“I’ll help you, mother. I’m going to teach him to tell the time of day by the clock. I asked him if he would like to have me teach him, and he said he would. He can swim and fire a gun first rate. I got him to talk a little yesterday; he said he worked with a farmer who gave him powder and small shot and kept him shooting sparrows that eat up the grain. And after that he was all summer with the gamekeeper on a nobleman’s place, and used to shoot hawks and owls; he says they call ‘em vermin there; and he used to drive horses for weeks together.”
There were no Sabbath-schools in those days, but after meeting on Sabbath afternoon Mr. Whitman catechized his children. They were all assembled in the kitchen, and he put to Peter the first question:
“What is the chief end of man?” Peter replied,—
“To glorify God and enjoy him forever;” when James exclaimed abruptly,—
“I know that man.”
“What man?”
“God. Mr. Holmes used to tell me about him; and he’s a Lord, too,—he made the Lord’s prayer and the Bible, and made me, and every kind of a thing that ever was, or ever will be.”
“Mercy sakes, James!” cried Mrs. Whitman, holding up both her hands in horror; “God is not a man.”
“I thought he was a great big man, bigger than kings or queens; and I heard a minister what came to the workhouse read in the Bible, ‘The Lord is a man of war.’”
“He is indeed greater than all other beings; but he is not a man, but a spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth.”