"Cicely," she asked at length, rather abruptly, "do you not find some parts of the Bible very hard to understand?"
"A vast sight, my dear!" said Cicely; "a vast sight! Sure there's a deal that's main hard to a poor old ignorant body such as me."
"Then what do you do, Cicely, when you come to a piece that you cannot understand?"
"Leave it alone, my dear. There's somewhat about the middle of the Book—I can't say the words right, never has 'em pat—about the road being made so straight and smooth like that the very fools can't shape to lose the way. Well, I think the Book's a bit like that itself. For I am a fool, Mrs. Celia, and I won't go to deny it. Surely God will show me all I want, and all that's meant for me, thinks I; and so what I can't understand I think ben't for the likes of me, and I leave it to them 'tis meant for."
"Now all about those Jews, on their way to the Promised Land, and the forty years they spent in the wilderness,—I cannot see what that has to do with us."
"Eh! Mrs. Celia, my dear, don't you go to say that!" urged old Cicely, earnestly. "Wasn't they hard-hearted and stiff-necked folks? and ben't we hard-hearteder and stiff-neckeder?"
"But is it not very gloomy, Cicely, to be always thinking of death, and judgment, and such horrid things?" said Celia, with a little shudder.
"Never thinks about 'em, my dear," was old Cicely's short answer.
"Why, Cicely! I thought religious people were always thinking about them?"
"Don't know nought about religious people, as you call 'em," said Cicely; "never came across one. All I know is, I never thinks—not any while—about death, and judgment, and such like. You see, I haven't got to die just now,—when I have, it'll be a hard pull, I dare say; but there's dying grace, and there's living grace. He don't give dying grace—at least so I think—till we come to dying. So I leave that alone. He knows when I'm to die, and He'll be sure to see to it that I have grace to die with. And as to the judgment, my dear, I have no more to do with that than the other,—a sight less, it seems to me. For we have all got to die; but if I understand the Book right, them that trust in Him haven't no judgment for to stand. If He has taken all my sins away, what am I to be judged for? Don't you see, Mrs. Celia? Eh, no! 'tis not we need think over the judgment, but the poor souls that have to stand it—who will not take Christ, and have nought of their own."