Part 10

"How weakly I have spoken, how little have I said of what I wished to say!" he murmured to himself. "The words of my Persis are true indeed: it is only the Holy Spirit that can convince of sin. Then I know that my manner is too impetuous. I am always running the chance of offending, rather than persuading; and I don't know how to put into words the thoughts that are swelling within me like a stream that is bursting its bounds. I cannot restrain myself, when any one would put aside (as if they could be worn out by time) those Old-Testament Scriptures which our Lord himself bade us search, as testifying of him; when any look upon the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as quite a distinct thing from that required of us; when, like poor Stone, they seem to conclude that justice and holiness are confined to the Old Testament, mercy and love to the New! Ah! the truth is"--Franks quickened his steps, as if to keep pace with the current of his thoughts--"the truth is, that Satan knows that he has a terrible advantage over us, if he can but persuade us to try any way but God's way to reach the kingdom of heaven. Satan is willing that we should look on the Lord as a great example, or a great teacher, or even as a great king, if he can only keep us from acknowledging Christ as also a great sacrifice for sins, for _our_ sins; and so prevent us from throwing ourselves entirely upon his mercy and merits. To draw us back from the ark, that is Satan's chief aim; to make us believe that we do not require a Saviour. As if the Son of God would have died, had there been any less costly means of purchasing heaven for his people; as if we did not see most clearly, in his sufferings on the cross, the _holiness_ of God that abhors sin, the _justice_ of God in punishing it, joined with the boundless _mercy_ and _love_, which made God not spare even his Son, but give him freely for our salvation!"

[C] Isaiah ix. 6.

[D] Micah v. 2.

[E] Zechariah xiii. 7.

[F] Isaiah liii. 5, 6.

[G] Hebrews ix. 22.

[H] Acts iv. 12.

[I] 1 John ii. 7.

XXI.

An Old Letter.

"Well, Bell, my dear," said the carpenter, as his wife returned from afternoon service, "tell me what you've heard to-day, and I'll tell you what I've heard."

"Mr. Leyton preached as usual," replied Mrs. Stone, as she unloosed the red strings of her bonnet. "I think he's getting less shy, and more earnest. His text was, '_If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us._'"

"Why, that would ha' done for the text of the sermon I've had all to myself," said Ben Stone.

"Sermon,--what do you mean?" asked his wife, pausing in the act of taking off her shawl.

"There's Ned Franks been here, and--talk of earnestness--he's earnest with a vengeance! There was nothing would content him but that I should own myself to be a downright, miserable sinner; and he threw out something more than a hint, that I'm like to come to the same end as those who wouldn't go into the ark, and so were drowned in the flood."

"I wish that Ned Franks would mind his own business," exclaimed Mrs. Stone, indignantly. "I'm sure that he, and every one knows that there's not a better man in the parish than you are; it would be well if, with all his fine talking, Mr. Franks were but half so good!"

"Softly, softly, my dear," said Ben Stone, amused and pleased at her warm defence. "Ned Franks is a capital fellow; a brave, noble-hearted man."

"Let him be what he likes," exclaimed Mrs. Stone, angrily pulling off her boots. "If he comes here a worritting and lecturing you, I shall shut the door upon him!"

"His visit was certainly very unlike that which the young curate paid me. Mr. Leyton, with his gentle way and soft voice, spoke of my trials and my hope; and said that a true Christian is not afraid even of death. Then says I, 'Sir, I'm never afraid of death;' so, of course, he takes it for granted that I'm a true Christian, and all right, and goes away quite pleased and happy. But as for Ned Franks,"--Ben Stone gave his little chuckling laugh, though it sounded less merry than usual,--"he'll take nothing for granted, except that I _must_ be a sinner. He leans forward and looks right into your eyes, as if he meant to read you through and through, and let you see right into his soul also. I can just fancy," continued the sick carpenter, laughing again, "what sort of a sailor he was when he served the queen,--how he'd stick by his colors, and go slap-bang at an enemy!"

"But you're no enemy," cried Mrs. Stone, "neither his nor any one else's, and I'll not let him go slap-bang at you! Let him preach away as much as he likes to that wretched Nancy Sands whom he pulled out of the mill-stream!"

"There's not much chance of _her_ deceiving herself, and saying that she has no sin," observed Stone.

"It was small kindness to her husband to save her," continued the carpenter's wife; "Sands has little cause to thank Ned. The poor clerk is growing thinner every day, and looked at church this afternoon as if he was going to be hanged. He knows that when Nancy comes out of hospital she'll be at her old tricks again, drinking him out of house and home; far better for _him_ if all had been over at once! I couldn't help giving her a bit o' my mind about that, when I went to see her yesterday!"

"You did!" exclaimed Stone, in amused surprise; "how did she take it? If Nancy returned you a bit o' _her_ mind," he continued, with a laugh, "I guess you'd the worst of the exchange. You never were a match for Nancy, my dear."

"She said nothing, but looked as if she could have eaten me," replied Mrs. Stone.

"Her accident must have pulled her down a bit, if she'd not something sharper than a look to fling at you," observed Ben. "You and she used to go at it like poker and tongs, but Nancy could hit hardest and longest; she'd a tongue like a mill-wheel if once you set it a-going. But put the kettle on the fire, my dear, and lets have a drop of good tea. In the evening I'll do what I've been intending to do for these many years past,--look over that box of old things belonging to my poor mother, whom I lost when I was a little chap but nine years of age. I want to sort 'em,--put by what I mean to keep, and burn what's of use to no one. Ned Franks himself would say it was right for a sick man to put his house in order."

The task of looking over the contents of that old box, which had been stowed away in a cupboard for a great length of time, was one which the carpenter had put off from day to day, and year to year, perhaps because--till illness came--he had led a busy, active life, or more probably because his cheerful, easy nature disliked any occupation that might awaken melancholy thoughts. And who but is saddened by turning over memorials of one loved and lost, even though, as in the case of Stone, forty or fifty years may have elapsed since the friend departed. This Sunday evening, as twilight came on, Ben Stone fulfilled the long-deferred task. His wife brought the old box,--a deal one covered with faded paper,--and placed it on a chair close to his bed, that he might examine its contents with ease. She lighted a candle and put it on the table beside her husband, and then sat down with some little curiosity to see her mother-in-law's hoarded treasures, but a secret conviction that the box would hold nothing but "old-fashioned rubbish."

The late Mrs. Stone had not been an orderly woman, or perhaps death had taken her by surprise, so that she had left her things in confusion,--such was the silent reflection of her son's wife, as Ben went slowly over the contents of the box. They were a strange medley. There were two gilt lockets, a nutmeg-grater, an old tooth-brush and silver thimble, a collar, an unfinished bit of embroidery, a sampler, several skeins of silk and cotton of various colors in a tangled mass together, fragments of gimp and tape, a red leather pocket-book much the worse for wear, a prayer-book without a cover, and a padlock without a key. There were also heaps of papers, recipes for cures, and recipes for dishes, old patterns, old letters, old bills, a jumble of all sorts of things which it was scarcely matter of wonder that no one had cared to reduce into order.

"You may use all these receipted bills to light the fire with, my dear," said Ben Stone; "they at least can be useful to nobody. But I'll keep this old bit of an Almanac,--1815! Well, well; how time passes! It seems strange to look back to the days when this Almanac was a new one!"

"I think that this may go into the fire too," said Mrs. Stone, who had been vainly trying to unravel a silken tangle.

"Ah! here's something curious," observed Ben, as he drew out an old letter, written on very coarse paper, in a very round, childish hand, a letter which had been fastened with a big red wafer pressed down with a button, and which was soiled with many a blot.

"Here is, I suppose, the very first letter as ever I wrote. I didn't remember that I had ever written to my mother. She died--poor, dear soul!--the week after I first went to school."

Mrs. Stone was of course interested, as any good wife would have been, in the first specimen of her husband's handwriting. She pushed the candle nearer to him, and read over his shoulder, as she might have done at the distance of half the length of the room, the school-boy's big, blotted scrawl.

"Dear Mother, I hope your well. I am ill my head is so bad pleas get me home _quick_ QUICK your dutiful son B. S."

Mrs. Stone smiled, but her husband looked grave. Strange old recollections, and those by no means of a pleasing nature, were brought back to his mind by the sight of that--till now--forgotten letter to his mother. Ben put up his hand to his forehead, and pushed up the nightcap from his temples.

"Yes, yes," he muttered to himself, "I remember writing that letter as if it were but yesterday; I remember the very button which I used to press down the wafer. I was very wretched on first going to school,--the boys bullied me, and I could not bear regular work; so to get my poor mother to take me home, I wrote that letter with a big falsehood in it. It was the first,--the only note as ever I sent her, and it was full of lies! Strange that that should turn up now!"

"There's nothing to take to heart in such an old matter as that," observed Mrs. Stone, struck by the unusual gravity of her husband, who generally turned everything into a jest. "Nobody thinks of raking up what they've done wrong forty or fifty years back."

"Tut, I should not care a toss of a straw about it," replied Stone, "had I told the falsehood to any one but my mother, and that just a few days before I lost her. I'd never an opportunity of telling her that I'd deceived her, or of asking her to forgive me, for I did not go home till she lay in her coffin. To think of that vile bit of paper turning up against me now!" Ben doubled the note, and, tearing it into pieces, threw the fragments on the floor.

It may be a matter of surprise that a sin of childhood should have in the slightest degree ruffled the easy conscience of such a man as Ben Stone. He had thought very little indeed of sinning against God, but his natural affections made him feel pain at having sinned against a sick mother. Perhaps the words of Franks had not been so utterly unheeded as they had seemed at first to be, and had served to rouse a suspicion, confirmed by the school-boy's letter, that there might be many a forgotten fault of the highly respectable man that would "turn up against him" some day; faults for which forgiveness had never been granted or asked. Be that as it may, Stone suddenly found out that he was tired and sleepy, and bade his wife shut up the box and take it away. The evening was getting on; it was time for him to take his night-draught, and go quietly to rest.

Though the night-draught was taken and the pillows carefully beaten up and sleep soon closed the invalid's eyes, it was not quiet rest. A confused medley of thoughts shaped themselves into dreams, which took their color from what had occurred during the day. Ben Stone in his sleep was still looking over and examining things of the past; his whole room appeared to be filled up with boxes, one piled on another, and there seemed to be a necessity for him to open and put them all into order. This was in itself an oppressive feeling to the dreamer; but the oppression became much greater when he found that each box was filled to overflowing with bills,--old, forgotten bills,--and that not one of them was receipted; not one had ever been paid. Stone had a dim idea that all these debts were connected with unforgiven sin, from that falsehood contained in his first letter to the last "idle word" which had fallen from his lips. As box after box was emptied, and every unpaid bill thrown down in despair, the white paper seemed to turn into foam, a sea was rising around him, and it appeared to Stone as if his numberless debts would drown him at last. Ned Franks was by the side of the dreamer, helping him to look over his boxes, and saying, every now and then, in an earnest, anxious tone, "Ben Stone, if you don't pay, you are a ruined man!--if you don't pay, you are ruined forever!" So strong was the impression left on the dreamer's mind, that he awoke with the words on his lips, "If you don't pay, you are ruined forever!"

Very still was the room when Stone opened his eyes with a start, relieved to find that he had, after all, been but dreaming. One feeble night-light was making "darkness visible" in the chamber, where no other object could distinctly be seen. Even so faint a light had Stone's conscience hitherto thrown upon spiritual things, as different from the clear radiance of Truth as the night-light from the sun. The sinner had not known his sinfulness because his light had been too dim to enable him to see it.

As Ben Stone lay silent and still on his pillow, the breeze bore to him, more distinctly than he ever before had heard it in his cottage, the sound of the church clock striking ONE. For once Stone felt something solemn in the sound; he felt that time was being meted out to him, that his remaining hours might be few, and that he _was not prepared_ for eternity.

Then Stone thought of Ned Franks. The sailor was not afraid of death, but his reason for not fearing it was something utterly different from the easy reliance on his own goodness which the carpenter knew to have been his own. Ned Franks had shrunk from the idea of his safety depending on his merits. On what then _did_ it depend? The invalid, with a dawning perception that he himself might not be quite as secure as he had lately thought himself to be, felt desirous to know more clearly what was Franks's hope of salvation; and when, in the morning, Mrs. Stone was preparing her husband's breakfast, he asked her to stop the sailor when next he should pass their door, and ask him to step in and see him.

XXII.

Peace from Above.

"You went off in such haste yesterday that we'd not time to have out half our say," said Ben Stone to Ned Franks, as, called in by the carpenter's wife, he walked up to the patient's bedside.

Franks smiled, agreeably surprised to find that Stone wished to renew such a conversation.

"Take a chair, my good friend, and sit down. Bell, you needn't stop in for me. I know Franks won't grudge me a half-hour for once, even on a week day."

Mrs. Stone soon quitted the cottage, but not till she had warned her visitor with raised finger and shake of the head, "Don't you bother my husband about anything to make his mind uneasy."

When she had closed the door behind her, Ben Stone turned to Franks, and said, "I was looking over old papers, yesterday, which reminded me of my boyhood, and I suppose it's that which has brought back to me a bit of rhyme which I learned from my mother, and which has been running in my brain all this day, though it had gone clean out of my memory for years,--

"'There's not a sin that I commit, Or wicked word I say, But in Thy dreadful book 'tis writ Against the judgment-day.'

"Now, do you suppose," said Stone, with an effort to speak in his usual careless tone, "that God keeps an account like that, as a creditor with his debtors, and that when folks die there are all the old bills, as it were, brought up, even debts that they'd clean forgotten?"

"Yes, assuredly, _unless all those debts have been paid_."

"That's the very nail that I want you to hit," cried the carpenter. "How are we to make sure that the debts _are_ all paid,--I mean, that God has forgiven us outright? Are you sure that _your_ debts are all paid?"

"Yes, thank God!" cried the sailor; "my debts were paid, every one of them, when my Saviour died on Calvary. Does not St. Paul say that Christ blotted out _the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross_?"

"Were every one's sins blotted out then?" asked Stone.

"The sins of all who have living _faith_ in the Lord."

"Ah! _faith_; that's what you're always talking about, and I can never quite make out what it means."

"It simply means that we believe from the heart that the Son of God _died for us_," said Ned Franks.

"Is that all?" exclaimed Stone, in surprise. "Why, a poor wretch like Nancy Sands might believe that as well as yourself!"

"And if poor Nancy does believe that _from the heart_, her sins, be they few or many, _are_ forgiven her for the sake of Him who bore the punishment for them all."

"That's a dangerous doctrine, a very dangerous doctrine," said the carpenter, shaking his head; "you wouldn't put Nancy, I hope, on the same footing as yourself or as me?"

"The ark of Salvation is as open to Nancy as to us," replied Franks; "and if any of us reach God's heaven, it can only be in that ark."

"I don't understand what you mean," said Ben Stone. "Would you put bad and good all together?"

"Perhaps I can explain myself best by referring to Noah's ark," replied Franks. "God made known that a deluge was coming on the earth, and that the only way of escaping it was by going into an ark which Noah was commanded to prepare. It is clear that those who were _saved_ were those who _believed_. It was _faith_ in God's word that made Noah and his family enter the ark; they were saved because they were _in it_, and not, as I tried to explain yesterday, because of their merits as sailors or swimmers. It is clear, also, that they could not be _half_ saved by the ark, and _half_ by their own boats or rafts. So, if we trust our souls to Christ, we must do so _entirely_; we must give up all notion of saving ourselves, and own that our hopes of forgiveness and heaven rest on _nothing but his mercy and merits_. We own ourselves, indeed, to be miserable sinners, but we are able to take our firm stand on the Gospel doctrine that _Christ died for sinners_,--for that is our ark."

"I'm afraid that people who make sure of being saved by faith will lead very careless lives," said the carpenter, who could not get over his repugnance to being classed with Nancy Sands.

"They can only be saved by living, true faith," replied Franks. "Merely to say that we believe is nothing; nay, a cold conviction that the Bible is true, is nothing,--_the devils also believe and tremble_."

"How are you to know true faith from false faith?" asked Ben, with rather a sarcastic smile, as if he thought he had driven Ned Franks into a corner.

"How do you know a real fire from a painted one?" asked Ned.

"Well, it does not need much wit to tell the one from the other, if the painting were ever so clear," replied Stone; "the real fire warms us, of course; it aint a thing only to be looked at."

"And so real faith warms the heart, fills it with a glow of grateful love towards Him who gave himself for us. And that love makes us loathe and detest sin, because it is displeasing to our Lord,--the one thing which he hates. True faith and sin are just as much opposed to each other as fire and water. You said just now that you were afraid that people would live very careless lives if they hoped to be saved by faith. Do you find it to be so in your experience of men, Ben Stone? Those who are the most active in good works, the most steady in conduct, the best husbands, parents, neighbors, are they not the very people who have no hope of heaven but in the great Sacrifice for sin?"

"I can't deny that," answered Ben Stone, who knew that Ned Franks himself had a standard of duty that made his own appear but a low one. "But I can't see how that should be."

"Because every man _that hath that hope_ in Christ, _purifieth himself even as he is pure_;[J] because true faith is a gift of God's Holy Spirit, and it must be followed by two others,--the love of Christ and that _holiness without which no man shall see the Lord_.[K] As a good man once said, 'We come to Christ just as we are, but not to remain as we have been.' When we are once in the ark, Stone, it will lift us above the waters of wilful sin, as well as the waves of destruction; none serve God like those who have received the assurance,--'Go in peace; thy sins are forgiven thee.'"

The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Leyton. Franks respectfully rose, and gave up his chair to the young clergyman, and, at his request, brought the large Bible, which always occupied a conspicuous place in Ben's home. Very few words were exchanged, but Franks felt that the portion of Scripture selected by the curate was peculiarly well suited to deepen any impression which the late conversation might have left. It was the fifty-first psalm which Mr. Leyton read, almost without comment, by the sick-bed of one just beginning to have his eyes opened to the truth that he, too, had need to cry, _Have mercy upon me, O Lord! Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me!_

The eyes of Ben Stone were never again to be utterly closed to that truth; as life's day waned, a better light dawned on the invalid's soul.

[J] 1 John iii. 3.

[K] Hebrews xii. 10.

XXIII.

The Wife's Resolve.

On, on flowed the stream, round and round went the mill-wheel; and even so flows the current of time, and the circle of daily occupation goes round and round. Little Bessy, the miller's child, used every afternoon to watch Ned and his little band of workers going cheerfully to their toil; for the short cut to Wild Rose Hollow was through the wooded glen. Whistling and singing, laughing and shouting, the boys came along, and often a nosegay from a cottage garden, or a garland of flowers from the hedge, was left on the way for Bessy. The almshouses she always called _her_ cottages, and the boys who labored to repair them _her_ workmen; and the child's day-dream, as she sported by the stream, was to build a whole village of cottages, the prettiest that ever were seen, so that every poor old woman in England might have one with a garden all brilliant with flowers.