"Father want you, eh? That doesn't happen very often, does it?"
"No, Mr. Jasper; I don't think he ever wants me myself, but you know sometimes when Phil and I go out singing, we get quite a nice bit of money given us, and father likes that. One night he made us go into a public-house, and we got more than five shillings there. But Phil says he'll never go again; and he and father had a row about it, but Phil wouldn't give in, though father said he'd thrash him. But of course we do go into the squares and terraces, and some of the people are so kind to us; and I think, you know, Mr. Jasper, that Jesus tells them we are poor and hungry, because, you see, we tell Him about it, and then He tells them; so we always get something. But, oh! I like being here best of all;" and rubbing his cheeks against the old man's knee, by way of a farewell, the child ran quickly out of the shed, and up Preece's Place, to his own home, where, as he expected, he found Phil and the soup.
Not again that day did he visit his friend; so Jasper finished his sorting alone, and then clearing up his place a bit, and shutting his doors earlier than usual (for these December nights were sharp and cold), he drew his chair close to the stove, put his lamp on the shelf just behind, and with almost trembling hands took down the Bible.
It was long years since he had opened it, and its pages were yellow and brown, not, indeed, from use, but from age; for it had been his father's before him. The book was open just as Rob had left it after his fruitless search, and surely it was not by accident, but by God's own loving arrangement, that Jasper, when he had put on his glasses, and glanced down at its pages, read, "The Book of the Prophet Isaiah."
A verse or two at the beginning he read, and murmuring, "I can't make anything of this," was just going to turn over when his eye caught the words, "Wash you, make you clean," and for a moment he stopped. "The same old story again," he muttered, but almost in the same breath there came an explanation, for there, just below, were the very words Rob had repeated, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." With almost a nervous clutch he held the book nearer to the lamp, to make quite sure. Yes, there they were; Rob was right, and glancing up for a moment, as if to try and think it out, his eyes fell once more on the text Rob had brought him two or three weeks before: "He careth for you."
"Well, really it seems like it," he said to himself, "if He'll do so much for anybody as to make 'em clean;" and for a long time he sat lost in thought over these two wonderful messages from God to him. "But I can't see how it comes about: I'm down here in my old shed, and the Lord's up in heaven, a mighty way away; and yet those boys often tell me He's here! Anyhow, it don't seem much like it! I wish I knew things rightly;" and Rob's words came back to him, "I suppose, Mr. Jasper, you'll soon have to die?"
It was a terrible thought; but he faced it then. "Yes; I shall have to die, and I daresay I shall be all alone in this dark place when I do die; and I'm afraid of the thought, I'm afraid to meet God; and why? Because of sin."
Yes, he knew it now; it had come to him he hardly knew how. Partly by the boys' talk, maybe; partly by God's Spirit working in his heart; and as he sat there by the dying fire and the fading light, a great fear came over him, a fear that must come to every man who thinks of God apart from Christ, and knows not that the God who hates sin is the God who so loved the sinner as to give His only begotten Son, that all through Him might be saved. Yes; the God that Jasper feared, as he sat thinking late into the night, was the God who was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.