The Prodigal Girl

by Grace Livingston Hill

“You think anybody might have written it?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Try it and see. A great many have tried to write something like it and failed. But yes, Jane, you can believe it in spite of any doubts you may have, if you will to do so. People easily believe much more foolish things than that. You can say, ‘I’m going to take this Book with a mind open to receive every word it says as absolute fact, and let it prove itself to my reasoning powers as I study, and begin to understand.’ You have no right to doubt a book until you know what it says. The Bible is able to prove its truth to you if you will give it a chance to reveal itself to your spirit. You can’t just understand the Bible with your mind alone, your spirit must enter into it, because it is written for your spirit to understand. If you were to try to get at the Bible through your body alone, if you were to take it and eat it and try to get it into your system in that way, you would not get anywhere with it. And why do you expect to understand it merely through your mind alone?”

  Jane giggled.

  “And now,” said Dr. Dunham, “I am going to tell you a little story I once heard a great teacher tell that will illustrate one way we know the Bible is true. We will suppose a man in England makes his will. He leaves his property in trust for a good many years until it shall accumulate interest enough to amount to a certain very large sum. At that time it is to be divided between all his descendants who are then living. A copy of this will is filed with the English government at the time of the man’s death, perhaps in some courthouse or government building in England. After a few years have passed, one of this man’s sons decides to move to Spain. He desires to give his children the benefit of his father’s will, so he gets a copy of it and takes it with him to Spain. There it is translated into Spanish and put on file, perhaps with the Spanish government. Another son moves to Germany, and he gets a copy of the will in German. Later another goes to Italy and the will is translated into Italian. Another to India, and perhaps another somewhere else. Each takes a copy of the will in the language of the country to which he is going, filing it for use of their descendants. Then one day a great fire destroys the building in which the original will is filed. The will is burned. At last the day comes when the property has reached the sum named in the will and the heirs make application to have it divided. But the original will is gone, and what can they do? They get together the wills that have been translated into the different languages and compare them. In this way they get an accurate copy of the original will, and by it the court divides the property. Now just such a thing happened with the Bible. We have not the original manuscripts on which the men wrote who were taught by God what to write. But as the years went by those original manuscripts were copied and recopied into many languages and scattered over the whole earth; scholars who have devoted their lives to the study have gathered these different copies and compared them. They find that they all agree! Here is a book”—he held up a little brown volume—“that tells about this investigation. It is written by one of the greatest scholars in the world, who has devoted forty-five years to looking into this matter. You will be interested to study this sometime. It was written to show that from the standpoint of a scholar we may know that we have the original word of God as it was given to holy men of old, moved by the Holy Spirit. That is what we call ‘inspiration.’ We shall talk of that later.

  “Now, will you open your Bibles to the first chapter and the first verse of the first book, called Genesis, and we will have our first geography lesson.”

  There was a little rustle of excitement as the new Bibles were opened.

  “Christopher, will you read the first verse?” Chris read, almost embarrassedly:

  “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

  The old minister interrupted him:

  “You will remember we are going to take up our study of this Book with the idea of accepting all its statements and giving it a chance to prove them true. We must therefore if we are to get anywhere accept this as a fact.”

  Jane began to be restless. Her lip curled a trifle.

  “What is it, Jane?” questioned the keen-eyed minister.

  “Our teacher at school says that isn’t so!” said Jane importantly. “She says God didn’t make the earth or anything. She says it just developed out of matter and that there isn’t any God, only just a force that makes things grow. She says that nobody believes that anymore, only ignorant people.”

  “Shut up, Jane, that’s not polite!” admonished Chris in the tone of a mentor.

  “Let her speak,” said the teacher. “We want to understand all these things and get them cleared away out of our minds. Now, Jane, your teacher is wrong! There are a great many famous scholars who believe in God and His Book with all their hearts. One of them is coming to visit me this winter. He is the author of this brown book I showed you. Perhaps I can introduce him to you. He is considered by everybody to be the greatest living authority on ancient languages. He has spent many years in trying to find out these things, and he probably knows more than your teacher in school ever heard of. He has personally read all the ancient manuscripts and has given his whole life to this study. He knows forty-eight ancient languages, and in over twenty he can talk and write as well as read. He has written two remarkable books about the Bible showing that it is true, which someday I hope you’ll read. And after you have read them you may like to send copies of them to your teacher to read.

  “But now suppose we get back to our study of the statement that God made the heavens and the earth out of nothing, for that is what the word create in the Hebrew means, ‘to make out of nothing.’”

  The children looked incredulous but waited.

  “Now, we do not know how many ages ago that was,” went on the wise, pleasant voice, “but it was thousands, perhaps millions of years—”

  “Why,” broke in Betty, before she realized she was speaking, “why, I thought all people who believed in the Bible thought the earth was made only about five or six thousand years ago, and that it was all made in six days. And that couldn’t possibly be, you know, for there are all those fossils and buried things that took simply ages to get that way.”

  The minister smiled leniently:

  “There is room for all that, Betty, between the first and second verses of Genesis. We have been talking about what is sometimes called the pre-Adamite creation. Jane, will you read the second verse?”

  Jane read:

  “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

  “Now,” said the minister, “in the Hebrew, which is the language in which this Old Testament was originally written, that word that has been translated ‘was’ means ‘became.’ It doesn’t mean that it was so in the first place but that it became so after it was created on account of some great disaster or cataclysm resulting from God’s wrath. There are some words that translated into other languages lose much of their strength, and this is one. The verse should read ‘And the earth became without form.’ There are passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah that have reference to this very thing having happened to ‘the world that then was’ as it is called. Jane, I’ve given you the Isaiah reference to read, and Christopher may take the one in Jeremiah. I’ll give Doris and John each something to look up also. It is very interesting to study about the destruction of this first creation because of sin and how God had to make the world over again. Now, Jane will you read?”

  The morning flew away before any of them realized it, and Betty did not want to go back to bed again when the class was over. She even sent Jane downstairs that afternoon for one of the new Bibles and got her to make a copy of all the references that she might look them up again.

  “It’s going to be kind of fun, I believe,” vouchsafed Jane when she brought the Bible.

  “I never heard anything like it,” said Betty. “I don’t believe they know these things in school. I wonder if he knows what he’s talking about.
”

  “Well, he sure had a good line and is interesting,” said Chris, who was standing in the doorway. “But maybe it’s all just baloney!”

  That was the beginning of a new order of things.

  The children took hold of their studies with avidity, and worked and played happily. They seemed to forget the life from which they had been so summarily withdrawn.

  Betty grew stronger every day now and came regularly to the classes. Her father had been fearful that she would rebel against studying with the minister, but she went into the work without any question.

  Chester and Eleanor looked on with delight. What a miracle had been wrought! Even Doris and John were eager and interested and went about memorizing Bible verses and vying with one another as to who could learn the day’s portion first. All of them seemed simply fascinated by the new study. Even Chester and Eleanor began to drop into the classes.

  “I had no idea what the Bible was like,” said Chester humbly one day. “I have brought my children up in ignorance. They are simply little heathen. I am not much better! And I thought I knew the

  Bible well!”

  “Well,” Chester heard Chris say to Betty one day, “I don’t know whether the old man has got it right or not, but it’s darned interesting anyway. That about the pyramid being all told about in the Bible was great! Gee, I’d like to go over to Egypt and see that thing and crawl all through those passages. He says he’s got a model of it; he’s going to bring it over and show us.”

  The clear, cold weather had settled down upon them now, and the children spent many happy hours upon the ice or sledding down the old hill—coming in with faces glowing, healthy appetites, and minds alert for study. Even Betty took her part now again in the sports and seemed to be getting fully back to normal once more. Eleanor and Chester watched her with growing delight and began to hope her fearful experience was not to be so disastrous after all. Yet nothing had been said between them about her running away. Chester and Eleanor were both afraid to disturb the happy calm that seemed to have settled down upon the old farm and decided to let well enough alone and just ignore the circumstance for the present. Betty was noticeably maturing day by day.

  One day Mrs. Dunham fell ill, however, and the lessons had to be interrupted. She was so ill that after a few days they sent for her son, and David came swiftly in answer to their call.

  When she grew better Dr. Dunham came down with a heavy cold brought on by weariness and loss of sleep during his wife’s illness, and David lingered on a few days longer.

  It was at his father’s request that he came up to the farm to conduct the classes for a time or two.

  “Davy has one or two new discoveries in archaeology I want the children to hear about,” explained the old minister when Chester came up one morning to see how he was getting on. “I want David to tell them, too, about the prophecies and the way they are being fulfilled over there in Europe today by the lining up of the nations; that shows the Coming of the Lord cannot be far away. He has a new book on the chronology of the Bible that I want him to show them. It makes things very clear. It’s a kind of key to some of the sealed passages in Daniel. We must have it for reference. You know the Bible says that in the time of the end they shall be unsealed, and the wise shall understand these things, but none of the wicked shall understand.”

  “I never noticed that passage before,” said Chester humbly. “I’m learning a lot this winter, including what a miserable father I have been.”

  “But Thornton, it’s wonderful how your children are taking hold of this study,” went on the minister. “It’s given me an idea. I wish I was young and had money. I’d start such a school with the Bible as the basis of all studies. I understand there are several now, here and there, with much the same idea behind them.”

  “Well, why not come down to Briardale and start it there,” said Chester. “I would dare to take my kiddies back home if I had such a school to send them to. We could have a winter school in Briardale and a summer one up at the farm. I believe I could get some other men to join with me and finance the thing, if only I could show them the result of it on my children. What do you say? Will you do it?”

  “But there’s my church,” smiled the minister.

  “Let some young man just starting take the church for the winter months,” said Chester, “and you and David come and help me start a school in Briardale. You need to get busy out in the world. This is no time to hide away a wise man of God in the wilderness like this. Look at my children! Think what was happening to them! And there are millions of others in their condition.”

  “Not every father is awake to the condition of things,” said Dunham.

  “Well, I’ll admit God sent me an eye opener,” said Chester, “but there must be a few others who are worried about the state of things. I’ll see what I can stir up.”

  David came up to the farm for a few days and began to teach more wonders to the eager students. He was “David” to them all now.

  He took them out and taught them to use their skis, and they were wild with delight. They skated and sledded and had wonderful times together after the lessons were over, and then they came in and helped Eleanor cook and wash dishes.

  One day Jane expressed their feeling:

  “I’ll say I’m glad Daddy kidnapped us all and brought us up here, aren’t you, Betts?”

  And Betty with a smiling face admitted she was.

  Betty had received David shyly, almost silently at first, but after they had played together out-of-doors for a few days she began to talk with him a little more naturally. He wondered if she remembered any of the things she had said to him in her delirium. But one day when they had been sledding together and he was helping her up the hill again, she suddenly turned to him and said:

  “Did you mean all those things you told me while I was sick, or did you just tell me that to quiet me?”

  “I certainly meant every word,” he said with a glad ring to his voice. “I have been wondering if you remembered.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t forget that!” said Betty earnestly. “It had been so awful having God looking at me all the time. I could see just what He thought of me. But isn’t He going to bring it all up sometime and judge me for it?”

  “No. He says in His word that He’ll forgive your transgressions and remember them no more.”

  “But it will always be there,” said Betty sadly. “There’ll always be those things that I have done! I’ll always be unclean!”

  “What God has washed cannot be unclean. ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us,’” quoted David.

  She was silent for a long time, and then she said timidly, as though she were not sure she ought to say it:

  “But you will always think of me that way—as—unclean!”

  “I will always think of you as one who is saved!” he said reverently, and his voice had a glad ring in it.

  “Oh, will you!” she exclaimed with a light coming into her eyes. “I’m so glad! But oh! I wish I’d never known Dudley Weston!” She pressed her fingers over her eyes and gave a little shiver of horror at the remembrance.

  When David Dunham went back to his work, he wrote to Betty every few days, and life began to take on a new look. She was no longer the haughty princess in exile. She walked the earth as if it were paved with flowers, and all day long she was singing.

  Plans for the new Bible school went forward rapidly. Chester took a trip home and found three or four more men whose children were disappointing them. They were dubious, it is true, as to whether anything about the Bible could ever touch their young outlaws, but they were willing to be convinced, and Chester brought three of them up to the farm when he came back, along with Hannah who said she was homesick for her family. When the three fathers had listened in on the Bible studies for several hours they marveled and went away thoughtfully to tell others. And so the scheme for a Bible school grew.

  The spring came on, and t
he snow melted at last. Arbutus and mountain laurel appeared, and the earth took on a loveliness that even surpassed the grandeur of the winter whiteness.

  Chester went back home for part of each week now as the business claimed more of his time. But the family had elected to stay at the farm till summer was over. So the Bible lessons went steadily on. As the Book opened its treasures to them, the children changed and grew thoughtful and lovely of attitude. Eleanor was expressing this to their minister one day, and he smiled and said:

  “The Lord has promised that His Word shall not return unto Him void but shall accomplish that for which He sent it. Your children are growing wise in the deepest lore of the ages. I think they are going to be among the wise, Mrs. Thornton.”

  As the summer drew to a close the plans for the new school began to mature. Money had been forthcoming. A building had been secured. The Dunhams promised to undertake the school and had found several other fine, wise spirits for teachers. Word had gone forth that the school would be open for students in the fall.

  The exile was over.

  The Thorntons were going back to Briardale again, but they were all reluctant to leave the farm and talked eagerly of their return next summer.

  David had come up to help his father pack and spent much time at the farm. He and Betty were standing one day on the brow of a hill. The frost had already begun to fling scarlet banners of loveliness over the world in preparation for another winter. Betty’s face was tender as she looked across the misty purple of the mountains.

  “It’s going to be strange going back,” she mused. “I almost dread it. There won’t be any of my old friends who will be in sympathy with me. I shall be practically alone. There are some I wish I never need see again. I’m glad the Westons have moved to New York. But Gyp and Fran will not understand. I used to be proud of being hard boiled, and they will think I am crazy. I shall be separated from everybody.”

  “That’s the history of every child of God,” said David quickly.” ‘Come out from among them, and be ye separate.’ The church is a body of called-out ones. He has called us to be a royal generation, kings and priests unto Him. Isn’t that good enough, Betty?” He looked at her earnestly, reaching out and gathering her hand into his. “You are very precious to me, Betty. I have loved you ever since I found you like a little lost lamb in the snow. Do you think you could ever love me? Do you think after the school is on its feet and things straighten out that you and I could go together through life? Could you love me, Betty?”