I have in my hands a small book entitled “A Day’s Time-Table”. It is a sweet and candid story of a young lady’s effort to live every moment according to God’s will. The date written in this book is 1895. To my knowledge it was never reprinted, so few people have read it for a couple of generations. I will post it chapter by chapter over the next few days. Enjoy!
A Day’s Time-Table
or
Lois Emerson’s “Gospel of Guidance”
by
E. S. Elliott
Chapter 1
“Fenced off from fields of time-
Its span a holy rood-
Unsullied see descend for thee
A day prepared by God.”
“If only one could have a time-table made out in heaven, and let down every day for that day’s direction!” mused Lois Emerson, as, Bible in hand, and with somewhat weary retrospection, she retraced, before retiring for the night, the history of the last twenty-four hours.
The commonplace history of a day set in an ordinary week of an uneventful year belonging to a life early turning gray-so, from that evening’s point of view, might have been described the now closed portion of the career which seemed to lie unfolded before the eldest daughter of the family, as with grave inquest of self-examination she paused at the words, “That your days may be as the days of heaven upon the earth.”
“But how-how in a life so utterly matter-of-fact, so unmarked by incident, as mine?” was the corollary of meditation, as her thoughts started on an excursion into a past less keenly sorrowful than draped in the dull livery of a life-story lived out on a scant allowance of sympathy. “All the plans for missionary work” – and Lois Emerson’s castles in the air had early taken the form of pioneer tents and of schools and churches in the far East- “brought to the ground by this weakness of health! And this, while I cannot claim the sympathy and privileges of acknowledged invalidism, just enough to take the edge off all enjoyment, and to make it right for others to say to me, ‘If people will go beyond their strength, it is their own fault if they are laid up.’ Looking on at other people’s work and amusements is continually set before one as a perfectly satisfying vocation. What is called ‘taking an interest’ is supposed to furnish abundant occupation for every energy. When Fanny married I could hear excellent women murmuring out to mother on the sofa, ‘Such a nice interest for your eldest daughter, dear Mrs. Emerson!’ I wonder what they really meant. I was very glad to see Fanny so happy. I dutifully sent the expected frock to the baby. But ‘taking an interest,’ no matter how diligently one may work at it, leaves an uninvested ‘conservation of energy’ – mental, if not physical – which one longs to put our to advantage. ‘Home duties’ in the aggregate sound exemplary. As a matter of fact, one knows what mother would say to the smallest domestic interference, even if it were needful. I can read and write when my head is clear enough” – and Lois’s eyes brightened as hopes for usefulness in the latter department came before her – “and can do some account-keeping, because stronger people are wanted for something better and more interesting. But ‘days of heaven upon earth’ – and never would I lower that standard – what do I know about them? A little bit of hope and life from heaven let into a great deal of earth: it seems to me that I go but little further.
“And yet ‘your life is hid with Christ in God’ ought to glorify the homeliest path, to satisfy the hungriest soul. But then, when one has had to give up all thought of a career, when individuality seems monotonized out of a daily history in a London house in which every one would go on just as well without me, when others appear to be living out the patterns on the canvas, and I only the dull grounding – how is ‘heaven upon earth’ to be realized? Only, I feel it, by a glad following in the pathway ordered in tenderest love. Only by real, conscious, unbroken communion with Him who redeemed me for His own. I know it – I feel it – my whole heart and reason assent to it. But then, in a life like mine – without salient interests, a life in which nothing particular happens, a life in which, because I am not strong, I can’t do the helpful work which I would joy to do, and in which, also, because I am not strong, people say that I am free to do anything I please – there seems such an absence of marked vocation that one longs for more definite guidance.
“I come back to it – if only I had a time-table let down, day by day, from the unseen Lord – from the hand which – I accept the doctrine to its fullest extent – ‘orders all the affairs of men’ – how different life would seem! I can understand how this longing for visible direction induces many an one to take refuge in the awful mistake of a convent life. But I would, nevertheless, love to see my ‘rule’ as precisely worked out at that of a Carmelite – to have from moment to moment clear, definite intimations of the exact way in which I may walk and please God; for certainly I am not realizing a life of ‘heaven upon earth’ as yet.”
With which thoughts Lois closed her book; and the course of meditation which, as often before, had landed her in an “if only” of unaccomplished desire, left her that night in a vague region of combined self-condemnation and weary perplexity only lost sight of in troubled sleep.
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