Interrupted

by Pansy

The study was dingy from force of necessity. The carpet was faded, and worn in places into positive holes; the table-spread was faded, because it had been long worn, and was cheap goods and cheap colors in the first place. Everything about him was wearing out, and the old-young minister felt that he was wearing out, too, years before his time. I do not know that it is any wonder that he frowned when he heard the knock at the side door. It was nearly Saturday noon; he had not time for loiterers, yet he must answer that knock; thus much he could save his wife. He threw down his pen, with which he had just written the half-formed sentence, "the inexorable and inscrutable decrees of God," and went to the door to admit Bud, and the umbrella.

Not much need for delay here, and yet Bud lingered. The umbrella had been set aside, and the minister had said it was no matter that it had not been brought before, and still Bud did not go. He held his hat in his hand, and worked with nervous fingers at the frayed band around it, and at last, summoning all his courage, dashed into the centre of his subject:

"If you please, sir, will you tell me where Jerusalem is?"

"Jerusalem!" repeated the minister, and he was even more astonished than Alice Ansted had been; but he looked into Bud's eager, wistful face, and saw there something, he did not understand what, which made him throw the door open wider, and say, "Come in;" and almost before he knew what he was doing, he had seated Bud in the old arm-chair by the stove, in the study, and was sitting opposite him.

You don't expect me, I hope, to describe that interview? There have been many like it, in degree, all over the world, but nothing quite so strange had ever come to this minister before. Actually a hungry soul looking for the Jerusalem above, about which he, the minister, had read that morning, with bated breath and an almost rebellious longing to be there, where "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away."

It was not difficult to show Bud the way. He was like a child who heard with wide-open wondering eyes, and for the first time, the astounding fact that the Jerusalem toward which his eyes were turned was near at hand; that there was no ocean to cross, no dangerous journey to take; it was simply to put forth the hand and accept the free gift.

I pause, pen in hand, to wonder how I can make plain to you that this is no made-up story; that Bud is a real character who lives and does his work in the world to-day. It is so natural in reading what people call fiction, to turn from the book with a little sigh, perhaps, and say: "Oh, yes; that is all very well in a book, but in real life things do not happen in this way; and there are no people so ignorant as that Bud, anyway." But some of us do not write fiction; we merely aim to present in compact form before thoughtful people, pictures of the things which are taking place all around them. Bud did live, and does live; and he was just so ignorant, and he did hear with joy the simple, wonderful story of the way to the Jerusalem of his desires, and he did plant his feet firmly on the narrow road, and walk therein.

I want to tell you what that minister did after the door had been closed on Bud for a few minutes. He walked the floor of his limited study with quick, excited steps, three times up and down, then he dropped on his knees and prayed this one sentence, "Blessed be the Lord God, who only doeth wondrous things!" Then he went out to the kitchen, and kissed his wife, and made up the fire under her wash-boiler, and filled two pails with water, and carried Johnnie away and established him in a high-chair in the study, with pencil and paper and a picture-book; and then he took the five sheets of that sermon over which he had been struggling, and tore them in two, and thrust them, decrees and all, into the stove! Not that he was done with the decrees, or that he thought less of them than before; but a miracle had just been worked in his study, and he had been permitted to be the connecting link in the wondrous chain through which ran the message to a new-born soul, and the decree which held him captive just then was that one in which the Eternal God planned to give his Son to save the world. And he was so glad that this decree was inexorable, that its inscrutability did not trouble him at all. I am glad that he made up that fire, and filled those water-pails, and, busy as he had need to be, gave some gentle attention to Johnnie. A religious uplifting which does not bubble over into whatever practical work the heart or the hands find to do, is not apt to continue.

It was on the following Sabbath that Miss Benedict found opportunity to offer to mark the verses in Bud's Bible.