She need have no longer any compunction in lying in that soft bed, in receiving all that tender and novel treatment. God meant her to have it—it was all right. When to-morrow, or the day after, she was quite well and rested again she would try and find out more about God, and thank Him in person, if she could, for His great kindness to her, and ever after the memory of that kindness would be something to cheer and help her in her cellar-life.
How much she should like to see God! She felt that God must be beautiful.
Before her confused and dreamy eyes the angels in their white dresses kept moving up and down, and as they moved they sang “Glory, glory, glory.”
And Flo knew they were surrounding God, and she tried to catch a glimpse of God Himself through their shining wings. She was half asleep when she saw them, she was soon wholly asleep; she lay in a dreamless, unbroken slumber all night. And this was the beginning of her recovery, and of her knowledge of God. When the doctor came the next day he said she was better, but though the fever had left her, she had still very much pain to suffer. In her fall she had given her foot a most severe sprain, and though the swelling and first agony were gone, yet it often ached, without a moment’s intermission, all day and all night. Then her fever had turned to rheumatic, and those little thin bones would feel for many a day the long lie they had had on the damp cellar floor. But Flo’s soul was so happy that her body was very brave to bear this severe pain; such a flood of love and gratitude was lighting up her heart, that had the ceaseless aching been worse she would have borne it with patient smiles and unmurmuring lips. For day after day, by little and little, as she was able to bear it, Mrs Jenks told her what she herself called the Story of God.
She began with Adam and Eve, and explained to her what God had done for them; she described that lovely Garden of Eden until Flo with her vivid imagination saw the whole scene; she told how the devil came and tempted Eve, and how Eve fell, and in her fall, dishonesty, and sin, and misery, all came into the world. And because sin was in the world—and sin could not remain unpunished—Adam and Eve must die, and their children must die, and all men must die. And then she further explained to the listening child how, though they were sinners, the good God still cared for them, and for their children, and for all the people that should come after them; and because He so loved the world He sent His only begotten Son into the world, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
And because little Mrs Jenks loved God and Christ with all the strength of her nature in return, she told the story of the birth of Jesus, of His life, of His death, so tenderly and so solemnly, that the child wept, and only the knowledge that His sufferings were now over, that He was happy now, and that He loved her, could stay her tears. What could she give Him in return? Why, all He asked for, all He needed.
Lying there on Mrs Jenks’ little white bed which God had lent her, she offered up to the Father, to the Son, and to the Spirit, the love and obedience of her whole heart and life for time and for eternity.