“Thank God if it does! But I do not speak to you—and this you must give me credit for—as if it were my profession only; I speak to you as a man, a father, and a brother, wishing you to share the good which God has given to me and gives to you. So I tell you again, and would repeat it and repeat it, that if we would only have to God that simple confidence, hearty love, frank, cheerful communion, peace and joy, which we wish our children to have towards us, we would experience a true regeneration. And what was the whole life of Jesus Christ save a life of this blessed, confiding, obedient, childlike sonship? Oh, that we would learn of Him, and grow up in likeness to Him! But this ignorance of God is worse than death. For if knowledge be life, spiritual ignorance is death. My good friends, I have been led to give you a regular sermon!” said the Doctor, smiling; “but I really cannot help it. To use common everyday language, I think our treatment of God has been shameful, unjust, and disgraceful on the part of men with reason, conscience, and heart. I do not express myself half so strongly as I feel. I am ashamed and disgusted with myself, and all the members of the human family, for what we feel, and feel not, to such a Father. If it were not for what the one Elder Brother was and did, the whole family would have been disgraced and ruined most righteously!”
“Doctor,” said William, with a trembling voice, “thank ye, thank ye, from my heart. I confess I have been very careless in going to the church, but—”
“We may talk of that again, if you allow me to return to-morrow. Yet,” continued the Doctor, pointing to the child, “God in His mercy never leaves Himself without a witness. Look at your child, and listen to your own heart, and remember all I have said, and you will perhaps discover that though you tried it you could not fly from the Word of the Lord. A father’s voice by a child has been preaching to you. Yes, Thorburn, when in love God gave you that child, He sent an eloquent and holy missionary to your house to preach the gospel of what our Father is, and what we as children ought to be. Only listen to that sermon, and you will soon be prepared to listen to others.”
The Doctor rose to depart. Before doing so, he asked permission to pray, which was cheerfully granted. Wishing to strengthen the faith of those sufferers in prayer, he first said, “If God cannot hear and answer prayer, He is not supreme; if He will not, He is not our Father. But blessed be His name, His own Son, who knew Him perfectly, who Himself prayed, and was heard in that He prayed, has enabled our parental hearts, from our love to our own children, to feel the beauty and truth of this His own argument, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him!’” And then the Doctor poured forth a simple, loving, and most sympathizing prayer, in which he made himself one with his fellow-worshippers, and expressed to a common Father the anguish of the hearts around him. When it ended, he went to the bed, and looked at the sleeping child, touched its white hand, and said, “God bless your little one! May this sleep be for health!”
“It’s the first sleep,” said Jeanie, “he has had for a lang time. It may be a turn in his complaint.”
Without waiting to force the parents to give him an immediate reply to what he had taught them, the Doctor shook them warmly by the hand, and gazed on them with a world of interest in his eyes, asking them only kindly to consider what he had said. The silence which ensued for a few minutes after his absence, as William and Jeanie returned from the door and stood beside the bed, was broken by the smith observing, “I am glad that man came to our house, Jeanie. Yon was indeed preaching that a man can understand and canna forget. It was wee Davie did it.”
“That’s true,” said Jeanie; “thank God for’t!” And after gazing on the sleeping child, she added, “Is he no’ bonnie? I dinna wunner that sic a bairn should bring gude to the house.”
That night William had thoughts in his heart which burned with a redder glow than the coals upon the smithy fire! I am much mistaken if he did not begin to feel that God had sent him a home missionary in “wee Davie.”
CHAPTER III.
It was a beautiful morning in spring, with blue sky, living air, springing grass, and singing bird; but William Thorburn had not left his house that morning, and the door was shut.