FIDELIA'S CONCLUSIONS RESPECTING HER DUTIES.
FIDELIA was lazily lying in a hammock, one fair August afternoon. Though still warm, and belonging to summer, the air brought faint and almost indescribable suggestions of the autumn. The beautiful mellowed light upon the hills had something new in it, which she had not seen before, and which told that the end of the summer-time was approaching. Nature had reached its resting-point, everything was complete; from this time the sure, yet slowly insidious decay, was steadily progressing. These half-unconscious observations brought with them other suggestions to Fidelia's mind. It was very different with her from what it was with nature. To her, summer, meant delicious rest, but the autumn the renewal of work. Not that she belonged to the working-classes as generally so understood, though she often laughingly asserted that she did. Her labors were all voluntary and self-imposed, but they pressed none the less heavily because of that. In fact, autumn meant with her the return to "duty," and she was conscious of being very much under the sway of that peculiar divinity. There was probably no one word, of any particular importance, which she heard or used more frequently during the year, than "duty." Now this word had a strange way of changing its sound. In the autumn it had clarion tones, and was like the welcome call to battle. As the winter advanced, it changed into the constant iterations of a faithful but wearisome friend, whose counsels must ever be heeded. But when the spring-time was near, it became like the hated words of a hard task-master. Recalling the repeated experience of several years, Fidelia had but little reason to hope that the coming season would afford any exception, and she was conscious of a strange unwillingness to heed the clarion tones already alluded to. The conflict ceased to be alluring, and she hugged her present ease and comfort. "Duty, duty, duty!" she said to herself; "how tired I shall be of that word before the year is over, and summer comes again!" Being a conscientious young woman, the number and variety of what she considered her "duties," was considerable. There was the church, with its Sabbath services, its weekly meetings, its choir rehearsals, its calls upon strangers. There was the Sabbath-school with its lesson to be studied and taught, its teachers' meetings, its scholars to be regularly visited, its truants to be hunted up and driven back into place. There were the numberless charities, which thicken so rapidly in our cities, with their meetings, their reports, their long discussions, their collection of funds, their ministering to the sick and the afflicted, their continued draughts upon time, strength, and patience. Then there were social duties,—for Fidelia had fallen into the habit of looking at all these things from a severely conscientious stand-point,—there were visits to be made, and, alas! there must be anxious thought and precious time given to careful and punctilious attiring of one's body. Fidelia sighed at the prospect; she hummed softly to herself, as she luxuriated in her present idleness, the old jingle, "I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke, and found that life was duty." Suddenly it occurred to her that matters were not quite as they should be. Surely there was more of a connection between those final words than that of a somewhat imperfect rhyme. Was it not possible that she, a professing follower of Christ for some years, might, by this time, have passed out of the duty and into the beauty of a Christian life? Duty—what did it mean? According to Webster, and according to derivation, something owed. Was life, then, to be but a continued and acknowledged state of paying a debt to God? She could fancy how a child, the first few nights of her stay in her new home, might kiss her adopted mother good-night, because she owed her this recognition of the kindness shown. But if the mother were loving, would the act not very soon grow to be one of spontaneous expression? Would the caress be a welcome one, if the child persisted in saying to herself, "I will kiss my mother because I ought, because it is my duty"? Speranza, by this time, had brought her work, and seated herself upon the grass at Fidelia's feet. "What are you thinking about so soberly?" she asked, looking up brightly. "About duty! and about how I was growing to be impatient of the very word!" "You surprise me! I thought you were a devout worshiper of Duty, and were even one of her most devoted priestesses, offering up continual sacrifices on her altar!" "You were right," answered Fidelia, somewhat sadly; "and I have just begun to see that perhaps I have worshiped duty more than I have loved God!" "Doesn't 'duty' furnish a high motive?" "Not the highest, certainly. For 'love must be a great deal higher. And the question which has come to me is, how long a Christian ought to stay in the rut of duty, and how soon he may expect to get up on the wings of joyful service? When are we going to stop doing things because we ought to, and begin to do them because we love to?" "Couldn't you 'do things' without thinking anything about it, one way or the other, having once made up your mind it is right to do them?" "Possibly I might, though I doubt it. I want something positive put in, to sweeten them. It seems to me there should be a joyful spontaneity about a Christian's life, and that we might grow to do all these things because we love them!" "Surely, self sacrifice is commendable!" "Yes, but are we going to crucify our flesh all our lives, and never get in the least degree the victory over it?" "But is there any virtue in doing what we like to do?" "Speranza, I am astonished to hear you ask such a question! There may not be any virtue in doing it, but certainly there is the highest virtue in bringing one's self to such a point that one likes to do it. Is the man who has won the battle less brave than the man who is fighting it? Are the angels less virtuous than men? I fancy they don't think much about it's being a self-sacrifice to go on their missions of love!" "Well, my dear, perhaps you are right. I certainly have not been in the way of looking at it from just such a stand-point. You seem to have been thinking pretty hard about it." "I have, and my conclusion of the whole matter is," she answered solemnly, "that I have thought so much about doing my duty, that I have made life a wearisome, continual grind!" "But the very duties I have heard you rebel most against, such as making calls, and getting your clothes, how about those? You can't transform those,—can you?" "'He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' I fancy social duties cannot be left out any more than the rest. Christ's second great commandment is 'like unto' the first!" "How about disagreeable charitable duties?" "Isn't this a kind of contradiction of terms, then?" Suppose we translate them—unpleasant loving obligations. Doesn't it sound queer? However, that is the way a great many people seem to regard it. How surprised we should be, when we ask people to do charity-work, that is, love-work, if they should say, 'Oh, thank you, I should like to do it so much! I am very much obliged to you for the opportunity.' Instead of that we generally hear, and generally expect to hear, either a refusal, or an acceptance like this, 'Oh yes, I suppose I must! I suppose it's my duty to do my share.'" "All this sounds remarkably fine," said Speranza, quietly. "Now what do you propose to do about it?" "I propose to do this," answered Fidelia, with determination. "Do you remember what that dear, five-year-old saint said in that charming book of Mrs. Walker's, 'Our Little Girls?' When her obstinate baby brother resolutely refused to walk upstairs, and insisted on being carried, she took hold of his hand, and said, 'Let's play we wanted to walk upstairs,' and they went up triumphant. Now I propose to play I wanted to do all these things, until the play becomes a reality." "Very good," said Speranza, approvingly, "a very excellent intention. But may I ask how long you expect this sort of thing to last?" "I hope," Fidelia answered, with deep feeling, "I hope, and I mean, that it shall last forever."
—B. M. Day, in Sunday-School Times.