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THE KEEPER OF THE DOOR

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 26, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 13.

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THE KEEPER OF THE DOOR.

By Emily Huntington Miller

BY EMILY HUNTINGTON MILLER.
“Mama, I am completely discouraged.” Jennie pushed away her book, and looked up at her mother with an expression that was very much like despair, and yet not altogether that, for somehow her mother had a way of brightening up dark places that was helpful as well as comforting.
Her mother was rocking the baby, and she scarcely dared speak, lest the little tyrant should open his eyes for a new frolic; but she sent Jennie a smile that said just as plainly as words: “What is the trouble? Let us talk it over.”
“It’s about my faults, mama. You see we were talking last Sunday about striving against sin, and Miss Marston advised us to sit down and make an honest list, just for our own eyes, of our own special faults—the ones that made us most trouble—and then try, by God’s help, to overcome them. I made up my mind to try it, and had to write down ever so many things, but I truly thought that my tongue made me the most trouble.”
“Your tongue! O, yes, I understand!” said mama.
“Saying things, you know, mama, things I ought not to say; and I am so sorry about it afterwards; but that doesn’t seem to make it any better, because I go and do it again.”
“Well?” said mama, as Jennie paused.
“Well, I thought I’d just take aim at that one thing, and I did. I thought it would be a good plan to write down whenever I forgot, and so every night I put down in my little book the bad things I had said, and—and—mama, it is just horrid. The days don’t grow a bit better, and to-day is the worst of all.”
Jennie drew a deep sigh, and scowled at her little book. Then she said desperately, “I wish there was some way to just tie my tongue up, and keep it out of mischief.”
“You need a gatekeeper,” said her mother, laying down the baby and taking up her sewing. “When a city is in danger from enemies, they must do something more than put sharpshooters on the walls; they guard the gates, and keep sentinels at their post day and night, to give warning of the approach of danger.”
“I try to watch,” said Jennie. “I thought of it all the morning while I was dressing, and then when I came down and heard Rob fretting at Hatty for taking his sled, and at Norah because there was no toast, and even at baby for pulling his hair, I went to singing:— ‘Brother, thou wast mild and lovely, Gentle as a summer breeze,’ though I knew perfectly well that always makes Rob madder than anything else. Then he threw his book at me, and papa sent him out of the room, and I just wanted to pound myself on the head for being so mean.”
“You must have a gatekeeper,” said her mother more seriously than ever; “and I would ask for one before I was an hour older. Your Father will give you one.”
“Papa!” exclaimed Jennie. “How can he?”
But the mother opened her Bible, and, turning over the leaves, gave it to Jennie with her finger on a verse in Psalms. “Read that,” she said; and Jennie read aloud: “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.”
There were tears in her eyes as she repeated the words, “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth.” “I never thought about that, mama; somehow I expected to take care of that sin myself; but I should like a keeper. Just think, mama, of an angel standing on guard to keep the door of my lips. Will he have a sword, I wonder?”
“I think so; the sword of ‘truth.’”
“And what will be the watchword?”
“‘Peace,’ I think, or ‘love,’—the love that ‘worketh no ill to its neighbor;’ at least, I would try that watchword to-day, and ask the keeper to challenge every word, and let nothing pass without the watchword.”
When Jennie went to her room that night, she found a little card pinned up over her dressing-table, with David’s prayer written upon it, and she added it very earnestly to her own petitions. In the morning it was again before her eyes, and she went down to breakfast repeating it to herself. The first thing she saw was Johnny tormenting her beloved white kitten by trying to drive it in harness.
“You mean, cruel boy!” was upon her very lips, but the keeper drew his sword and stopped the words.
At school Jennie’s temptations came thick and fast—first a temptation to evil speaking, then to unkind criticism, then to uncharitable judgment, then to tell a ludicrous story of a simple-minded old Christian, then to punish the self-conceit of Mamie Morris by repeating what a lady had said of her, and then to keep back a cutting reply to a most ungenerous taunt. It seemed to Jennie, as she reviewed the day, that it had been a specially hard one; and yet she was conscious that through it all the keeper had been standing at the door, and she could look back with gratitude, and not with shame.
“How about the watchman, Jennie?” asked her mother, when she came home.
“He stood at his post, mama; twice, I think, something slipped by without the watchword, but he killed it with his sword before it got far enough to do much mischief.”
Cousin Sue heard the story, and on Jennie’s next birthday sent her a lovely motto for her room—a wreath of daisies and wild roses, delicately painted as a border for the text, “Keep the door of my lips.”
“I think Cousin Sue might have sent that to me,” said Rob honestly; “I am sure I need a doorkeeper more than Jennie does.”
And Mamie Morris confessed to her dearest friend that she really did believe Jennie Wilder was a Christian, because she never said things to make folks uncomfortable.
“She’s so funny, and so smart to think of things, that I never used to open my mouth before her without expecting to be set down, but now I like her best of any girl in school.”—Scholar’s Magazine.