“Now, it’s some years ago as me and mine was living a long way off from here. Jane were in service at a great house, and the butler and lady’s-maid, who hated the truth and poor Jane, because she loved it and stood up for it, managed to take away her character in the eyes of her mistress; but the Lord has graciously opened her mistress’s eyes at last, and that cloud is passed away for ever. I only mention this just to bring in this little book. The butler, to vex poor Jane, had taken away her Bible from her before he took away her character; but what happened? Why, when she had left the place, he goes to his drawer and takes out the Bible when he were looking for summat else; for he’d quite forgot as he’d hid it there. He sees the red lines, and reads the verses over them, and they make him think, and he’s brought to repentance.
“The little book’s beginning to do great things. He wants to restore the book, and make amends to Jane, does the butler; but he’s been such a rogue, he’s obliged to take himself away into foreign parts somewhere. But I don’t doubt but what he’ll come right in the end; the Word’ll not let him alone till it’s brought him to the foot of the cross. As he’s on his way abroad, he leaves the Bible at the station here to be taken to our house; but it manages to get lost on the way, and turns up at last in the tap-room of a public-house. Now, just mark this. If the Bible had come straight to our house, it would have helped to clear Jane’s character with her mistress, and no more; but there were other work for it to do. The publican’s daughter gets hold of it, and sees the red lines. She sees the verses above ’em, and they pricks her conscience. She don’t like this, and she resolves to get rid of the book. Yes, yes; but the little book has taken good aim at her heart, and shot two or three arrows into it, and she can’t get ’em out; it’s been doing its work, or rather the Lord’s work. So she takes it with her in the dark, and drops it into William Foster’s house, of all places in Crossbourne.
“Just fancy any one leaving a Bible in that house ten months ago. But it came at the very nick of time. William’s wife were in great trouble, and she’d tried a great many sticks to lean upon, but they’d all snapped like glass when she leaned her weight on ’em—she found nothing as’d ease the burden of an aching heart. It were just at the right time, then, as the little Bible fell into her room. She took it up, noticed the red lines, and some precious promises they was scored under, and by degrees she found peace.—Eh, but William must know nothing of this; how he would scoff if he found his wife reading the Bible!—But what’s this? William finds his missus quite a changed woman; she’s twice the wife to him she was, and his home ain’t like the same place. What’s the secret of this change? He don’t like to ask; but he watches, and he finds the worn old Bible hidden in the baby’s cradle. He reads it secretly; he prays over it; the scales fall from his eyes; he becomes a changed man; he comes out boldly and nobly for Christ; he and his wife rejoice together in the Lord.
“But the little homely book hadn’t quite done its work yet. Foster one night asks me to help him in a little trouble which the words of the book had got him into. Strange that, isn’t it? No, ’tain’t strange; ’cos there’s deep things, wonderful things, and terrible things in that blessed book; but then there’s light too to help you past these deep pits, if you’ll only use the Word as God’s lamp. I takes up the Bible to help William to a bright text or two, and I sees my mother’s name in the cover. Here was our long-lost Bible; its work so far were done, and now it’s got back to its rightful owner. But after we’d got it back we’d some time to wait; but waiting-times are blessed times for true Christians. At last the full evidence, of which Jane’s Bible were one little link, came up, and my dear sister’s character were cleared of every spot and stain as had been cast upon it by her fellow-servants.
“Now, what I want you to notice, dear friends, is just this—how wonderfully the Lord has worked in this matter. If my dear sister had not suffered in the first instance from the tongue of the slanderer, that blessed book’d never have done all this good, as far as we can see. The butler wouldn’t have been convinced of sin; the publican’s daughter wouldn’t have been brought to repentance and praise; William and his wife wouldn’t have been made happy and rejoicing believers. And indeed, though I can’t explain all now, neither, as far as we can tell, would Jim Barnes have been what he now is, with his missus like a new pin, nor would poor Ned Taylor have died a humble penitent. All these precious fruits have growed and ripened out of the loss of my dear sister’s Bible. And she herself—well, it’s been a sore trial, but it’s yielded already the peaceable fruit of righteousness. She’s lost nothing in the end but a little dross, and her sorrow has helped to bring joy to many.
“Now, I ask you all to cling to the grand old book; to use it as a sword and a lamp,—a sword against your spiritual enemies, and a lamp to guide you to heaven. We’ve heard a good deal just now of the special dangers of our own times, how people are getting wise above what’s written. Ah! But ‘the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.’ Dr Prosser’s a man of science, and you’ve heard his experience. You see he finds he can’t get on without the old-fashioned gospel. A religion without a regular creed’s no use at all. He’s found out as religion without a real human and divine Saviour’s only moonshine; nay, it’s no shine at all; it’s just darkness, and nothing else. There’s a striking verse in the prophet Jeremiah as just suits these days. It’s this, and I’m reading it out of Jane’s Bible. You’ll find it in Jeremiah, the eighth chapter and the ninth verse: ‘The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?’ Well, but do you cling to the old Bible—there’s nothing like it. There’s many a showy life just now as looks well enough outside; but if you want a life as’ll wear well you must fashion it by God’s Word.
“Now, afore I sits down, I’m just a-going to tell you about Dick Trundle’s house-warming.—Dick were one of them chaps as are always for making a bit of a show, and making it cost as little as possible. He were a hard-working man, and didn’t spend much in drink, so he managed to get a little money together, and he puts up half-a-dozen houses. The end one were bigger than the rest, and had a bow-window to it.—Well, Dick were a bachelor, and had an old housekeeper to do for him. When his new houses were built, and he were just ready to go into his own, he resolves to have a house-warming, and he invites me and three other chaps to tea and supper with him. We’d some of us noticed as he’d been sending a lot of things to the house for days past.—When the right day was come, we goes to the front door, ’cos it looked more civil, and we knocks. Dick himself comes to the door, and says through the keyhole, ‘I must ask you to go round, for the door sticks, and I can’t open it.’ So we goes round.—There were a very handsome clock in the passage, in a grand mahogany case. ‘Seven o’clock!’ says I, looking at it; ‘surely we can’t be so late.’ ‘Oh no,’ says he, ‘the clock stands. I got it dirt cheap, but there’s something amiss with the works. But it’s a capital clock, they tell me, entirely on a new principle.’—We was to have tea in the best parlour. ‘Dear me,’ says one of my mates, ‘what a smell of gas!’ ‘Yes,’ says Dick; ‘ain’t them beautiful gas-fittings? I got ’em second-hand for an old song, but I’m afraid they leak a bit.’—We should have been pretty comfortable at tea, only the window wouldn’t shut properly, and there came in such a draught as set us all sneezing. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Dick, ‘as you’re inconvenienced by that draught; it’s the builder’s fault. Of course I took the lowest estimate for these houses, and the rascal’s been and put me in green wood; but the carpenter shall set it all right to-morrow.’—But the worst of all was, the gas escaped so fast it had to be turned off at the meter. ‘Ah!’ says he, ‘that won’t matter for to-night, for I’ve bought a famous lamp, a new patent. I got it very reasonable, because the man who wanted to part with it were giving up housekeeping and going abroad.’ So we had the lamp in, and a splendid looking thing it were; but I thought I saw a crack in the middle, only I didn’t like to say so. Well, all of a sudden, just in the middle of the supper, the lamp falls right in two among the dishes, and the oil all pours out over my neighbour’s clothes. Such a scene there was! I tried to keep from laughing, but I couldn’t stop, though I almost choked myself.—Dick, you may be sure, weren’t best pleased. It were a bad job altogether; so we bade good-night as soon as it were civil to do so. But I shall never forget Dick Trundle’s house-warming, nor the lesson it taught me.
“What we want, dear friends, is, not what’s new, cheap, and showy, but what’s solid, and substantial, and thoroughly well made. Will it wear well? That’s the question after all. Dick’s fine things was just got up for show; they’d no wear in ’em—they was cheap and worthless. Now there’s a deal of religion going in our day as is like Dick Trundle’s house and purchases; it’s quite new, it makes a great show, it looks very fine, till you come to search a little closer into it. But it ain’t according to the old Bible make: it don’t get beyond the head; it can’t satisfy the heart. What we want is a religion that’s real—just the religion of the gospel, as puts Jesus Christ and his work first and foremost. If you haven’t got that, you’ve got nothing as you can depend on it’ll fail you when you most want it. It may be called very wide, and very intelligent, and very enlightened, but it won’t act in the day of trouble, and when the conscience gets uneasy.
“Well, now, we’ve got a happy company here to-night; we’re many of us total abstainers on principle and most of us, I hope, Bible Christians on principle, after the old fashion; for, if we haven’t Christ and his Word for our foundation, we haven’t got that as’ll stand the test. No, friends, take the word of Tommy Tracks—and you’ve got what’ll confirm what I say all round you in this meeting to-night—the life as is begun, continued, and ended in the fear of God, and with the Bible for its guide, and Jesus for its example, is the life that’s just what you and I were meant to live by the God who made us and redeemed us, and it’s plainly and unmistakably the life that wears best.”