Free Ariel Custer by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

success upon her effort and show how true He was? But how would she know what to say? How would she be sure she would not do harm?
    She glanced back again one more column on the previous page: “I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. I am the Lord—”
    Ariel was not at all sure that she understood whether this might not mean something deep and strange that she did not understand; something pertaining to the Jews and Gentiles perhaps, but surely, surely the Lord was bringing a meaning to her soul. Surely it seemed as if He was asking her to witness for Him to those who were blind to Him and did not know Him and that He was promising to go with her and hold her hand.
    Very reverently Ariel closed the book and knelt down, her head upon its cover: “Dear Lord,” she prayed, “I don’t know whether I have understood aright or not, but if You want me for Your witness, I’ll be glad to do it. I know what You’ve done for me, and I can tell it. But I’m glad You’re going to hold my hand, because I might make so many mistakes. Don’t let me try to say anything of my own, just Your words that You put into my heart to say, and if I am presuming in thinking You mean this, please stop me and don’t let me do any harm in the great, wonderful kingdom of God.”
    Ariel slept sweetly on her little hard bed, but Jud was out on the hillside walking the woods alone and thrashing his bitter thoughts out with himself. He had no God to commune with, only his own heart thoughts, and sometimes they failed him in time of need, and a great fury rose within him so that he could scarcely contain himself. At such times the woods had for years been his refuge, and tramping for hours beneath a curtain of dark, he would somehow find his self-control again.
    But tonight he seemed to be stirred deeper than usual. The very fountains of his being had been penetrated by his mother’s prodding tongue. He felt as if something inside him were bleeding to death, something sweet and good that had just been born, and he did not quite know what to do with himself.
    Once he flung himself down on a great rock above a stream and stared up at the sky. The stars seemed so far away. He thought of God and of what Ariel had said. How could it be possible that God cared? Why had God made him anyway? What was the use of life? Why was his mother the way she was? Why couldn’t things all be sweet and good? Why should one have to live if life was to be a continual turmoil, with all things that seemed sweet and good and right trampled underfoot?
    Was there anything in what Ariel had said—for he had come to call her Ariel in his thoughts now—about putting God to the test? Taking that promise about doing His will? He would ask her more about it when he saw her again. He would like to read the promise himself. He wished he had a Bible, but if he had he wouldn’t know how to find it. Of course there was his mother’s Bible, but it was beyond thought that he could go to that. She had never brought him up to love her Bible. It was a book of severity to her. The fear of the Lord, she held up to him, never the love of the Lord, never the forgiveness of sins, nor the atoning blood. Christ was a Savior, but of what she never said. Jud had gathered the hazy belief of the masses from his youthful compulsion at Sunday school, but the private application of such truths as he had absorbed had never appealed to him, so as he grew older he rejected all of it and pronounced himself an unbeliever. His subsequent studies both at school and in evening classes in the university had tended to strengthen this decision. He had grown to feel that the Bible was for women who didn’t know any better. That Miss Emily drew sweet comfort therefrom