'Well, 'twas readin' what we ought to live like, first knocked me down. I got a-lookin' through them there epistlies, and got awful cast down. And then I thinks to mysel', p'raps arter all Paul and such like were too severe, so I went to the gospels, for I've always heerd the gospels tell of love, and not judgment, but I wasn't comforted by them, not a bit,—not even when I turned up the sheep chapter that I used for to learn as a little 'un. It says there, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." And I says to myself, "Reuben! you've never a listened to His voice; you've a gone your own way all your life through, and you ain't a follered Him one day in all the sixty-and-eight years you've a bin on this 'ere blessed earth!" Well, I began to think I'd better say that prayer my dear old missis a told me, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." And then 'twas last Toosday night about seven o'clock I got the answer.'
The old man paused, took his pipe out of his mouth, and looked up at the blackened rafters across his little kitchen with a quivering smile about his lips; whilst Betty, with knitted brows, tried hard to follow him in what he was saying.
'I was a-turnin' over the leaves of the old Book,' he continued, 'when I come to a tex' which stared me full in the face, and round it was pencilled a thick black line, which was the doin' of my missis. I'll read it for you, little maid.'
He rose, and took from the shelf a large family Bible. Placing it on the table, he turned over its leaves with a trembling hand; and then his voice rang out with a solemn triumph in it, '"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." My knees began to tremble, for I says to myself, "Reuben, 'tis the Lord's voice to thee." And I drops down on the floor, just where you're a-sittin', missy, and I says, "Amen, so be it, Lord." I gets up with a washed soul—washed in the blood of the Lamb.'
There was silence; the old man's attitude, his upward gaze, his solemn emphasis, awed and puzzled Betty.
'And now you're in the text!' she said at last, somewhat wistfully; as she drew Prince to her, and lifted him into her lap.
'I shall be one o' these days, for certain sure,' was old Reuben's reply; 'but 'tis the Lord that will put me there; 'tis His washing that has done it.'
'That's what Miss Fairfax said; she said it wasn't tribulation would bring us to heaven. She made me sing,—
"There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin;
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven and let us in."
But I'm quite sure God won't mean me to stand in the middle of those people round the throne, if I haven't been through tribulation; I'm quite sure He won't! I shall find myself in a mistake if I try to creep in among them; and, oh! I want to be there, I want to be there!'