The Little Preacher

"I wish you would go to bed, mother. You know I cannot. Tell me once more, mother, are you sure God is good?" Again thus solemnly adjured, the poor feeble mother burst into tears. She held out her arms, and Doris ran into their shelter, just as she had done when a child, "Whatever He does, He is good," said the mother. ~ from The Little Preacher.

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Make Me Smaller and Smaller

 

 

"I have just finished a short story called 'Gentleman Jim,"' she tells a correspondent under date of January 20, 1878. Then after mentioning a letter-- "the most discriminating I ever received -- about Greylock " -- she gives us the key to the singular equanimity with which she sustained the praises of her writings. " After the first rush of pleasure, the Evil One troubled me off and on for two or three hours, but at last I reminded him that I long ago chose to cast in my lot with the people of God, and so be off the line of human notice or applause." 

In her answer to the appreciative reader (Mr. J. Cleaveland Cady, the popular architect) she strikes the same chord more strongly. "I am not sorry that I chose the path in life I did choose. A woman should not live for, or even desire fame. . . . If I had not steadily suppressed all such ambition I might have become a sour, disappointed woman, seeing my best work unrecognized. . . . God has only taken me at my word. I have asked Him a thousand times to make me smaller and smaller, and crowd the self out of me by taking up all the room Himself." 

[A little insight as to what was in the heart of this woman and why her writings had and have the impact that they do. ~ mr]

A Regal Reading List

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Even the Little Trials

Great sorrows drive every Christian to God; but we are only too prone to try to bear our little trials alone. We fancy such petty affairs beneath His notice. Yet, may it not one day appear that the mountain was after all only a hillock; the great burden but a grain of sand? We must throw ourselves as children upon Him. We must be willing to consult His pleasure in the meanest affair of life; to seek his compassion and sympathy in "every pain we bear." Let Him be the judge of their worth and consequence; and perhaps He who seeth not as man seeth, will detect the mountain in what is called the hillock, and mark that as our intolerable burden, that men regard as the small dust of the balance. ~ from The Flower of the Family

Lucy's Struggle

"I wish I was good!" said she. "I wish I was a Christian! I wish I could help "being fretful and selfish. Oh! I do wish I could be a Christian! But. it's no use. The more I try to be good, the worse I am. I do hate so to sew and to work; and I do love so to read and to study! Mother says the children are growing older; but so am I growing older, and not learning any thing, hardly. But it is wicked to fret about it, I know. Oh! I do wish I was a Christian!"

[Later Lucy shared her struggles with her father, who responded with godly counsel and assurances.]

She had long been groping about in the dark, wrapped in a reserve painful to both her parents and herself; and now the ice was broken. She would gladly have opened her heart more fully, but this was needless. One glance had sufficed to show to her father that the struggle against sin and the pursuit after God had begun; and he felt that he could safely leave her in His hands who giveth the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. He made her kneel once more by his side, while, in a few solemn words, he gave himself and her to God, to be His, and only His, for ever, and then retired for the night. Lucy returned to her room, greatly cheered and comforted. ~ From The Flower of the Family. A book for girls.

[Oh that all young girls would take such matters of the heart to their fathers, and that all fathers would respond as Lucy's did.]