"I believe that it was not so much what God had said, as what he had found God to be, that so humbled Job as to make him confess himself to be a miserable sinner. The truth is, neighbor, we think so little of our own sinfulness, because we think so little of God's holiness. The clear light of his purity does not stream into our souls, and therefore we don't mark the spots and the stains in those souls. We think sins small and trifling which in the Lord's eyes are hateful and deadly. Eve plucks a forbidden fruit, Moses loses his temper, a man of God lets himself be drawn into what we might deem a small excusable act of disobedience: it is clear enough from the punishments which followed, that a holy God did not regard these things as trifles, though man in his blindness might do so."
"Ah! all these examples are from the Old Testament," said Ben Stone; "as for me, I hold by the New. There's none of that terrible strictness now."
"The God of the New Testament is the God of the Old," observed Franks; "the same just and holy Being who hath declared, The soul that sinneth, it shall die."
"You talk like a Jew," said Stone; "yet you know as well, and better than I do, that we've the gospel to look to now, and that's all mercy and love."
"The New Testament rests on the Old; it has grown out of it; it forms with it a complete whole. We cannot really accept the one without the other," replied Franks, with an animation of manner which strongly contrasted with the carpenter's stolid composure.
Ben Stone shook his tasselled cap, and half smiling observed, "The New is enough for me."
Ned Franks glanced around for something that might serve to illustrate the important truth which his companion could not, or would not, understand. He took up a cut flower which had been placed in a glass of water on the table.
"The Old Testament is the bud of the New; or rather as the green sheath enclosed the bud, so in the Old-Testament Scriptures is the precious gospel held and enclosed," he said, looking down on the flower.
"Granted, if you wish it," said the carpenter; "but now we've done with the sheath, and only the flower is left."
"Not so," cried the school-master eagerly; "look here, this is the green sheath of the bud, the green cup or calyx, as they call it, still holding and supporting the flower; less noticed, certainly, under the bright petals, but keeping them all together. What would happen, Ben Stone, were we to tear that green part away?"