CHAPTER IV.
_POLLIE KEEPS HER PROMISE._
POLLIE had made two promises, and as she drove along by her uncle's side, she was earnestly considering how she should set about keeping them.
She did not, however, guess the difficulties that would be raised when she got back, or she would have gained her uncle's permission at once.
When she asked at dinner if she could go to the meeting that evening at the Town Hall, her aunt and cousins made so many objections that Pollie did not know how to press the matter further.
She subsided with burning cheeks, and the more they told her she ought not to go, the more she longed to do so.
"What is it, Mary?" asked her uncle, coming in just as Laura was saying something about its not being respectable.
"I promised Miss Loveday to go to the Town Hall to-night if you and Aunt Elizabeth would allow me?" said Pollie, her eyes filling with tears at his kind look.
"Well?"
"But Aunt Elizabeth does not think I can go."
"I'll talk to your aunt, Mary. If you have promised an old friend, I should like you to go—I will take you myself."
Mrs. Brown shrugged her shoulders, and no more was said. But in the evening, her uncle told Pollie to bundle on her hat, and they went together.
She had another promise to keep, and as she sat in the packed audience, her heart beat fast when she remembered that now was a chance which might never come again, and what if she did not take it?
* * * * *
"Some of you have come here to-night above all things to make a decision, and you almost dread that the evening should be over and you should go back to the old life just your old self.
"And well you may. You feel you cannot save yourselves; that is true, to be sure. You say you have no faith, and that is probably true too.
"But don't look for faith with your weary eyes; don't try to save yourselves with your weary hearts. The remedy is Jesus.
"Look how these Israelites got better of their deadly snakebites. Not by trying to save themselves from the fiery serpents; not by looking within themselves to see if they had faith; but they were saved simply by looking off to the appointed way of healing which God had provided—the serpent of brass raised high on a pole in their midst—and so looking, and so believing, the thing was done; they lived.
"That is how we believe in Jesus Christ. He says Himself, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'"
* * * * *
It was over. Pollie and her uncle walked slowly home in the June twilight.
"Wonderful!" said Mr. Brown, looking up into the deep blue vault above him. "Wonderful that I never saw that before."
Pollie was almost sorry that he had spoken, but she thought that she ought to answer, so she said:
"What, uncle?" thinking it was a bright star he meant.
"I've heard those words hundreds of times, but to-night God has opened my eyes, and I have seen His glory for the first time—"
Pollie squeezed his arm.
"I thought it was some great thing to do to be saved. I find it was only a look, eh, Pollie?"
"Yes," whispered Pollie very low.
"How long have 'you' known what that look meant?" he said, bending down to her.
Could Pollie speak? Her tongue seemed as if it were tied. Then she thought suddenly, "With the mouth confession is made," and she suddenly looked up with all her heart in her eyes.
"Oh, uncle, I've had father and mother all my life, but it's only just now that I—that I've had Jesus! I never knew before, but I do now."
"Mary! Mary! My little girl, how glad I am we came!"
They walked along in silence after that.
But when they reached home, her uncle went in straight to the drawing-room, and kissed his wife affectionately. "My dear," he said, "I'm glad I went, and so is Mary. We have learned what is worth the whole world. Thank God for it."
Thus Pollie began her new life, and she had reason to thank her uncle many times for linking her so kindly with himself in the change of which he spoke. But for that she sometimes felt as if she never could have got through the next fortnight.
Her aunt and cousins treated the whole matter as an absurd joke. The obnoxious meetings were now over, the young man who had conducted them had returned to his home before sailing (he had said) for a distant country, and now all thoughts were centred on the picnic to which they were invited, and, except for an occasional sarcastic allusion to "excitement" and "sensationalism," the subject was dropped.
Pollie was thus thrown back the more completely on the love and tenderness of her new-found Saviour. As she had no earthly helper, she went away by herself and told Him; and thus waiting upon the Lord her strength was renewed, and she learned to find her rest and satisfaction in Him, as perhaps she never would have done in brighter hours.
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