"'Reuben,' said I, and held out my hand; he drew back, and looked as if he would as lief have grasped a viper. 'Turncoat, dog of a Christian!' he hissed forth, and passed me with a gesture, which, had I not been a Christian, would have made me strike him to the pavement, and stamp upon him as he lay there!" The dark eyes of Isaacs seemed to flash fire as he said this, and intuitively he clenched his thin hand.
"O father, dear, then you'll have your scars to show!" cried Benoni. The soft, sweet voice of the boy sounded to Sophy like music after a storm.
"Scars! what do you mean?" asked Isaacs.
"Ned Franks said that what we have to suffer for Christ, because we are his faithful soldiers, will be to us at last like the scars left by wounds got in battle."
There was something soothing in the idea to one who was at the moment smarting from persecution borne for righteousness' sake. The furrows on Isaacs' brow smoothed down; he seated himself wearily on the chair, and drew his little boy towards him.
"You seem to have a good memory, Benoni, for everything done or said by your good friend the sailor, though you were so young when we left the village of Colme."
"We had such happy days there," said Benoni; "the happiest days in all my life, when you and I lodged in the pretty cottage with old Mr. Meade and dear Persis, and every evening Ned Franks came to court her for his wife. He used to take me on his knee, and tell me stories, and I think of them now so often,—most of all at night when I can't get to sleep; it seems as if they brought those dear old times back again." Benoni, in that gloomy London kitchen, could not repress a little sigh. As memory may have recalled to Adam the sights and sounds of Eden, so she pictured to Benoni the cottage mantled with creepers, buried in its green wooded dell, with the gurgle of the stream and the clack of the mill and the happy voice of Persis singing hymns at her grandfather's door.
"And what was it that Franks said about wounds and scars?" asked Isaacs.
"You know that Ned Franks had served the queen, and had been in more than one battle; yet he told me that he had never so much as received a scratch in fight, and that he half envied the fellows that carried away some marks that they'd been in the struggle; for that though wounds may be sore at the time, an old soldier or sailor likes afterwards to look at his scars. Franks said, that if the bright angels in heaven, who have nothing but peace, happiness, and love, could envy us poor mortals anything, it must be the opportunity of giving up something and suffering something for the sake of the Lord Jesus, who suffered so much for us. The angels may have the harps of gold and the crowns of life, but they can't have the victor's scars, for no one has ever hated or persecuted them for righteousness' sake. Sometimes," continued the boy, nestling closer to his father, and speaking on, because he felt that his simple words were giving comfort,—"sometimes I like to think of all the Lord's faithful soldiers marching in glory before him, when all their trials and battles are over, and when everything which they have borne for him will be remembered. There will be Joseph,—he got his scar when he was thrown into prison; Daniel, his in the den of lions; the three brave Jews, in the burning, fiery furnace. And then there will be the scars of those who have been reviled and spoken against and laughed at because they would serve the Lord; scars of those who have lost money for Christ, who have given up Sunday gains, or wouldn't take bribes, or get gold in any bad way, and so were sometimes hungry and poor while they lived upon earth. And sometimes it has seemed to me," continued Benoni, "that even if I could get so easily through life as never to have a hard word or want a comfort because I served the Saviour, I would rather have some little scars to show,—not because they would make me deserve anything as a reward from my King, but because they would be like marks to prove how dearly I had loved him."
"Ay, ay," said Isaacs, calmly and even cheerfully, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake. It is the Master himself who bade his wounded servants rejoice and leap for joy. If we have never received so much as a scratch in the long struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, it looks as if our fighting had been but a sham,—that we had kept out of the fire, and thought a great deal more of our own comfort than of the honor of our Leader. He bore shame and loss for us; we should welcome shame and loss for him." The thought was taking from Isaacs all the venom that had been rankling in his wounded spirit.