THE RED BOOK. I AM One of several happy sisters, living in the house in which we were born, and partaking of every comfort which children can enjoy under a tender parent's roof. I have two sisters older than myself, and as many younger; and, in order to give my reader an idea of our ages, I must add, that we are all in our teens, though our eldest sister will soon arrive at the dignity of being twenty years of age. We live in the country, but within a pleasant walk of one of the prettiest towns in England; and if we have the privilege of attending an excellent preacher in the town, we have also the delight of seeing some of the most beautiful works of God from the windows of our house. There are two rooms, opening into each other, at the top of the house, which our kind parents have given up entirely to us. In these we have each a bed, a chair, and a chest of drawers; and, in cold weather, we are allowed a fire in one of these rooms. We have each of us, also, a table, with a small looking-glass upon it; and we are required to keep every thing in the exactest order. My place in these rooms is, I consider, far the most pleasant, though my sisters do not agree with me, and that you will say is quite as well; for if all human beings had the same tastes, there would be more quarrels in the world than there are now, which would by no means be desirable, for there is no family on earth which does not occasionally suffer from the ill temper of its members; but this will not be so in heaven, for there we shall all be one in Christ, and be of one mind and one spirit. But I was saying that I like my own place better than that of my sisters, and for this reason-I have a window entirely to myself; it is a casement window indeed, projecting from the roof, but it looks down over all the trees in the garden into a valley, through which winds a little river, not a navigable one indeed, but on that account the more delightfully solitary and retired from the haunts of men, and in the meadows are sheep and cattle feeding. In the remote horizon is a range of blue hills, and between the hills and the river are many groves of trees and other beautiful objects, forming a thousand varied combinations, so that the eye is never tired of these scenes. Our parents have taken great pains, from our very earliest infancy, to lead us to associate spiritual and holy ideas with the beautiful and varied works of God; and, in some instances, they have succeeded to their hearts' content; for my sisters are not only truly pious, but have much of that turn of mind which renders piety pleasing in the eyes of some who would be disgusted with it if it were to appear in a coarser form. In short, 1 believe that never were parents blessed with four more lovely daughters than my parents are in my sisters. I alone, since we entered our teens, have ever given my parents any serious uneasiness. I shall proceed to explain the cause of the uneasiness I gave them, in as succinct a manner as possible. When I was fourteen years of age, I was invited to spend a few months with a relative at Bath. This lady, although she was very kind to me in other matters, seemed to have forgotten the most important duty she could perform for me, namely, to lead me from the pomps and vanities of this wicked world; and, in consequence, she suffered me to be initiated into all sorts of vanities while I remained with her. I then, for the first time, heard beauty and fashion talked of as very important things, and actually took it into my head that I was very handsome; and when I came home I was in consequence very unhappy, and could not enter into any of the innocent pleasures of my sisters. One of the first things I remember which I did on my return, was to remove my little dressing-table from its old place opposite my bed to a situation under the window, telling my sisters that it was impossible to see clearly in the looking-glass which stood upon the table, while the light came upon it in an oblique direction. My sisters laughed at me in a good-humoured way; and expressed a fear that the glare of the freestone, of which the Bath houses are built, had injured my eyesight. The dissatisfaction which I exhibited at home for some time after my return, was at first attributed by my kind friends to the pain I had felt in parting with my relative; but when this uneasiness continued after the lapse of several weeks, and I refused to enter into any of the business or the pleasures of my sisters, my mamma became angry with me. At first she reasoned with me, and pointed out the ingratitude towards God which I displayed in thus being dissatisfied in a situation where I was surrounded by every blessing; and then. when she found that these milder measures would not do, she reproved me more sharply, and thus led me to endeavour to seem more satisfied, and to become more industrious, though in reality I was not changed as to my feelings. I still sighed for the worldly pleasures 1 had lost, and it was my chief delight at that time to run up to my room, and to contemplate myself in my lookingglass whenever I could find an opportunity. When I was fifteen I was allowed to purchase my own clothes, a privilege which had been allowed to my two eldest sisters at the same age; and then I had a new subject of thought, and was always full of contrivances how to dress better than my sisters with the same sum of money, and how to fabricate the most becoming caps and bonnets: thus I spent every moment I could get to myself in studying and consulting my glass; and though my parents more than once told me that my glass was a false friend, and even gave me bad advice in the very thing in which it might be supposed to be most sincere, for it taught me to disfigure rather than to adorn myself, yet I was not to be persuaded. I had been at Bath, and I thought I knew better than anybody else what was genteel and fashionable, and I would not believe either of my parents when they told me that I had acquired a false taste, and was in the way to make myself very ridiculous. Thus, however, I went on, endeavouring (though in vain) to make myself happy in my own way, till the month of January, 1828, when my father, one day while we were sitting after dinner, received a small packet from London; he opened it immediately; it contained a number of little books bound in red, and made to close like pocketbooks. My father smiled as he opened the packet, and placing the books in a row before him on the table, he guarded them in a playful way with his hands, saying, “No one touches any of these books before I have made my bargain." "Your bargain, papa!" said my youngest sister, "money do you mean? I am ready to pay all you ask; you will not want more than half a crown, I dare say, for one book, papa: pray let me have one of those beautiful books." 66 Money will not satisfy me," said our papa; "I must have a promise from each of you, before I give you these books, that you will keep them on your toilet, and repeat or read the portions for the day every time you look in your glasses." A smile went round on hearing this proposal; and I fancied there was a direction of every eye towards me, by which I was a little embarrassed; however, I willingly added my voice to those of my sisters, assuring our father that each of us would gladly accept a little Red Book on the proposed terms. "Think again," added our father, solemnly, “are you not making rather a blind bargain? you have not seen the inside of these books. I have indeed hinted that they contain a portion of something appropriated for each day, and I will now tell you that there are as many portions as there are days in the present year; but how do you know what sort of sentiments may be contained in these portions?" "We are not so blind as you would make it appear, dear papa,” replied my eldest sister; "we know whom we are dealing with, and we again accept your terms." "Well then," he said, "remember we are upon honour; take each your book, and may they be blessed to you :" so saying, he presented each of us with a book, and rising, went out of the room. We were impatient, you may be sure, to ascertain the nature of our little Red Books, and we found the following words in the titlepage:-"Daily Food for Christians, being a promise and another scriptural portion for every day in the year, together with a verse of a hymn." We were all pleased with our papa's present, but perhaps my pleasure rather consisted in the novelty and beauty of my little possession, than in its intrinsic merit; indeed, I had no idea at that time of the treasures and consolations contained in this little volume. From that time our little Red Books formed a part of our toilet apparatus; they were laid on the right side of our looking-glass, while our dressing-boxes occupied the other, all being neatly arranged on a linen cloth trimmed with white fringe, a quantity of which had been prepared by our great-grandmother, long before any of us had been even thought of. There was a vast bustle about our daily portions during the first few days, and we repeated them to each other as we were dressing and undressing; and I prided myself in being able to repeat them all, from the beginning of the year till about the middle of February, at which time my relative sent me a small parcel of ribands and artificial flowers from Bath, and then I began to relax in my attentions to my little Red Book; and as I had hitherto been the person who had made the most bustle about our daily portions, they were much less talked of, and seldomer repeated aloud in our rooms; though I could not help observing, that when my sisters were dressing they were almost invariably occupied by them, for they seldom talked on those occasions, and I could see their lips moving as if they were learning by heart. In the meantime I had never felt the power of any of the texts or verses which I had learned; they had never touched my heart, although I possessed taste enough to discern the beauty of some of them; but a discernment of the beauty of Scripture is quite a distinct thing from a sense and feeling of its power. The carnal mind is at enmity with God, it cannot discern the things of God; and though I had been taught the doctrines of religion in their utmost purity from infancy, I was as blind to their real import as those who had never known any thing respecting them in consequence, every verse or portion of Scripture which spoke of the paternal love of our heavenly Father for his chosen and redeemed ones, was to me as inexplicable as the darkest riddle; and I remember particularly starting at the portion of Scripture for the 15th of January, viz.-"There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom., viii., 1, with the following verse from a hymn: "Who shall the Lord's elect condemn? I even went so far as to smile at the verse of the hymn (for I did not dare to laugh at the passage of Scripture), and to ask my eldest sister what sense there could be in mercy rolling over people's sins. I remember well my sister's answer: "As to those which are in Christ, Louisa," she said, "they are those whom the Almighty has adopted for his own children, and we have this passage respecting them in Scripture: 'Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? |