Daisy In The Field
Page 141"But," said I doubtfully, "I had questioned what was right; at
least I had not been certain that I ought to do anything just
now."
"Of course I am speaking in the dark," he answered. "But you
can judge whether this matter of division is something that in
your father's place you would feel you had a right to know."
I mused so long after this speech, that I am sure Mr.
Dinwiddie must have felt that he had touched my difficulty. He
was perfectly silent. At last I rose up to go home. I do not
know what Mr. Dinwiddie saw in me, but he stopped me and took
my hand.
"Can't you trust the Lord?" he said.
"I see trouble before me, whatever I do," I said with some
"Very well," he said; "even so, trust the Lord. The trouble
will do you no harm."
I sat down for a moment and covered my face. It might do me no
harm; it might at the same time separate me from what I loved
best in the world.
"Cannot you trust?" he repeated. " 'He that putteth his trust
in the Lord shall be made fat.' "
"You know," I said, getting up, "one cannot help being weak."
"Will you excuse me? - That is precisely what we can help. We
cannot help being ignorant sometimes, - foolish sometimes, -
short-sighted. But weak we need not be; for 'in the Lord
Jehovah is everlasting strength;' and 'he giveth power to the
"But there is no perfection, Mr. Dinwiddie."
"Not if by perfection you mean, standing alone. But if the
power that holds us up is perfect, - what should hinder our
having a fulness of that? 'If ye shall ask anything in My
name, I will do it.' Isn't that promise good for all we want
to ask?"
I sat down again to think. Mr. Dinwiddie quietly took his
place by my side; and we were still for a good while. The
plains of Jericho and the Jordan and the Moab mountains and
the Quarantania, all seemed to have new voices for me now;
voices full of balm; messages of soft-healing. I do think the
messages God sends to us by natural things are some of the
home.
"Do you think," I asked, after a long silence, "that this
mountain was really the scene of the Temptation?"
"Why should we think so? No, I do not think it."
"But the road from Jericho to Jerusalem - there is no doubt of
that?"
"No doubt at all. We are often sure of the roads here, when we
are sure of little else."
There was a pause; and then Mr. Dinwiddie broke it.
"You left things in confusion at home. How do you feel about
that?"