“It can’t do both!”
“Oh, yes, it can! it begins nowhere for itself, but everywhere for us. Only all its beginnings are endings, and all its endings are beginnings. Look here: suppose we begin at this red streak, it is just there we should end again. That is because it is a perfect thing.—Well, there was one who said, ‘I am Alpha and Omega,’—the first Greek letter and the last, you know—‘the beginning and the end, the first and the last.’ All the New Testament is about him. He is perfect, and I may begin about him where I best can. Listen then as if you had never heard anything about him before.—Many years ago—about fifty or sixty grandfathers off—there appeared in the world a few men who said that a certain man had been their companion for some time and had just left them; that he was killed by cruel men, and buried by his friends; but that, as he had told them he would, he lay in the grave only three days, and left it on the third alive and well; and that, after forty days, during which they saw him several times, he went up into the sky, and disappeared.—It wasn’t a very likely story, was it?”
“No,” replied Davie.
The ladies exchanged looks of horror. Neither spoke, but each leaned eagerly forward, in fascinated expectation of worse to follow.
“But, Davie,” Donal went on, “however unlikely it must have seemed to those who heard it, I believe every word of it.”
A ripple of contempt passed over Miss Carmichael’s face.
“For,” continued Donal, “the man said he was the son of God, come down from his father to see his brothers, his father’s children, and take home with him to his father those who would go.”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Miss Carmichael, with a pungent smile: “what he said was, that if any man believed in him, he should be saved.”
“Run along, Davie,” said Donal. “I will tell you more of what he said next lesson. Don’t forget what I’ve told you now.”
“No, sir,” answered Davie, and ran off.