Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/834

826 On this occasion he addressed the parents in their own behalf and that of their children. The bright day, the magnificent view his eyes commanded from the place where he stood to address the handful of people, the truth, with whose importance he was impressed, made him eloquent. He spoke with power, and Clarice Briton, holding the hand of little Gabriel, listened as she had never listened before.

“Death unto sin,” this baptism signified, he said. She looked at the child’s bright face; she recalled the experience through which she had passed, by which she was able to comprehend these words. She had passed through death; she had risen to life; for Luke was dead, and was alive again, — therefore she lived also. Tears came into the girl's eyes, unexpected, abundant, as she listened to the missionary’s pleading with these parents, to give their little ones to their Heavenly Father, and themselves to lives of holiness.

He would set the mark of the cross on their foreheads, he said, to show that they were Christ’s servants;—and then he preached of Christ, seeking to soften the tough souls about him with the story of a divine childhood; and he verily talked to them as one should do who felt that in all his speaking their human hearts anticipated him. It was not within the compass of his voice to reach that savage note which in brutal ignorance condemns, where loving justice never could condemn. He had an apprehension of the vital truth that belief in the world’s Saviour was not belief in a name, but the reception of that which Jesus embodied. He came down to Diver's Bay, expecting to find human nature there, and the only pity was that he had not time to perform what he attempted. Let us, however, thank him for his honest endeavor; and he glad, that, for one, Clarice was there to hear him,—she heard him so gladly.

To take a vow for Gabriel, to give him to God, to confirm him in possession of the name she had bestowed, became the desire of Clarice. One day when she had some business to transact in the market, she dressed Gabriel in a new frock she had made for him, and took him with her to the Port, carrying him in her arms half the way. She did not find the minister, but she had tested the sincerity of her desire. When he came down again to the Bay, as he did the next Sunday, she was waiting to give him the first fruits of his labors there.

He arrived early in the morning, that he might forestall the fishermen and their families in whatever arrangements they might be making for the day. When Clarice first saw him, her heart for a moment failed her,—she wished he had not come, or that she had gone off to spend the day before she knew of his coming. But, in the very midst of her regrets, she caught up Gabriel and walked forth to meet the preacher.

The missionary recognized Clarice, and he had already heard the story of the child. He was the first to speak, and a few moments’ talk, which seemed to her endless, though it was about Gabriel, passed before she could tell him how she had sought him in his own home on account of the boy, and what her wish was concerning him.

A naturalist, walking along that beach and discovering some long-sought specimen, at a moment when he least looked and hoped for it, would have understood the feeling and the manner of the missionary just then. Surprise came before gladness, and then followed much investigation, whereby the minister would persuade himself, even as the naturalist under similar circumstances would do, of the genuineness of what was before him; —he must ascertain all the attending circumstances.

It was a simple story that his questioning drew forth. The missionary learned something in the interview, as well as Clarice. He learned what confidence there is in a noble spirit of resignation; that it need not be the submission of helplessness. He saw anew, what he had learned for