"And do you suppose that I dare start in the voyage to eternity in such a cockle-shell as my own merits, all leaky and worthless!" exclaimed Ned Franks. "No, no, neighbor; I know too well that if I did so, I must go to the bottom. As when the flood was coming upon the world, there was but one safe vessel, and that was the ark, so there is now but one means of salvation, which God himself has provided,—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Can we fancy that in those old days of the flood there were no boats and no sailors,—that none could row, and none could swim? It's likely that there were men who had vessels, and trusted in them, and were proud of them, too,—who believed that these vessels could ride through the fiercest storm that ever blew; and that may have been the very reason why, despite of warning, these men would not fly to the ark; and so, when the flood came, they perished. My only hope of heaven is in the merits and death of my Lord. I don't fear death, because I know that I've already taken refuge in the ark of salvation, which is faith in Christ, the Saviour of sinners."
"These things are too deep for me," said the carpenter. "I'm a simple, plain man, and don't puzzle my head with matters of doctrine. I never can make out what you thorough-going people consider yourselves to be. There are saints and sinners in the world, that's clear. Nancy Sands is a sinner, and you are a saint,—nay, don't stop me, I must have out my say. Now, I don't count myself much either of a saint or a sinner; I'm a plain, honest man, who don't like extremes, and I dare say that I shall do just as well as others in the end. But what puzzles me," continued the carpenter, "is that the saints will insist upon it that they are the sinners; they flare up, as you did now, at the very notion of being taken to heaven because they are good, and seem to think that they can't be safe unless they declare that they are sinful!" The invalid would have laughed aloud, had there not been a grave earnestness in the face of Franks, which checked any such unseemly mirth.
"And is not the prayer in the Litany, Have mercy upon us miserable sinners, put into every mouth?" observed Franks, who had a clear recollection of the very audible tone in which Ben had joined in that prayer when attending church-service.
"Yes, to be sure. I could say half the Litany by heart."
"What a wide difference there is," thought Ned Franks, "between saying it by heart, or from the heart! Do you think," he asked aloud, "that that prayer is suited for every one who repeats it?"
Ben Stone hummed a little before he replied. "Well, I should say, suited better for some than for others; but there's no harm in any one saying it."
"There would be harm in any one calling himself a sinner before God if he did not believe himself to be one," observed Franks. "But I've no doubt, neighbor, that if St. Paul and St. Peter had lived in these days, they'd have been able to cry from the bottom of the heart, 'Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.'"
Ben Stone gave a look which seemed to say that he neither understood nor cared to understand how that could be. Ned Franks's feelings were much like what Mr. Curtis had described as his own. It seemed a hopeless matter to try to make any real impression upon that mass of quiet, self-complacent, good-humored insensibility. Ned had to repeat to himself, "He's a dying man, and dying without looking to the Saviour," in order to overcome his own strong inclination to give up in despair all attempt to convince or to move.
"I suppose that you'll agree," said the school-master aloud, "that Job was a saint if there ever lived one in this world; God himself declared that there was none upon earth like him; and yet, what were the words of Job? I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
"I never can make out why Job should feel that," observed Stone; "there was nothing in what the Almighty had said to him to bring him to such a confession."