“There’s no denying that, but if you must look about you, you needna surely fix your eyes on such crooked sticks as your Fishes and your Slowcomes. It’s no breach o’ charity to say that they dinna adorn the doctrine. But there are other folk that I could name, that are both light and salt on the earth.”
“Well, yes,” admitted Sampson; “since I’ve seen your folks, I’ve about got cured of one thing. I see now there is something in religion with some folks. Your minister believes as he says, and has a good time, too. He’s a good man.”
“You may say that, and you would say it with more emphasis if you had seen him as I have seen him for the last two twelve-months wading through deep waters.”
“Yes, I expect he’s just about what he ought to be. But then, if religion only changes folks in one case, and fails in ten.”
“Man! it never fails!” exclaimed Janet, with kindling eye. “It never failed yet, and never will fail while the heavens endure. And lad! take heed to yourself. That’s Satan’s net spread out to catch your unwary soul. It may serve your turn now to jeer at professors, as you call them, and at their misdeeds that are unhappily no’ few; but there’s a time coming when it will fail you. It will do to tell the like of me, but it winna do to tell the Lord in ‘that day.’ You have a stumbling block in your own proud heart that hinders you more than all the Fishes and Slowcomes o’ them, and you may be angry or no’ as you like at me for telling you.”
Sampson opened his eyes.
“But you don’t seem to see the thing just as it is exactly. I ain’t jeering at professors or their misdeeds, I’m grieving for myself. If religion ain’t changed them, how can I expect that it will change me; and I need changing bad enough, as you say.”
“If it hasna changed them, they have none of it,” said Mrs Nasmyth, earnestly. “A Christian, and no’ a changed man! Is he no’ a sleeping man awakened, a dead man made alive—born again to a new life? Has he not the Spirit of God abiding in him? And no’ changed!—No’ that I wish to judge any man,” added she, more gently. “We dinna ken other folk’s temptations, or how small a spark of grace in the heart will save a man. We have all reason to be thankful that it’s the Lord and no’ man that is to be our judge. Maybe I have been over hard on those men.”
Here was a wonder! Mrs Nasmyth confessing herself to have been hard upon the deacons. Sampson did not speak his thoughts, however. He was more moved by his friend’s earnestness than he cared to show.
“Well, I expect there’s something in it, whether I ever see it with my own eyes or not,” said he, as he rose to go.