'Exactly!' said Mr. Davis. 'You have been building your hopes of heaven on the sand—on your good deeds, on your good intentions, on all sorts of sand-heaps. You know you have.
'Yes,' said grandfather, 'I know I have.'
'Well, my friend,' said Mr. Davis, 'pull them all down. Say to yourself, "I'm a lost man if I remain as I am; my hopes are all resting on the sand." And then, build your hopes on something better, something which will stand the storm; build them on Christ. He is the only way to heaven. He has died that you, a poor sinner, might go there. Build your hopes on Him, my friend. Trust to what He has done for you as your only hope of heaven—that is building on the Rock!'
'I see, sir; I understand you now.'
'Do that,' said Mr. Davis, 'and then your hope will be a sure and steadfast hope, a good hope which can never be moved. And when the last great storm comes, it will not touch you; you will be as certainly and as entirely safe in that day as you are in this lighthouse when the storm is raging outside, because you will be built upon the immovable Rock.'
I cannot recollect all the conversation which Mr. Davis and my grandfather had that morning, but I do remember that before he went away he knelt down with us, and prayed that we might every one of us be found on the Rock in that last great storm.
And I remember also that that night, when my grandfather said good-night to me, he said, 'Alick, my lad, I don't mean to go to sleep to-night till I can say, like poor Jem Millar,
'On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.'
And I believe that my grandfather kept his word.