Thomas Bradly, though possessed of but a very moderate share of book-learning, was pretty well aware that it required no very deep line to reach the bottom of Foster’s acquirements; and so, while he preferred, as a rule, to avoid any open controversy with William, or any of his party, he never shrunk from a fair stand-up contest when he believed that his Master’s honour and the truth required it.
One evening, a few days after the mysterious appearance of the little Bible in his own house, Foster, as he was coming home from his work, encountered Bradly at the open door of the blacksmith’s forge with a bundle of tracts in his hand.
“Still trying to do us poor sinners good, I see,” sneered Foster.
“Yes, if you’ll let me,” said the other, offering a tract.
“None of your nonsensical rubbish for me,” was the angry reply, as the speaker turned away.
“I never carries either nonsense or rubbish,” rejoined Thomas. “My tracts are all of ’em good solid sense; they are taken out of God’s holy Word, or are agreeable to the same.”
“What! The Bible? What sensible man now believes in that Bible of yours? It’s a failure; it has been demonstrated to be a failure. All enlightened men, even many among your own Christians, are giving it up as a failure now,”—saying which in a tone of triumph, as he looked round on a little knot of working-men who were gathering about the smithy door, he seated himself on an upturned cart which was waiting to be repaired, and looked at his opponent for a reply.
Thomas Bradly, nothing daunted, sat him down very deliberately on a large smooth stone on the opposite side of the doorway, and remarked quietly, “As to the Bible’s being a failure, I suppose that depends very much on experience. I’ve got an eight-day clock in our house. I bought it for a very good one, and gave a very good price for it, just before I set up housekeeping. A young fellow calls the other day, when I happened to be in, and he wants me to buy a new-fashioned sort of clock of him. ‘Well, if I do,’ says I, ‘what’ll you allow me for my old clock, then, as part payment?’ So he goes over and looks at it, and turns up his nose at it, and says, ‘’Tain’t worth the trouble of taking away: you shall have one of the right sort cheap; that clumsy, old-fashioned thing’ll never do you no good.’—‘Well,’ says I, ‘that’s just as people find. That old clock has served me well, and kept the best of time these five and twenty years, and it don’t show any signs of being worse for wear yet. So I’ll stick to the old clock still, if you please, and take my time by it as I’ve been used to do.’ And the old-fashioned Bible’s just like my old clock. You tell me as it’s proved to be a failure. I tell you it isn’t a failure, for I’ve tried it, and proved it for more years than I’ve tried my clock, and it never yet failed me.”
“Perhaps not, Tommy,” said Foster; “that’s what you call your experience; but for all that, it has proved a failure generally.”
“How do you make out that, William? I can find you a score of families in Crossbourne as the Bible hasn’t failed, and their neighbours know it too.”