“As she returned with hurried steps towards her home, shuddering at the recollection of the sights of horror which she had seen in the course of her walk, with terror she observed her eldest son playing upon the very threshold of the infected house, and trying to imitate with a piece of chalk the dreadful signs upon the door!”
“The little idiot!”—“He must have been without his senses!”—“What did the poor mother do?” were the exclamations which burst from Thorn’s listeners.
“She could not speak, in the transport of her anger and grief: she seized him by the arm, and dragged him into her own house, with feelings which only a mother can understand. She found her four other children assembled in her little parlour, amusing themselves by—would you believe it?—playing at catching the plague!”
“Oh no, no!” cried the children at once. “You told us that we should judge whether the story were true, and we are sure that this cannot be true!”
“And why not?” inquired the teacher.
“Because,” answered Bat, replying for the rest, “the plague was too horrible a thing to make a joke of! Just at a time when their mother was so anxious, when thousands were suffering so much around them—no, no! that would have been too bad; they could never have made game of the plague!”
“And yet what were my pupils doing ten minutes ago but making game of a far worse disease than the plague—the fatal disease of sin? Its spots are blacker, the pain it gives more terrible: often has it caused the death of the body, and, except where repented of and forsaken, the death, the endless death of the soul! Oh, my children! it may be your lot, as it was that mother’s, to be obliged to go out and meet the danger, for the Almighty may have seen good to place you in situations of great temptation; but if so, take every means of guarding your own hearts, by faith, watchfulness, and prayer. But oh, never wilfully throw yourselves into temptation—do not play upon the threshold of the infected house—do not trifle with the danger which it is possible to avoid: and when inclined to think lightly or speak lightly of that which brought ruin and death into the world, remember that fools make a mock at sin, but that to free us from its terrible disease, and the fatal consequences which it brings, cost the Eternal Son of the Most High tears, blood, and even life itself!”
Fools make a mock at sin; but oh,
God’s wiser children do not so:
They know too well the strife with sin,