Deaf old Mrs. Dodge again spoke:
“It’s a mighty cobmfort, Sister Bemby, to have odne’s chilldn a growin’ up right. There’s my Viney, she’s been a perfesser nigh upodn five year, and haidn’t backslid yit. Why dodn’t you talk to Ben, Sister Bemby? He’s a clever ‘nough boy, but he’s so mischeevous. Sednce I lost my hearidn I look ’round some in church, and no longer’n this mordning I see Ben holding up a streaked lizzard by the tail, fixing to put him on old Miss Judy Yates, who’s the feardest of ’em in the world. Brother Bemby seed him jist in time to stop him.”
“I know it, Sister Dodge,” shouted Mrs. Bemby in the trumpet’s mouth, “and I have talked to him a heap of times, but Ben says he ain’t a going to die soon, and that he’ll be a preacher yet, and he makes me laugh so I have to let him alone.”
“Is you a lover of the Lord, sir?” Mrs. Dodge inquired, pointedly addressing me.
“I am afraid not as I ought to be,” I said, confusedly, shaking my head.
“Well, you ought to love Him with all your heart whedn you think what He’s dodne fur you.”
I bowed an acknowledgment of the truth of her remark, and told Mrs. Bemby I would go out and look for Ben.
Not finding him anywhere I turned homeward, thinking on the glorious Gospel of the Son of God—a Gospel that, with the same words, can comfort sister Bailey’s simple heart, and bind up one bruised beneath a velvet robe—a Gospel for all the world! deep enough to baffle the sage—simple enough to save a child. God alone can be its Author!
Go to the rustic church, with its rude unpainted seats, its plain deal pulpit, with a pitcher of water and a cloth covered Bible on the unvarnished slab. Sit with the simple, illiterate congregation, and listen to the unpolished man in the pulpit as, with an effort, he slowly reads his text: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Hear the story of the Cross told without rhetoric, and mark the faces around you, how they glow with faith and shine with tears.