"He shall cover thee with His wings, and under His feathers shalt thou trust. You understand it, Effie," he said, turning to his wife. "It's the picture you see every day when the mother hen tucks the little ones under her wings.
"You, sir, will remember," he turned now to me, "that our Master used the same thought of the cuddling power of love, when He stood on Olivet and looked down on the sin-blind Jerusalem. I would have gathered you as a hen doth her chicks under her wing.
"His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. This sentence puzzled me for a good while, chiefly because I didn't know what a buckler was. For a long time I couldn't find any Lander who did know. Finally I got an Englishman to look it up in a book he had and he told me it was something that went all around the body. Then I seed it plain. The Lord was to protect us at the one danger point, with the shield; but He doesn't stop there, He protects us at all points with the buckler."
He did not pause again in the reading of the Psalm until he came to the word angels, and then he spoke rather forcibly of his belief in angels.
"Yes, I believe in angels, travelling angels. Why shouldn't He let 'em travel? He let's us go about, then surely He must let them journey considerable more. Naturally they want to be where they are needed most and I reckon this world needs 'em. When we get the listenin' habit, we'll all hear 'em, and when we get to the trustin' habit, we'll obey 'em when they bring us messages. I reckon they've helped me a good deal. Sometimes they guide me to a big haul of fish, but more often they bring me to a passage of Scripture, that's like a draft of cool water on a thirsty day. I don't want you to think I'm looney, sir, but I fancy they walk with me sometimes and most often when no humans are with me."
At the last verse he paused and then read these words twice:
"With long life will I satisfy thee. This promise has troubled me a good deal. It don't seem to be coming true. Good little kids die; and tough, scaly old rascals live on poking fun at the righteous. I have been wondering what the Hebrews meant, for a good many of their prophets have said the same thing.
"Mebbe it's one of the delayed promises. But I imagine it is coming true oftener than we know. There is some connection between holiness and happiness and between contented days and lengthened days. It is natural to expect the man who obeys the law to find the benefit here and now in this life. Well, if the Lord had each one of us alone working out the promises, it would be very easy for Him and for us, but He's seen fit to let us live together and we interfere with one another considerable; but He thinks it best because we've got to get well acquainted with each other before we are really able to know Him. As we get so we can understand the laws for the many as well as the laws for the each, I guess we'll most of us live long, but now the main thing is to live well."
"But does it seem quite fair, Jim?" his wife questioned him, naturally, as though they were alone together.
"I've thought about that a good while, Effie," he replied. "If I had only one day to fish and only caught something on one hook in twenty-eight, it would be a sorry day for me and you 'uns; but since I've many days, it doesn't matter which day I get the fish, so long as I get 'em. Now, I take it, it doesn't make much difference whether the bounty and the blessing He's intended for each of us comes one day or another, so long as it never fails to come. If this earth day was all I couldn't believe in Him as I do, but when I remember that there are days that have no ending, why it seems all right to have some getting a little more this day and others a little more that day. It's all in the life time of the soul. How long we stay in this room of Hisn' and how much He gives us don't matter much in the long years o' eternity. Do you begin to see how it is, Effie?"