Sam Dorset invited James to sit with him, he was about to decline but Bertie gave him a punch in the ribs, and volunteered to go with them, John and Willie Edibean taking their places in his father’s pew. It was the design of Bertie to secure a friend for James who had some influence among people in general, for the drover was a frank, good-natured fellow, whom few could talk down and very few indeed dared to provoke, and whose occupation gave him a large acquaintance.
We shall watch with interest the different methods pursued by these very different farmers with their redemptioners.
In the course of the evening, Mrs. Whitman asked James how he liked the minister.
“I liked to hear him talk; I knew who he meant by that man he talked about in the afternoon, it was Mr. Holmes.”
“No, James, that was the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“I know he called him so, but that was who he meant, for he said he was just as good as he could be, and went about doing good, and that’s just what Mr. Holmes was, and just the way he did. I suppose he was afraid Mr. Holmes wouldn’t like it if he knew he called him by name.”
“But, dear child, Mr. Holmes was nothing but a man, and the Lord Jesus Christ is God.”
“The minister said he was a man and had feelings just like anybody. He said he was born at a place called Bethlehem (if he was born he must be a man) and told how he grew up, and said when a friend of his, a Mr. Lazarus, died, he felt so bad he wept, and after that he died himself; and now you say he was God, but one Sunday a good while ago when I said God was a man, you said he wasn’t, he was a spirit.”
“You had better drop the subject there, wife. And you will understand it better by and by, James, when you have heard more,” said Mr. Whitman, “and when you can read the scriptures for yourself.”
This incident, however trifling in itself, gave token that new ideas had begun to stir in that hitherto vacant mind, and to shape themselves into processes of connected thought. It, at the same time, served to confirm in the minds of his friends the belief already cherished, that he possessed a most retentive memory; as they found that as far as he could understand what he had listened to, he could repeat the most of both sermons, and had committed the questions and answers in the catechism by hearing Mr. Whitman ask them and the boys reply. The result of which was that when they came to go through the catechism again, he could get along as well without the book as the others could by its aid, and could repeat what he was unable to read.