Now it was Gracie’s turn.
“We love him because he first loved us.”
Her face was full of gladness as she repeated the words in clear, sweet tones. “I do love him, papa,” she added. “Oh, how could I help it when he loves me so?”
“Yes; strange that such wondrous love does not constrain every one who has heard of it to love him in return,” responded the captain; and then he repeated a text. “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.”
“Papa,” said Lulu, “that verse reminds me of something the minister said in his sermon this morning about God never leaving or forsaking any body that trusts in him. But then afterward he told about a poor dying woman that he went to see once, so very, very poor that she had hardly any furniture in her room, and nothing to eat, nothing but rags to wear or to lie on for a bed; and yet she was a Christian woman, and said it was like heaven there in her poor, wretched room, and she was just as glad as could be because she was going to die and go to heaven. Papa, I don’t understand; it does seem as if she was forsaken when she was so very poor that she hadn’t any thing at all even to eat.”
“Forsaken, daughter, when she was so full of joy in the consciousness of Christ’s love and presence, and the certainty that she would soon be with him in the glorious home he has gone to prepare for his own redeemed ones?”
“Oh, I didn’t think of it in that way!” said Lulu. “Jesus was with her, and so she was not forsaken.”
“I don’t think it made much difference about her being so poor,” remarked Max, “when she knew she was just going to heaven. What good do riches do when people are dying? they know they have to leave them behind. I’ve read that when Queen Elizabeth was dying she was so unwilling to go that she cried out, ‘Millions of money for an inch of time!’ She was dying in a palace with every thing, I suppose, that riches and power could give her, but who wouldn’t rather have been in that poor Christian woman’s place than in hers?”
“Who indeed?” echoed the captain; “in the dying hour the one question of importance will be, ‘Do I belong to Christ?’ for ‘There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.’ Only those who have been washed from their sins in his precious blood, and covered with the robe of his righteousness—who are loving and trusting in him, will be saved.”
The children finished the recitation of their texts, said their catechism also, to their father, then for an hour or more their voices united in the singing of hymns, Violet accompanying them upon a parlor organ.