had the deafening masses of soft goods that filled
the house permitted him to hear through them what passed between
the two.
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