She brought her breakfast to a hasty finish and went out to the office to inform the landlady that she would not be at dinner that day.
“Oh, all right,” said that person, studying her almost insolently. “Well, I was going to tell you that you can’t count meals out unless I have plenty of notice beforehand. Two days if possible. They have to be paid for whether they’re et or not. Understand?”
“Yes?” said Laurel lifting her eyebrows amusedly. “Well, all right. That seems fair enough. I’ll remember.”
The landlady pursed her lips as if offended and prepared another economic blast. “Well, I’m glad you understand that point. And now there’s another. You said you weren’t sure about taking your room for the winter, and I just wanted to let you know that I’ve had an application for it. It seems that’s true about the big munitions works going to be built here in this neighborhood, and that means housing conditions are going to be crowded. I had three men come in last night, and they wanted the three rooms. They just left a few minutes before you come in. That is, two of them did. The other man stayed and is here now. They wanted the three rooms together and liked yours best of all. They will take them for the winter, so if you wantta keep that room you took, you’ll have ta give me an answer at once or run the risk of losing it altogether. I couldn’t afford ta lose a rent fer the winter just fer one week’s rent.”
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Price. I understood that you rented me the room for a week and accepted a down payment with that idea in mind. Are you telling me that you would like me to leave tonight?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m only saying I can’t afford to let a chance go fer renting the room fer the winter in case you decide not to stay. But that wasn’t saying you hadta leave tanight. I just want a quick decision.”
“I can’t possibly give you a decision tomorrow,” said Laurel firmly. “I may have time to look around further on Monday afternoon, but I’m not sure. If you are in as much of a hurry as that, I had better get my things and go elsewhere tonight, and you can refund me the money I gave you.”
Mrs. Price gave a quick little gasp.
“Oh no. I ain’t in as much of a hurry as that. Of course you can stay till Tuesday or mebbe Wednesday if nobody else don’t come in a hurry and want your room right away.”
“All right, Mrs. Price. I wanted to try out this location and see whether it suits me in every respect before I take the room indefinitely, but since you have other renters waiting, I’ll see what I can do about a decision as much before the week is up as possible.”
Laurel spoke coolly and decidedly, and Mrs. Price began to hedge a little. She didn’t want to lose this good-looking girl. With a lot of young men in the place, such a girl would be an asset.
“Well, I’ll do me best for ye,” she called after the girl as she mounted the stairs to get ready to meet Phil Pilgrim. But the landlady looked after her with a bit of worry on her brow. Had she gone the least bit too far in endeavoring to make a profitable deal with this young woman?
But Laurel did not stop to talk further. She marched on to her room and was soon ready for the day, thankful that there was still bright sunshine.
She looked very pretty as she came down the stairs a few minutes later, dressed in a blue suit that just matched her eyes and a little hat that was most attractive. Mrs. Price looked after her worriedly and thought again that as good-looking a young woman as that ought to be a great attraction in a boardinghouse where there would likely be a lot of young men coming. Maybe she would try to make her a little better offer after all, when she came back. Then she heard the girl’s car driving out of the garage and turned with a sigh to answer that new Mr. Byrger’s questions about how far it was to the top of Crimson Mountain.
That was a notable day to both the young people who drove off together to get their hostess and take her to church.
In the first place, the church was different from any church Phil or Laurel had ever attended. They felt the atmosphere as they entered the door. It was not a large, handsome church. Just a little, old-fashioned place that had the air of a good many years ago. The carpet was worn, the seats were a bit narrow and hard, and the windows wore no stained glass. But everything was clean and attractive, and the sun was shining in across the heads of the people, touching them with a sort of glory look, and there seemed to be loving-kindness in every face. The two young people sat down and looked around them curiously. What was it that made this simple gathering so different from other worshiping places? It seemed as if God was here. As if they could almost see Him if they could only get the earth mist brushed away from their eyes.
And then the singing! They were not cultured voices, but they had the sweetness and heartiness of voices that were singing from the heart. They both joined in and began to feel a thrill of belonging to this little company of worshipers, worshiping in spirit and in truth.
The minister was young, almost like themselves, but he spoke with the deep conviction of one who believed with all his soul what he was saying, and it seemed that all the congregation had brought their Bibles. Someone stepped across the aisle and handed the two young strangers Bibles from a pile in the end of the seat, and they took them and turned over the pages. Laurel had no trouble in finding the places, but Phil Pilgrim looked furtively over his shoulder at Laurel’s Bible to see in which end of the book she had located the place. Phil Pilgrim was evidently not accustomed to looking up references in the Bible. But as he listened to the amazing truth that the young speaker was bringing out from the references they all read together, he began to be intensely interested. He had never heard anybody try to explain the Bible, not since he was a little boy at his mother’s knee, and that was so long ago and so very elementary. He wondered if his girl-mother had ever known these things were in the Bible, or had she just read it as a sort of duty? And was it possible that these things were maybe being explained in heaven to those who hadn’t fully understood while they lived on earth? But it was foolish to reason that way. Perhaps his mother had known more than she had been able to teach him because he was so young.
At the close of service, the kindly people gathered around and welcomed the young strangers, and Pilgrim told the young minister that he only wished he were going to be in Carrollton this winter. He certainly would like to accept the invitation so cordially given and come again, many times.
Driving home to Mrs. Gray’s, Pilgrim was very quiet, half listening as Mrs. Gray and Laurel talked, Laurel asking questions about people she used to know in town. Suddenly Mrs. Gray turned to Pilgrim. “Well, how did you like our little church, Phil?” she asked.
Pilgrim turned his steady eyes toward her. “It’s a wonderful place, Mrs. Gray. I wish I were able to stay here and go every Sunday to a place like that. I never knew there could be as much real help gotten out of anything in the Bible as that. I will not forget this morning’s sermon. It wasn’t like any sermon I ever heard. It was like a study. It left me with the same kind of thrill I used to get when some new fact of science was brought out in a class in college. Only that would have to do with physical things, but the sermon this morning was about spiritual things. And I don’t believe I ever heard spiritual things analyzed before. It’s interesting. I like it. I wish I could hear more.”
“Yes,” said Ellen Gray with a happy gleam in her quiet eyes, “it is good to study those things. To find out that there is a spiritual world as well as a natural one and that the spiritual one is the real one, the one that is to last forever, while the physical world will pass away. You see, that is the reason that I have left the old church, the one your mother and I used to attend when you were a little girl,” she said, turning to Laurel with a smile. “They got a minister over there about three years ago who laughs at the idea of anybody believing the whole of the Bible, and who won’t let them have an evening Bible class one night in the week because the man we wanted to teach it is ‘too radical,’ he says. But my soul was hungry for the truth. I got to thinking that the ti
me of my going from this earth was drawing nearer and nearer, and I didn’t rightly understand a great many things in God’s Word, so I heard about this place and I came over here a few times and found great refreshment. I’m glad you liked it. I thought you would. And now here we are. I must hurry in and look after the dinner I left cooking. You young people take your time coming in. It will be a half hour before dinner is on the table.”
Mrs. Gray opened the car door and slipped out to the sidewalk before Pilgrim could get there to help her and was unlocking her door and into the house like a flash.
“Isn’t she sweet?” said Laurel earnestly. “And wasn’t that a wonderful service? I haven’t heard anything that seemed to reach what I was really thinking in my heart before, about—well, you know—heaven and the hereafter.”
Pilgrim nodded. “Yes, that’s what I mean. I never heard anybody talk in that definite way before about being saved. I thought that was something you couldn’t know about, even if you did your best to live a right kind of a life, until after you were dead.
“Oh, I knew better than that,” said Laurel, who was listening earnestly. “I knew that there was a way to be saved and that you could find that way if you wanted to enough. One of the verses I learned when I was a little girl was, ‘And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.’ But I’m afraid I never sought with all my heart. I was too interested in the things of this world really to pay enough attention to it, until later years when sorrow began to come along my way and I didn’t know which way to turn. But even then I have been too much engaged in planning a tolerable life to take the place of the one I was losing, to give much thought to eternal life. But I did know there was a way, and I definitely knew that my mother and my father both knew it. I have always intended sometime to just take time off and give attention to it, but I haven’t ever done it yet.”
They got out of the car and went slowly up the walk talking, opening up a doorway into their innermost thoughts. Laurel had never met anyone else to whom she could talk in this way. It was a revelation to find one who understood and had had such thoughts himself. It forged another link in the chain of their acquaintance that was growing moment by moment into something that could never be easily broken.
In the house, they followed their hostess into the kitchen to see if there was something they could do toward helping with the dinner, but they found Mrs. Gray had it all in hand. She was just lifting out the roasted lamb, with the beautifully roasted potatoes surrounding it, and taking up the perfectly cooked lima beans from a double boiler.
“Yes,” she said briskly, “Phil, you may get the three plates of tomato salad from the refrigerator and carry in the roast and potatoes and then come back for the dish of beans. There’s the cover to the dish. You’ll find the table is all set.”
Then turning to the girl, she said, “You may go to the refrigerator and get the butter. It’s on a plate there, and the little pitcher of cream, also the pitcher of ice water. I got it ready before I went to church. You’ll find the bread plate in that little tin cabinet in the pantry. The bread is all cut. I knew you’d be hungry when you got home from church. Now, I’ll make the gravy and finish the coffee. I turned on the percolator the minute I came in.”
It was fun hurrying about under such able direction, getting that delicious-looking meal on the table, laughing and talking as they worked.
Phil Pilgrim didn’t need to be told to bring in the percolator and the gravy boat when they were ready, and Laurel had discovered the three pieces of pumpkin pie, the plate of delicate cheese cut in small inviting squares, the plates of pickles and olives and celery. In almost no time at all they were sitting down to the table.
And then there was an unexpected moment when Mrs. Gray bowed her head.
It had been some time since Laurel had been in a household where the custom of asking a blessing at the table was observed, but she fell into it naturally again, and it was sweet to hear the tender blessing.
“Lord, we thank Thee for this fellowship together, and we ask Thee to be a guest at our table and to make Thy presence felt among us. We thank Thee also for these gifts that Thou hast given us. May they strengthen us for our life and make our lives fit for Thy service. We ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.”
Then quite simply, as if this had not been an innovation, the hostess went on to talk of the day and the service they had attended that morning, and all in the same spirit, Phil Pilgrim presently asked a question. “Mrs. Gray, I’ve been wondering. Do you think a person can really know while they are living that they are saved? Your preacher spoke of people who were ‘saved’ as if it were something you could know beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
“Why surely,” said Mrs. Gray, smiling.
“You do?” said Pilgrim. “Well how do you know? What do you have to do to get that assurance?”
“Why just take the Lord at His word, accept what He says, and then go on trusting in that and let Him prove it to you.”
Pilgrim looked at her with a puzzled frown. “Do you mean to say God promises a thing like that? Where? How?”
“Well, there are a great many places in the Bible where He has promised salvation and assurance beyond a doubt. Perhaps the best known is John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ But there are many, many others. Take the book of John and begin to read it, looking for such promises. See how many you will come across.”
“But do you mean believing saves you? Just believing? And how can you believe if you do not know it is so?”
“Yes, believing is the condition of salvation. That does not mean just an intellectual acknowledgment that Jesus once lived on this earth and once died on the cross. It means that you believe and accept what He came to earth to do for you. You and all of us were under condemnation of death for our sin, and Jesus Christ came and took our sin upon Himself as if He had Himself committed it, and bore the penalty in our stead so that we might go free and in the eyes of God be no longer under condemnation. But though He has done all that for us, it does us no good unless we accept it, believe it, and take Him for our personal Savior. It all rests on that.”
“You mean that’s all we have to do?”
“Yes, that’s all.
“But I suppose you mean after that you have to live a perfect life, don’t you?”
“No,” said the lady gravely, “because you couldn’t, even if you tried with all your might. You still have that sinful nature as long as you live, and you could not of yourself live a perfect life. God did not leave us dependent on our own efforts for salvation—if He had, none of us could be saved. The living part we do because we love Him and want to please Him, and imperfect as it is, it pleases Him. But our best efforts never could save us. We have no plea to stand before the righteousness of a just God except that Jesus shed His blood to atone for our sin and put His own righteousness about us after we accepted His atonement.”
“I never heard it explained that way before,” said Laurel. “You make it very plain, Mrs. Gray. I’m so glad I know you. Will you mind if I come and ask you questions sometimes?”
“Oh, I’d be delighted,” said the little lady with sparkling eyes. “There is nothing I so enjoy as talking about the Lord and studying His Word with someone. Wouldn’t you like to join our Bible study class Tuesday evenings?”
“I certainly would,” said Laurel. “My mother loved to study her Bible, and I always wondered why, because when I tried to read it by myself it seemed dry and without point. I just couldn’t understand it reading by myself. Of course I know a lot of general doctrines. That is, I was taught them, but they never went deep into my understanding.
“But, I don’t understand,” said Phil Pilgrim. “Do you mean you just take statements in the Bible and go ahead and live by them as if they were proclamations, say from the government, or something like that?”
“I wou
ld put it rather that you take hold of God’s statements and believe them. If you have God’s Word that you are saved, then nothing can touch you. You must take hold of God’s promises. You must not question them. Believing is not something you do as a result of intellectual reasoning. It is accepting what you do not understand and putting it to its test afterward, as you might believe in a machine that would carry you somewhere, without understanding its mechanism. But once you trust yourself to it and let it carry you safely through, then your belief becomes knowledge. It is not knowledge of God that saves you, but belief that He has provided a way of salvation. It is taking Him and putting Him to trial in your life. As soon as you accept Christ as your personal Savior, the Holy Spirit enters into your heart to guide you. You are born again, and a new joy begins to come to you as you become acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ. When you know Him, you know you are saved. You no longer have any question about that.”
They talked on while they ate the delicious dinner, asking questions and getting amazing answers in simple language that they could understand.