CHAPTER III.

Division.

AS Martin Laver was still weak from recent illness, he slept till a later hour than usual on the Sunday morning. It would have been pleasant to him to have begun his home-life again with a day of rest, had he not more than suspected that, from the opposing views of his wife, Sunday, of all days in the week, was most likely to prove a day of conflict.

The first sight which greeted the eyes of Martin, after he had come downstairs in the morning, was that of Ann Laver arranging the pipes and cigars in the window.

"Nay, Ann, no need to take that trouble," said her husband. "I'll put up the shutters again. I've asked God's forgiveness for having so often broken the Fourth Commandment, and His help to keep it better in future. From this time forth, we will neither buy nor sell upon Sundays."

Ann's short truce with her husband was over, and her passion burst forth the more violently from having for a while been kept under control.

"I tell you what, Martin, I'm not going to have more of this nonsense!" cried the woman, turning fiercely round on her husband. "We've hard enough work as it is to keep soul and body together, while we do as other folk do. Sunday's our best day for business, and, if you're such an idiot as to put up your shutters to please the parson, you'd better give up shop-keeping at once, and take to begging, or throw yourself and your wretched family upon the mercy of the parish!"

"I do not think so," replied Martin, calmly. "I believe that no one is the worse in the end for obeying the Word of God in a simple, straightforward way. 'The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it.' * But were it not so, had we only the choice of a poorhouse with that blessing, or a palace without it, we should be fools indeed did we choose the latter. 'What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?'" †

* Prov. x. 22. † Matt. xvi. 26.

"I hope you don't mean to set up for a saint!" cried Ann, with a scornful jerk of the head.

"I wish to be a real Christian," replied Martin "and the one is the same as the other."

"What stuff you are talking!" cried Ann, with impatience. "Of course we are Christians, not heathens, though we don't pretend to be saints."

"Saint, which means holy, is the Bible name for all God's servants," replied Martin, leaning against the counter as he spoke. "You will find the word Christian, I think, but three times in all the Scripture, that of Saint more than forty or fifty; St. Paul's description of all the Lord's people in Rome was 'beloved of God, called to be saints.'" †

† Rom. i. 7.

"I am no saint, and I don't want to be one," said Ann Laver, with scorn; "but I know that I'm a baptised Christian, and that is enough for me!"

"Simon had but lately been baptised," observed Laver, "when St. Peter, the apostle, said to him, 'Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, because his heart was not right in the sight of God.' ‡ Oh! Dear wife, suffer me to speak for a few minutes freely on those things on which our salvation depends. God asks for our hearts, He will accept nothing less, and He accepts these hearts that, by His Spirit, He may make them holy."

‡ Acts viii. 21.

Ann would not hear her husband to the end.

"How you veer and change about!" she exclaimed. "Before you went to the hospital, it was all—'What must I do to be saved?' And now you are all for holiness as the way to get to Heaven."

"No, never, not the way!" exclaimed Martin, with such energy that his wife stared at him in surprise. "Christ is the Way, the only Way, it is His blood that cleanseth from all sin. * But, as some good man has said, 'He does not save us in our sins, but from our sins.'

* 1 John i. 7.

"'If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature'; † he that comes to the Saviour in faith, seeks to follow the Saviour in that 'holiness without which no man shall see the Lord!'" ‡

† 2 Cor. v. 17. ‡ Heb. xii. 14.

Ann Laver had never come to the Saviour, nor felt her need of being saved; she was one of the many who choose their own way, and do their own will, and yet expect, somehow or other, to get to Heaven in the end. She was like a person with bandaged eyes walking towards the edge of a precipice, and the attempt to unbandage her eyes, or stop her on her perilous course, only roused her pride and her anger. It is needless to repeat the bitter things which she said to him whose love had made him speak the truth which she hated to hear. After a violent burst of temper, Mrs. Laver, slamming the door behind her, retired into the back parlour, where Annie had good reason to know that something had put her mother thoroughly out of temper.

With a heavy sigh, Martin Laver went to put up his shutters again. He was so weak from his recent illness, that he had to pause more than once, even when making so slight an exertion. Six months before he would have lifted ten times the weight of a shutter with ease. It was sad to feel the once strongly-knit arms so feeble; but it was not this sense of weakness, nor the fear of approaching poverty, that drew that deep sigh from Laver's heart. It was the burden of that cross which is wont to press more or less heavily upon all who would follow Christ fully—that cross of which the Blessed Master knew the weight day by day, and which He bids all His servants take up.

"Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you," * the Lord once said to His disciples, and through His Word He says so still. Persecution has been the portion of God's saints not only in times when fire and sword were used to destroy them, but when hatred could be shewn only in sneers and taunts, that do not endanger life, but deprive it of earthly enjoyment.

* John xv. 19.

While Laver was replacing the shutters, he thought of Christian in "Pilgrim's Progress," and how hard his wife tried to stop him when he would flee from the wrath to come.

"He had to bear her taunts and revilings," thought Laver; "what a hard struggle it must have cost Christian to leave all that had once been most dear. How different would his pilgrimage have been, had he and his wife been of one heart and one mind, and gone through all their trials together! But though his wife would not go one step with him, she followed at last in his track. Doubtless he had prayed for her very, very often, and God answered his prayer, though not till after Christian had left this earth and its sorrows behind him. Perhaps it may be thus with us; my poor Ann may remember my words, when I am no more here to speak them."

Martin raised his hand to his brow, for a faintness was coming over him. "God help me to be so careful in my daily conduct, to keep my lips and my life so pure, that my wife must own, however unwillingly, that in trying to be a better Christian, I am also a better husband, father, and friend. When she taunts me with being a saint, may I have grace to become one indeed, that, at least, she may never think me a hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another."

Ann would scarcely speak to her husband during all the time of breakfast, but she missed no opportunity of speaking at him, addressing herself to their child.

"Ah! You want more butter to your bread, do you?" she cried, pushing towards Annie a slice which she had just cut from the loaf. "Your father takes good care that we shan't have butter, and it will soon come, I suppose, to doing without the bread too!"

Ann glanced angrily towards the darkened shop as she spoke.

Annie held out her little foot to her mother, one of her tiny shoes needed repair, and the cotton sock appeared through a hole in the leather.

"So you want new shoes, little brat!" cried Ann. "I only wish you may get them! You'll have to run barefoot about the streets soon, and what will you do then, I wonder!"

"Ask Daddy carry me!" lisped the little child, as she calmly went on with her meal, undisturbed by fears for the future.

Even Ann could scarcely help smiling at the unexpected reply.

And Martin, as he stooped to kiss his little one, thought, "if she can so quietly trust her father, shall I not trust mine, who is the Giver of all good things?"

"I suppose you'll be going to some prayer-meeting or other?" said Ann, abruptly, to her husband, as soon as the uncomfortable meal was ended.

"I am going to church," replied Martin, and he could not forbear adding, "I wish we could go there together."

"Oh! I'm no saint, whatever you may be!" exclaimed Ann, with a jerk of the head. "I'm going to Greenwich with the Battens and their set—a lark on the river is a deal more to my taste than all your preaching and praying. I shall pay for my trip with my last Sunday's earnings, which I've kept for the purpose," she added, to give a keener sting to her taunt.

"I should be the last to wish to deprive you of any harmless pleasure," said her husband; "but if you spend the Lord's day in such an excursion, it will be without my consent."

"Your consent, indeed, I never asked for it!" exclaimed the rebellious wife to him whom she had vowed before God to obey. "You go your way, I will go mine; with your leave or without your leave, I'm off to Greenwich by two."

The husband and wife were, indeed, walking on different paths, such as must conduct to different ends. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life." * These are our Lord's own words; but how few act as if they believed them to be true!

* Matt. vii. 13, 14.

Crowds press along the broad way, careless and disobedient, yet hoping that, after all, peace and rest and Heaven will be theirs at the end! "Ye shall not surely die" † is the Devil's whisper still, and, like Eve, we are too ready to listen. But let those who would continue in their sins remember that God hath declared in His word that "the end of these things is death," ‡ and that they who are His servants indeed have their fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

† Gen. iii. 4. ‡ Rom. vi. 21.