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WINNING STARS

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 8, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 41.

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WINNING STARS.

By Lida F. Scott

It was a honey-suckled cottage, a nest of a home, in the daintiest of settings. An invalid upon the second floor was the magnet drawing a motley stream of visitors. The evidences of love and sympathizing care were about her. The window-sill was abloom with azalia and cactus plants, an orange tree flourished, and an ivy vine twined about the windows inside, beguiling weary hours as the sufferer watched the cunning fashioning of flower or leaf.
Here was co-operation with the laws of nature, but just across the street, this harmony was broken by God’s crowning masterpiece—man, rebellious and proud.
For five years Agnes Fletcher had lain upon her couch unable to move a limb or lift her head unaided. Yet a sweet, indescribable influence, like the fragrance of her flowers, had attracted to her bedside many a heart-sick, sin-sick soul longing for a glimpse of life and of themselves through the eyes of this little heroine. Sometimes Agnes would point to the wonderful depths of the sky and say:—
“We gaze too much upon the earth. It is sick like ourselves. See eternity above, you. Let its light shine into your soul. Now how about the trials? Don’t they fade, like man-made dyes under strong light; but the truth of God, like His many-hued blossoms grow richer and more glorious in His sunshine. When this sunshine beams into your heart what is not of God will fade and perish.”
Then suddenly, at times, would she be torn back from her flight into the realms of joy and harmony to the rude, jaunting care of daily experience.
From her couch, by a turn of the head, she could see into the rooms of widow McCaul’s uninviting home where was enacted many a painful scene. The child, it is true, did not obey her mother. To her Master and heavenly Father, however, the mother did not yield her will. The child’s offense toward the mother was that of the mother toward God. Yet, the older in experience, in years, and in rebellion against a superior authority, was so blinded by selfishness that she failed to see the parallel. She sought to enforce obedience in her child with broom, tongs, or chair.
Vain endeavor! In the clear atmosphere of childhood, unbefogged by conformity to the world, many a childish mind is more clearly logical than its more learned senior. When God at last becomes exasperated and ceases to strive with rebellious human nature, and begins to perform His act, His “strange act” of permitting the working of wrath unmixed with mercy, what will be the reflections of the proud, exacting tyrant? In such a time, “blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
In vain, did her friends beseech the delicate girl to remove her quarters to the rear of the house and be spared these nerve-racking sights.
“No dear!” she would say, “It would be happening just the same, and I am trying to solve the problem of how such a child ought to be governed. Of course, the mother is to blame. She has blundered from the first. Her first wrong to that dear child, I remember, was when she was a baby. The baby saw a beautiful flower growing in the window, and with a little scream of joy pulled up the plant with its roots, and the pot crashed upon the floor. I shall never forget the frown she received. How the delicate nerves of a sensitive child must have been shocked as she was cruelly punished—for she knew not what—loving a ‘pretty flower.’ The mother seemed to expect the wisdom of maturity in the tiny head. What if she did injure the plant? Better than what the mother did—injured the child. The motive of the baby was beyond reproach. Strange, how many people place a higher value on plants and pet animals than they do on their babies.”
“How would you have done?” the question was asked.
“I remember when I was three years old I went out, one spring morning, and pulled up every one of my mother’s plants by the roots.”
“What did your mother do?”
“Do? She laughed and said, ‘The little innocent! Bless her heart!’”
The next day I ran to my best of friends in distress.
“Quick mama,” I cried, “the poor little flowers are thirsty. They want a drink.”
My mother then explained that they were all dying because I had pulled them up by the roots. This was a great grief to me, and there was never any more difficulty about my disturbing the flowers. We anticipate too much, leap ahead of a child’s experience, and harden its little heart. Why not have a little faith in God working in the child, as we give the young conscience a chance to work? The tongue no man can tame, and every mother who has learned the lesson, when not to speak, will have an experience similar to David’s when he said:—
“I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because Thou didst it.”
Agnes had with her an attendant whose name was Margaret. She asked her to induce poor, misunderstood Katie to pay her a visit. At length, the child consented. She entered the room with a dogged air and sat down on the edge of a seat. Her hair was done up in two tight braids and tied with shoe-strings. Her face showed evidence of scanty nourishment, and she was poorly clad.
“Come here, dear. I wanted to meet you,” said Agnes with a winning smile. But Katie gazed in sullen silence.
“You know, I am not strong. I can not walk as you can. How nice it must be to walk, Katie. I just love little girls like you and I hope you will come in often to see me.”
“You’re foolin’,” Katie began; then, checking herself, she looked straight at her hostess, her eyes opening with interest, really handsome eyes, Agnes noticed. “Can’t you walk, sure?”
“No, dear, I used to walk, but fell out of a swing and hurt my spine. Now, I am helpless. I can not move my hands nor my feet.”
This seemed to touch the girl, but forcing back a tear:—
“How you speak,” she said, “as tho you cared a little—what you say. Yes,” with a pleading glance, “I would like to come again, if you really mean—” she stopped—“Everybody lies to me.”
“Do you think I would lie to you, Katie?” Katie gave her a quick, searching glance and replied slowly:—
“No—o; but if you don’t you’re the first.”
And thus was laid the foundation for a lifelong friendship between those two cripples—the one physical, the other moral.
Yet the unequal struggles went on from day to day, the disgraceful quarrels between mother and daughter.
Agnes pleaded with Katie to obey her mother.
“Nobody could,” was the terse reply.
With fiendish cruelty Mrs. McCaul finally planned a means of bringing Katie into subjection. A hypnotist was in town and the people were attending his meetings with great interest. From the platform he waved his hand over the audience and some left their seats and walked in a sort of trance to the platform to make a laughing-stock of themselves.
Mrs. McCaul became a regular attendant at these meetings. At the close of one she stepped to the platform to consult with the hypnotist as to a means of dealing with her refractory child.
“That’s an easy matter,” he at once affirmed. “If you will allow me to take the matter in charge, I will come a few times to your home, and she will be as docile as a kitten. But you must let me have my way. I will be rough with her. I must get her afraid to disobey me before she will yield to my influence.”
In the meanwhile Katie and Agnes were cementing their friendship. Agnes could see that noble sentiments were slowly gaining a foothold in the obstinate heart.
Suddenly, one day, Katie rushed up the stairs to Agnes’ bedside, as tho pursued by the fancies of a nightmare. She was much agitated.
“What is the matter, my child?”
“O, Miss Agnes!” and the child burst into a spasm of weeping such as seldom escapes from one so young. When she had given vent to her feelings, she sobbed out:—
“Such a terrible man with eyes like a snake has come to hypnotize me. He shook me and hit me, yelling at me all the time, and made me sit just where he said and do just as he liked. I knew he would beat me awfully if I refused. What is it to hypnotize?”
“To hypnotize?” said Agnes indignantly. “It is to rob one of his God-given right of the power of choice.”
“To rob?”
“It is always robbery even when the subject is willing; for when an individual takes your will and makes it his he is doing more than God, an infinitely superior being to man, ever permits Himself to do. If He did so, He could make us all obey Him without waiting until we wish to do it. You, moreover, have no right to yield yourself to anybody. You are not your own to give away. You are bought with a price. God says to us, ‘Yield yourselves unto God.’ Since He is the only One who can be trusted not to take advantage of this confidence and who will, at any time you grow tired of your bargain, return you fully to yourself. By yielding to man you yield in fact to Satan, the master hypnotist, and no man can break the chains with which he binds you. He means to get you, by fair means or foul, for time and eternity; God never will do that. When does this hypnotist come again?”
“This evening. My mother says she has found out how to conquer me at last.”
“Dear Kate, why don’t you obey her?”
“She beats me when I do right and when I do wrong. I can’t please her.”
Agnes, with a feeling of horror and indescribable helplessness, looked at the child. Kate was no coward, but there was an expression of unconcealable fear upon her features.
“O his dreadful eyes,” she shuddered, “Miss Agnes, is there a real devil?”
“Can you doubt it when such wickedness abounds?”
“Maybe it’s him.”
At length Scripture came to her memory, and Agnes softly quoted:—
“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” We have a Saviour who said, “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that God won’t let them injure you if you put yourself under His care.”
“Does God care?”
“He loves you, and when you are in trouble He hears your cry. Don’t you want to ask Him to help you now?”
“How can He, they are going to do it sure.”
“But God can do anything. All things are possible with God. Will you pray after me, kneel down and repeat the words?”
Slowly, reluctantly, the girl bent her proud will and those wilful knees, and repeated the words, making her own additions, and closing with the request:—
“Don’t let that man hypnotize me, dear Lord; please don’t.”
There was a smile on the pallid face of the invalid. She said: “The Lord will cause something to interfere.”
When Kate arose her face was radiant.
“I ain’t afraid now,” she exclaimed. “How strange I feel. I believe it’s God that’s here,” pointing to her breast.
“What time is it?” inquired Agnes of her nurse, Margaret, that evening.
“Nearly seven,” was the reply.
“Time the hypnotist is due. I am strongly impressed that God is to use me as an instrument. I must go to rescue Kate.”
“You?” gasped Margaret. But before she could interfere Agnes had, tho not without an effort, tossed back the bed covers and arisen to her feet. As she tottered across the floor Margaret gazed expecting to see her drop dead. Agnes slipped in her mother’s white wrapper and went out into the hall and down the stairs. Strength seemed to increase. She went across the street, Margaret following dazed, into the house of her neighbor, and stood before the terrified spectators. Mrs. McCaul believed she saw a ghost. The hypnotist, as he glanced into Agnes’ face, recognized a spirit antagonistic to his own and, without ceremony, left the premises.
Katie alone was calm. She murmured:—
“I knew God would send you. I was praying for this.”
But her mother cried out in fear:—
“Good Lord! What is it? Are you dead or alive? Who are you anyway? This is a judgment on me.”
Agnes quickly explained:—
“Don’t be afraid, my dear woman. I am no spirit. I am only Agnes Fletcher, your neighbor, whom you have often seen on her couch at the window. The Lord has healed me to-night that I might save your daughter and show you that He will hold you, as a mother, accountable for her soul. But, thank God, she has given her heart to Him already, and He would save His trusting child if He had to empty heaven of His angels to do it.”
“A miracle! a miracle?” exclaimed Mrs. McCaul with ashen lips. “You walking? Is this really Agnes Fletcher?”
“Yes,” said Agnes as with returning strength her spine straightened, and she raised her head to an erect posture. “See how strong He is making me, and I can walk, see!” She stepped to the other side of the room and back with a steadiness that amazed them all. Then she stopped and looking searchingly into the face of the widow said:—
“Isn’t God good? Isn’t He worth loving and serving? That’s the kind of a Father I have.”
Mrs. McCaul sighed:—
“I had never thought of Him as my Father. Do I deserve a kind Father? I have not even been a kind mother,” and she burst into tears. “Can He, could He save such a wretch as I? I am sick of myself. I want to be saved. O Agnes! you know something about these things. Is it too late? Have I gone too far?”
“Listen to what Job says, ‘He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.’”
“That means me, for I have sinned, God knows how much. Katie, can you forgive such a wretched mother as you have had?”
Kate was in her mother’s arms and together they were confessing their faults in broken-hearted tones, and together they took it to Jesus, and left their burdens at His feet. Transformed in heart and face, old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.
And the news of these marvels spread over the country. Some scoffed, some feared, but a few, when they saw the mother and daughter working harmoniously in service for others, and Agnes walking about caring for the sick and pointing erring ones to the Saviour, were softened, and a revival swept over the town such as had not been seen in years.
And, some day, not far distant, will a voice, O so lovely, be heard to say in tones of sweetest music to such as these:—
“Well done! Enter thou in”—and upon their modest heads will Jesus place with His own beautiful hand, rare golden crowns brilliant with many stars.
LIDA F. SCOTT.