Mr. B. I suppose many people would have thought him crazy.
"I suspect the minister did, at first," said Mrs. B.
"And yet I suppose," said I, "he was never more rational. Just think what it is for a poor sinner all at once to feel that the eternal God is his; that He will be a God to him! We hear of some people dying at the receipt of good news; and I have seen some so happy at this experience, of having a God to love and to love them, that, if the thing itself did not, as it always does, bring peace and inward strength with it, nature could not have sustained it."
"Joy unspeakable," said Mr. B. "And full of glory," said his wife, waiting a moment for him to finish the quotation.
"Now, my dear friends," said I, "that man on horseback, at his minister's door at midnight, had, at that moment, the first part of what is meant by the 'Abrahamic covenant.' How little way do these words go toward expressing the thing itself, and a man's feelings under it! There was a time when God made Abraham far more happy even than he did you on your way to the post-office that morning."
Helen came along, just then, with a fruit-basket of apples, and I said to her, as she was going round with them, "Say again that verse in your hymn, which has these words in it, 'Thou art mine.'"
So, while Mr. B. was paring his apple, Helen stood before him, and said:
"O, might I hear thy heavenly tongue
But whisper, 'Thou art mine!'
Those gentle words should raise my song
To notes almost divine."
Mr. B. put his apple and knife down, and took his red bandanna handkerchief from under his plate, and, wiping his eyes, said:
"Hymns always make me feel a good deal, especially Watts's. I've read that hymn in meeting before the exercises began."