"My dear Miss Erskine, will you be so
kind as to tell me the work for which you feel qualified, and for which
you have no distaste?"
Again Ruth hesitated, looked confused, and then laughed. She began to
see that she was making a very difficult task for her pastor.
"I don't feel qualified for anything," she said, at last. "And I feel
afraid to undertake anything. But at the same time, I think I ought to
be at work."
"Now we begin to see the way clearer," he said, smiling, and with
encouragement in his voice. "It may seem a strange thing to you, but a
sense of unfitness is sometimes one of the very best qualifications for
such work. If it is strong enough to drive us to the blessed Friend who
has promised to make perfect our weakness in this as in all other
efforts, and if we go out armed in His strength we are sure to conquer.
Try it. Take this for your motto: 'As ye have opportunity.' And, by the
way, do you know the rest of that verse? 'Especially to them who are of
the household of faith.' It is members of the household that I want you
to call on, remember."
Ruth laughed again, and shook her head. But she took her list and went
away. She had no more that she wanted to say just then; but she felt
that she had food for thought.
"I may try it," she said, as she went out, holding up her list, "but I
feel that I shall blunder, and do more harm than good."
Dr. Dennis looked after her with a face on which there was no smile.
"There goes one," he said to himself, "who thinks she is willing to be
led, but, on the contrary, she wants to lead. She is saved, but not
subdued. I wonder what means the great Master will have to use to lead
her to rest in his hands, knowing no way but his?"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIV
AN UNARMED SOLDIER.
MANY things intervened to keep Ruth Erskine from having much to do with
that list which her pastor had given her. She read it over indeed, and
realized that she was not familiar with a single name.
"What an idea it will be for me to go blundering through the city,
hunting up people whom I shall not know when I find."
This she said as she read it over; then she laid it aside, and made
ready to go out to dinner with her father, to meet two judges and their
wives and daughters who were stopping in town.
During that day she thought many times of the sentences that had been
read to her out of that plain-looking, much-worn Bible on Dr. Dennis'
study-ta
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