Brentwood by Grace Livingston Hill

Author:Grace Livingston Hill [Hill, Grace Livingston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63058-198-5
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2014-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

If Marjorie, sitting in the pretty little old stone church of a hundred years ago, that was now called “the chapel,” and listening to the young preacher making salvation plainer than she had ever heard it before, could have known what was going on back at the little house on Aster Street, she would not have sat so comfortably absorbed in the sermon. But fortunately she did not know, and so it seemed to her that she was happier than she had ever been in church before. Always on Sunday she had gone to church with a vague longing for something, she hardly knew what, something that would satisfy the wistfulness of her soul. And it had never been there. Sometimes her imagination would soar heavenward, and she would try to feel as she thought a good saintly soul should feel, but always such forced emotions left her as she went from the church, and the days passed on with that uneasy little restlessness of soul back in her being somewhere that would not be entirely satisfied even when things were going just as she had planned.

But here in this sweet chapel with its lovely arched ceiling of polished wood and its fine windows of old-fashioned design, there seemed a different atmosphere from the churches she had known all her life. It was as if a strong sea breeze were blowing through the little audience, waking up and freshening every mind to keener intelligence. As if a holy kind of glory pervaded the place. She heard one woman explaining to another, “Why, the Holy Spirit is here!” She wondered if that were what she was feeling. It seemed a place where God dwelt intimately, companioning with those who came to Him here in a way He did not reach the people who attended most church edifices. Maybe it was only a fanciful idea of hers. Her adoptive mother used to tell her that she was strange sometimes, had quaint, old-fashioned ideas. She often used to wonder if Mrs. Wetherill, much as she loved her, fully understood her when she tried to explain the strivings of her unsatisfied soul.

Then, too, the singing here seemed to have a different sound from that in ordinary churches. The people sang the words as if they meant them, and the music rose like incense from an altar and seemed to mingle with the heavenly choirs above. Of course, that must be just fancy, too, for the people around her were just ordinary people, some of them looked quite uncultured. It couldn’t be the quality of their voices, or their training either. It seemed to her that they were singing because they loved to sing and because they felt what they were singing. “Making a joyful noise unto the Lord.” Wasn’t that phrase somewhere in the Bible? Or was it in the ritual of the church? She wasn’t very familiar with Scripture. She didn’t know. Bible study had not been a part of her early training.

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