“Taffy, you’ve heard Jim tell about my mother, haven’t you?”
Taffy silently nodded.
“Well, suppose, while I’m here, my sister Tiny was to come, to say mother wanted me to go home; do you think I’d be afraid to go—home, to mother and father, you know?”
Taffy shook his head.
“Then, don’t you see,” pursued Johnny, and in his earnestness he took the little hot hands, and held them fast. “That when our Father in Heaven says He wants us, we needn’t be afraid to go? Mother says we oughtn’t to be—not if we love Him.”
Johnny was afraid that Taffy would not understand, but he did. Since Jim had taken charge of him, he had begun to go to Sunday-school, and having quick ears and a good memory, he had learned fast.
“But s’pos’n we ain’t minded him?” and the feverish grasp on Johnny’s hands grew tighter.
“We haven’t minded Him, any of us,” said Johnny, softly, “and that’s why our Saviour died for us. Now see here, Taffy; if a big boy was going to whip you, because you’d taken something of his, and Jim stepped up, and said, ‘Here, I’ll take the whipping, if you’ll let him go,’ then you wouldn’t be whipped at all. Don’t you see?”
“I didn’t know it meant just that,” said Taffy, “what made Him do it, anyhow, if He didn’t have to?”
“Because He loved us—because He was so sorry for us!” Johnny’s voice trembled as he said this; it seemed to him that he had never before fully realized what the Saviour had done for the world. “He wanted to have us all safe and happy with Him in Heaven, after we die, and it’ll be only our own fault, if we don’t get there—just the same as if a wonderful doctor was to come in, right now, and tell you to take his medicine, and he’d make you well, and then you wouldn’t take the medicine.”