“I should say they did,” chuckled Jack, who knew the outcome of the story. Reading in this way you can see how long it might take them to get through with even a short story; but Jack thought it a “tip-top” way to read.
He sat lost in thought for some minutes after the lame man had gone leaping into the temple, then said, half-doubtfully, as though not sure whether it were just the proper thing to say: “Uncle Jack, wouldn’t it be a splendid thing if Peter were alive now, and should come home from church with the folks, and cure you so you could run all around?”
Uncle Jack turned bright smiling eyes on his nephew. “You forget,” he said briskly; “it wasn’t Peter who did it; he was only the instrument. You might as well call the cup in which you take your beef tea the food, as to call Peter the physician in this case.”
“Well, then,” said Jack, looking resolute, “I don’t understand why he doesn’t cure folks now—Jesus, I mean. People say he is here all the time, though we can’t see him, and that he is just the same as ever he was; why don’t he cure you, Uncle Jack, just as he cured the man at the temple gate?”
“He has,” said Uncle Jack promptly; “He has performed a much greater cure for me than He did for the man at the gate.”
And then Jack looked astounded. As though he did not know that his Uncle Jack had not taken a step in two years, and even the great surgeon from the city could not be sure if he ever would.
The gay young uncle laughed over his astonishment, then said: “I see I shall have to tell you something, Jackie. Before I was hurt I was in a bad way—lame not only in my feet, but in my will power, which is much worse. I was making a headlong rush toward ruin, and when the accident happened which laid me flat on my back, I knew before many weeks that it was Jesus Christ trying to cure me.”
Little Jack stared. “Couldn’t He have done it without that?” he asked.
“No,” said his uncle confidently; “I don’t believe He could. I wouldn’t let Him, you see. He had called me hundreds of times, and urged me to let Him do the best things for me, but I wouldn’t. My will power, as I told you, was lame, sick—deathly sick; I couldn’t seem to want to be cured, nor to do any of my part of the work. There is always our part to do in a cure, you know.” Jack nodded, and remembered the bitter medicine which he had rebelled against swallowing. “Well, I wouldn’t do my part; refused out and out, and kept on refusing until I was placed on my back. I suppose the Lord Jesus knew that that only would bring me to my senses, and give him a chance to cure my heart sickness, so he let it come to me. Understand?”
