The tide of action, in these later years flowing more swiftly in the hearts of women—whence has resulted so much that is noble, so much that is paltry, according to the nature of the heart in which it swells—had been rising in that of Hester also. She must not waste her life! She must do something! What should it be? Her deep sense of the misery around her had of course suggested that it must be something in the way of help. But what form was the help to take? “I have no money!” she said to herself—for this the last and feeblest of means for the doing of good is always the first to suggest itself to one who has not perceived the mind of God in the matter.

To me it seems that the first thing in regard to money is to prevent it from doing harm. The man who sets out to do good with his fortune is like one who would drive a team of tigers through the streets of a city, or hunt the fox with cheetahs. I would think of money as Christ thought of it, for no other way is true, however it may recommend itself to good men. Neither Christ nor his apostles did anything by means of money. Nay, he who would join them in their labours had to abandon his fortune.

That evening the thought of the miserable, ruinous old man kept haunting Hester, making her very sad. Her thoughts wandered abroad over the universe of misery. For was not the whole world full of men and women who groaned, not merely under poverty and cruelty, weakness and sickness, but under dullness and stupidity? And now, on this night for the first time, the idea came to Hester whether she might in some way make use of the one gift she was aware she possessed for the service she desired. Her passion for music had resulted in her training in both organ and piano. She was also gifted with a fine contralto voice which, she hoped, could comfort and uplift humanity.

But sheer pity for her kind was not the only impulse moving Hester in this direction. Hers was an honest and active mind. She could not have gone to church regularly as she did without gaining some glimpses of the mightiest truth of our being, that we belong to God in actual fact of spiritual property and profoundest relationship. She had much to learn in this direction yet. This night came back to her the memory of a sermon she had heard on the text, “Glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” It was a dull enough sermon, yet not so dull that it hindered her from gleaning its truth. When she had gone out of the dark church into the sunshine on that day and heard the birds singing, a sense awoke in her such as she had never had before.

She saw that the voice lying like an unborn angel in her own throat belonged not to herself but to God, and must be used in some way for the working of his will in the world he had made. She had no real notion yet of what was meant by the glory of God. She had a lingering idea—a hideously frightful one—that God thought so much of himself that he required homage from his creations. Hence, she first thought of devoting her voice to some church choir. With her incomplete notion of God and of her relation to him, how could she yet have escaped the poor pagan fancy—good for a pagan, but beggarly for a Christian—that church and its goings-on are synonymous with serving God? She had not begun to ask how these were to do God any good, or how they were to do anything for God.