“I hain’t a doubt of it,” says I heartily and decidedly.
“Yes, they would hoot at me, so little can they enter into such a heart as mine. But I can’t always live along in this way. Some day there may be a change. I give wimmen warnin’ that there may be.”
And so he went on for two hours, if it was a minute. Repeatin’ it over and over agin, till I was as sick as a dog of hearin’ of it. But knowin’ he was talkin’ to me in confidence, I didn’t want to come right out plain, and tell him what I thought of him. But I was glad enough when he got through and started off of his own accord.
But since Kitty come he has been to our house more than ever. He has acted crazy as a loon about her. Though true to his principle, he asked Josiah the other day, “if consumption run in her family, and if he thought it would go too hard with her if he didn’t make up his mind to marry her.”
A JUDGMENT SEAT.
Old Cobb is well off, but he and Kellup works hard, and fares hard. They stent themselves on clothes, and I don’t s’pose they allow themselves hardly enough to eat and drink. And all the literary feasts and recreations they allow themselves is to set round in stores and groceries, on dry-goods boxes and butter-tubs, a-findin’ fault with the government, spittin’ tobacco-juice at the stove, and fixin’ the doom of sinners. Kellup is harder on ’em than the old man is. Old Cobb thinks there won’t be more’n half the world saved; Kellup thinks there won’t be more than a quarter, if there is that.
They argue powerful. Have come to hands and blows frequent. And once Kellup knocked the old man down, he was so mad and out of patience to think the old man couldn’t see as he see about the Judgment. You know there is sights and sights said on that subject now and wrote on it; and Kellup and the old man will borrow books and papers that are wrote on it, some on one side and some on the other, and then they’ll quarrel agin over them. And they’ve tried to draw me into their arguments time and agin. But I have told ’em that I was a master hand to work where I was needed most, and I didn’t seem to be needed so much a judgin’ the world, and settlin’ on jest how many was a goin’ to be saved or lost, as I did a mindin’ my own business, and tryin’ to read my own title clear to mansions in the skies. Says I: “I find it a tuckerin’ job to take care of one sinner as she ort to be took care of, and it would make me ravin’ crazy if I had to take care of the hull universe.”
It fairly makes me out of patience, when there is so much work our Master sot for us to do for His sake, it fairly makes me mad to see folks refuse to do a mite of that work, but tackle jobs they hain’t sot to tackle. Why, the Lord don’t, like a good many human bein’s, ask impossibilities of us. He only wants us to do the best we can with what we have got to do with, and He will help us. He never refused help to a earnest, strugglin’ soul yet. But He don’t calculate nor expect us to judge the world, I know He don’t. Why, our Saviour said, in that hour when it seemed as if the God and the man was both speakin’ from a heart full of a human longin’ for love and a divine pity and tenderness for sorrowful humanity,—He said, “If you love me, feed my sheep.” He said it twice over, earnest and impressive. He meant to have it heard and understood. And once He said, seemin’ly so afraid the childern wouldn’t be took care of, “Feed my lambs.” That is a good plain business, tryin’ to feed them every way, doin’ our best to satisfy all their hunger, soul and body. That is the work He wants us to do, but He never gave a hint that He wanted us to judge the world. But He said out plain and square more’n once, “Judge not.” Then what makes folks try to do it? What makes ’em pass right by flocks and flocks of sheeps needy and perishin’ every way, pass right by these little lambs of Christ, hungry and naked, stumblin’ right over ’em without pickin’ of ’em up? Why, they might fall right over quantities of dead sheeps and dyin’ lambs, and not know it, they are so rampent and determined on tacklin’ jobs they hain’t sot to tackle, crazy and sot on judgin’ the world.
Why, everybody says they never did see such a time as it is now for arguin’ and fightin’ back and forth on that subject. Why, the papers are full of it. “Is there a Hell?” And “How deep is it?” And “How many are a goin’ there?” And “How long are they a goin’ to stay?” Books are wrote on it, and lectures are lectured, and sermons are preached on both sides of the Atlantic; and Kellup and his father are by no means the only ones who get mad as hornets if anybody disputes ’em in their views of the Judgment.