Gods Answers | Page 3

where that venerable soldier of the cross still
lingers, as if halfway betwixt the Church militant and the Church
triumphant But whether in the father's house or in the uncle's manse,
kind and truthful speech was the coin current, a good example the
domestic stock-in-trade, and an interchange of cheerful, loving service
the main business. It was a quiet school, whose very hum was peaceful;
and yet the schooling was thorough; things strong often grow as quietly
as things feeble. The oak rises as silently in the forest as the lily in the
garden. Strong characters, too, under any conditions of life, school
themselves much more than they are schooled. Active, inquisitive,
resolute, and possessing a fair share of the national perfervidum
ingenium, not without some tincture of those elements of the Scottish
character known as the "canny" and the "dour," our worker early
developed that robust vigour of mind and body which has so long stood
the wear and tear of severely trying work.
One passage of significance in the family history deserves notice,
especially as suggesting a peculiar feature in her early training and
supplying a link in the chain of providential events. In work among the
young her father was an enthusiast. With a heart bigger than her own

family circle, her mother took in two orphans to foster and rear. Thus in
the work of caring for the outcast and the forlorn Annie Macpherson
was "to the manner born." Inheriting her father's enthusiasm and her
mother's sympathetic nature, the quick-witted, warm-hearted girl would
not fail to note the equal footing enjoyed by the stranger children, and
would know the reason why: the much tact employed to keep the new
and difficult relations sweet would engage her attention; and the
exceeding tenderness with which the motherless little ones were treated,
would be a very practical Gospel to our young scholar in Christian
philanthropy. Were matters sometimes strained? did little jars arise and
a shadow now and then gather on the faces of the strangers because
their own mother was not? The wise foster-mother would set all right
again by some merry quip, some gleesome turn, some one of those
playful gleams of humour which furnish a key to the secret of
successful work among the young. To be a mother to those orphans, to
make life in its duties and joys, as far as possible, the same to them as if
they had not lost their own mother, ay, and to teach them to gather the
brightest roses from the thorniest bushes, was at once a good work in
itself, and a model for one who was destined to similar service, only on
an immensely wider scale and on a tenfold more difficult field. The
sisterly fostering of the orphans was a providential training for her
future life-work. To learn to love and to serve over and above the
claims of mere natural affection, could not fail to enlarge the heart and
awaken the sympathies of a quick, susceptible child. Little did her
mother know what she was doing when she took the orphans to her
bosom. She only thought to make a warm home and a bright future for
the hapless pair; but in effect she was preparing a warm home and a
bright future for thousands of the poorest children on God's earth.
But there was something better in store. Girlish days swept by much as
usual--the rapid growth of warm thought and feeling making each
revolving year a continuous springtide, an opening summer. At
nineteen, Annie Macpherson looked out on a world that always
promises more to youthful eyes than it ever fulfils. Eager hope was
drawing much on a future whose furthest horizon was Time. Suddenly
a shadow fell. A word spoken by a friend was the vehicle of a divine
message. A more distant and awful horizon arose to view: Time with
its hopes and joys, like a thin mist in early morning, vanished in the

light of eternity; and quickly from that young heart, pierced with a new
sorrow, went up the prayer, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"
How little the world understands that same old prayer. Yonder afar off
stands a man who, having trafficked in all iniquity, having matured in
wickedness, and perfected himself in the fine art of dodging truth and
conscience, is at length found out in the thicket of his own vices by a
bull's eye that glares on him like hell. Well it befits such an one, even
the world admits, to smite upon his breast and cry for mercy. But for a
girl in her teens, an innocent, merry-hearted, pure-minded young thing,
to raise a cry for mercy like a very publican or a prodigal, is
confounding to the world's sense of propriety and