ETHEL'S RELIGION by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 13, 1900

ETHEL'S RELIGION.

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

ETHEL and Edith were twin sisters, but they were quite unlike in appearance and character. Ethel was practical, energetic, and ambitious, thoughtful in small matters, and sunny hearted. Edith was dreamy, romantic, and visionary, and given to melancholy.

Of late Edith had turned her whole attention to religious thoughts, had passed through a “conversion,” and was now a member of the church, and a most devout one. Her father and mother were much pleased with her sincere feeling on this subject, and they encouraged her in all her benevolent aims and charitable works among the poor and needy, where she was most active. But Edith was very sad about one thing, and that was her sister’s indifference to religious subjects. To be sure, Ethel attended church, and occasionally Sunday-school, but she showed no enthusiasm on the matters dear to her sister’s heart, and Edith feared that she was as yet wholly unregenerate.

There were four younger children and an aged and invalid grandaunt in the family, and they kept no servant. This necessitated a great deal of hard work on the part of the mother and the twin girls.

One Sunday morning soon after Edith’s conversion she had been pleading with her sister, while they made their toilets, to take a more serious view of religious subjects. Right in the midst of her most eloquent appeal, Ethel said, “Excuse me, dear,” and hurried out of the room and down-stairs. She did not return, and Edith sat by the window in a deep reverie when the bell called her down to breakfast half an hour later.

The mother usually prepared the morning meal, and afterward the girls attended to the work of clearing up the dishes and washing them. Ethel was not at the table when Edith took her place, but presently she came in, bearing a plate of hot pancakes, her cheeks flushed and burning. “You were very thoughtful, dear, to remember that we were to have cakes this morning, and that my headache always comes on if I am much over the hot fire,” said Mrs. Gray, with a smile. “Edith will prepare the next plate after this, and you may sit down.”

But Edith was deep in a reverie, and did not hear until she had been twice spoken to.

After service that morning, Edith wished her sister to go with her to visit the poor and sick persons on her list.

“But I can not this morning,” Ethel said.

“I promised to read to auntie.”

“Why, mother is there, and I am sure she will look after auntie.”

“Yes, but mother is not feeling very well, and she has the children to entertain Sundays, when they are out of school, and that is work enough for one person to do. Then father likes to have her sit with him awhile on Sunday afternoons, so I feel it my duty to read to auntie. Some other day I will arrange to go to visit the poor with you.”

Edith turned away with a sigh, and Ethel hastened home to her duties. It was only a few days later when Ethel made her plans to go with Edith into the poor district on a visit of mercy, and then to finish up the afternoon on a shopping excursion. She was pleased to see how Edith was welcomed in the homes of the poor, and gratified at the words of thanks and blessing that they bestowed upon her.

The sisters took a street-car to go into the shopping portion of the town, and sat down in the only two unoccupied seats in the car. Edith was talking very earnestly to Ethel about the necessity for greater interest in religious matters, and urging her to pray for an awakening of her heart, when she observed her sister rise up and grasp a strap on the opposite side of the car. At first she thought Ethel was annoyed with her conversation, and had taken this way to put an abrupt end to it; but just then she saw a tired old woman, burdened with a large basket of clean laundry-work, drop into the seat her sister had vacated, and she knew that Ethel had risen to give her the place. Ethel was always doing things like that.

When they reached the large dry-goods house where they were to do their shopping, they encountered a great crowd of people. It was nearly time for the store to close, and everybody was in a hurry.

Edith pushed ahead and passed through the great swinging door, when she heard a smothered cry from Ethel. Looking around, she saw her sister catch the heavy door with both hands just in time to save it from slamming full in the face of a woman who was entering behind Edith.

“O Edith!” cried her sister, as she hastened to her side, “you must be more careful about those doors; if I had not caught it just as I did, the lady might have been seriously hurt.”

“I was thinking of something else,” Edith replied. “You know I am seldom conscious of my surroundings; my mind is so full of other things.”

When they had finished their shopping, and were again seated in the car ready to go home, Edith took out her Sabbath-school lesson and began to read it with great attention. She had turned diagonally in the car seat so as to get a better light on her book. The car was filling rapidly; and the people were standing from one end of it to the other, jostling and pushing and treading on one another’s toes; Still Edith read on, absorbed. Presently she whispered to Ethel: “Oh, how I would like to be more like our dear Lord! It is the only wish of my heart, my only ambition!”

An odd smile curled the corners of Ethel’s lips, and she whispered, in her sister’s ear: “I can tell you how to take one step nearer that goal right now.”

“How? What do you mean?” asked Edith, astonished to think of getting spiritual counsel from an unregenerate sister.

“Why, by turning around straight in your seat, and making room for another person to sit down,” Ethel replied. “You are selfishly occupying two seats while half a dozen persons stand. Our Lord would never have done a thing like that.”

Edith flushed, and turned about in her seat, silent for a moment. A tired-looking woman dropped into the extra space, with a gentle “thank you.”

“I was so intent on serious thoughts I did not notice,” Edith remarked, after a moment.

“I know of no thoughts more worthy of one’s attention than making other people feel a sense of brotherhood by thoughtful, unselfish acts,” Ethel replied. “Any religion that does not include such acts is not the right kind. I may not be as devout as you in many ways, but this is my way, or I try to make it my way, of showing religion. I doubt if I shall ever be an enthusiast like you, and do so many great things or long for great sacrifices, but in my heart I feel deeply the love-one-another spirit of Christ, and I try to show this in my daily, yes, hourly, actions at home and abroad. Some of us must work in small ways, others in great actions, but it is not for either one to say the other is unregenerate or hard of heart.”

Somehow after that afternoon Edith had very little to say about Ethel’s lack of religion, and it was noticeable to all that she grew more thoughtful in small things, and looked nearer home for her duty. She showed, too, a spirit of true religious humility by one day thanking Ethel for what she had said to her.

“You made me see life in a new phase,” she said, “and myself in a new and unattractive light. After all, it is the small courtesies and small kindnesses that go to make up the sum of life, and I was neglecting these to reach over and find some great duty.”