When Alfred had finished, his father said, “That text tells us that God knows when we are kind to his children, and will reward us for it at the judgment day.”
“But, father,” said Alfred, “you told me once that we did not deserve reward for any good thing which we ever did.”
“We do not deserve any reward,” said Mr. Penrose. “The wish in us to do anything right comes from God. Yet, after he has given us this disposition, he rewards us for the exercise of it; so, as the apostle Paul tells us, ‘It is all of grace.’”
“Does God never pay us in this world for doing right?” said Alfred.
“Sometimes he does pay us, even in this world, for being good to his people. I will tell you, Alfred, how he once rewarded a man because he was kind to one of his ministers.
“Many years, a great many years ago, some wicked men took one of God’s good ministers, and put him in a dungeon. A dungeon is a dark prison. The dungeon in which this good minister, or prophet, was put was a doleful place under ground. The bottom of it was full of soft, filthy mud.
“Wicked people put him in this sad place, because he feared the Lord, and would say what he bade him, instead of what the enemies of the Lord wished. They wanted him to say pleasant, flattering things; but God did not tell him these.
“No doubt Jeremiah, for that was the prophet’s name, prayed to God from that dark dungeon. Daniel cried to him from the lions’ den, and Jonah prayed to him when the darkness wrapped him about. Man could not hear Jonah’s voice from the midst of the seas; but God heard both Daniel and Jonah. And he also heard the voice of his faithful Jeremiah from the deep, damp dungeon.
“God put it in the heart of a man, who lived in the king’s house, to remember Jeremiah, and to pity him. This good man went to the king, and said,
“‘Those are wicked people who have cast Jeremiah into the dungeon. He will die for hunger.’