CHAPTER X.
HABAKKUK.
HE church toward which Tode bent his eager steps was quite filled when he reached it, but the sexton made a way for him, and he settled into a seat with a queer, awkward sense of having slipped into a spot that was not intended for such as he; but the organ tones took up his attention, and then in a moment a burst of music from the congregation, among the words of which he could catch ever and anon that magic name Jesus. So at least they were going to sing about him. Yes, and talk to him also, for Mr. Birge's prayer, though couched in language quite beyond Tode's reaching, yet closed with the to him wonderful sentence, "We ask in the name and for the sake of Jesus our Redeemer." When he opened the great book which Tode knew was the Bible, the boy was all attention; something more from the Bible he was anxious to hear. He got out his bit of pencil and a crumpled twist of paper, and when Mr. Birge announced that he would read the fourth Psalm, Tode bent forward and carefully and laboriously made a figure four and the letters S A M in his very best style, and believed that he had it just right. Then he listened to the reading as sometimes those do not who can glibly spell the words. Yet you can hardly conceive how like a strange language it sounded to him, so utterly unfamiliar was he with the style, so utterly ignorant of its meaning. Only over the last verse he had almost laughed.
"I will both lay me down in peace and sleep; for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety."
Didn't he know about that? The awful night, those dreadful eyes, and the peace in which he laid down and slept at last.
"Oh, ho," he said to himself, "some other fellow has had a time of it, too, I guess, and put it in the Bible. I'm glad I've found out about it just as I did."
Tode didn't mean to be irreverent. You must continually bear in mind the fact that he didn't know the meaning of the word; that he knew nothing about the Bible, nor dreamed that the words which so delighted him were those of inspiration, sounding down through the ages for the peace and comfort of such as he.
Presently Mr. Birge announced his text, reading it from that same great book, and Tode's heart fluttered with delighted expectation as he heard the words, "Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." The very name! and of all news this, that he passes by. Oh, Tode wanted so to see him, to hear about him. He sat erect, and his dark cheek flushed with excitement as he listened eagerly to every word. And the Spirit of the Master had surely helped to indite that sermon, for it told in its opening sentences the simple story, entirely new to Tode.
"A little more than eighteen hundred years ago, very near a certain city, might have been seen a large concourse of people, differently circumstanced in life, many of them such as had been healed of the various diseases with which they had long been afflicted. This throng were following a person upon whose words they hung, and by whose power many of them had been healed. As they passed by the roadside sat a blind man begging. He, hearing the crowd, asks what it is. They answer, 'Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.'"