CHAPTERII.Myheart is sore as I write it, that “wee Davie” got ill. He began to refuse his food, and nothing would please him; then to get peevish and cross, so that he would hardly go to his father, except to kiss him with tearful cheeks, and then stretch out his hands with a cry for his mother. His mother nursed him on her knee, and rocked him, and walked with him, and sang to him her own household lullabies; and put him to bed, and lifted him up, and laid him down, and “fought” with him day and night, caring for neither food nor sleep, but only for her child’s ease and comfort. What lessons of self-sacrificing love was she thus unconsciously taught by her little sufferer! The physician was at last called in, who pronounced it “a bad case—averyserious case.” I forget the specific nature of the illness. The idea of danger to Davie had never entered the minds of his parents. The day on which William realized it, he was, as his fellow-workmen expressed it, “clean stupid.” They saw him make mistakes he had never made before, and knew it could not be from drink, but could not guess the cause. “I maun gang hame!” was his only explanation, when, at three o’clock, he put on his coat and stalked out of the smithy, like one utterly indifferent as to what the consequences might be to ploughs or harrows, wheels or horse-shoes. Yet taking an old fellow-workman aside, he whispered to him, “For auld friendship sake, Tam, tak’ charge this day o’ my wark.”“What ails Willie?” was the only question put by him and others, to which no reply could be given.It was on the afternoon of next day that “the minister” called. It must here be confessed that William was a rare attender of any church. The fact was, he had been hitherto rather sceptical in his tendencies; not that his doubts had ever assumed a systematic form, or had ever been expressed in any determined or dogmatic manner. But he had read Tom Paine, associated the political rights of man with rebellion against all old authorities, all of whom seemed to him to have denied them, and he had imbibed the idea at the old “philosophical” club, that ministers, especially those of the Established Church, were the enemies of all progress, had no sympathy with the working classes, were slaves to the aristocracy, preached as a mere profession and only for their pay, and had, moreover, a large share of hypocrisy and humbug in them. The visit of Dr. M‘Gavin was, therefore, very unexpected.When the Doctor entered the house, after a courteous request to be allowed to do so, as it was always his principle that the poorest man was entitled to the same respect as the man of rank or riches, he said, “I have just heard from some of your neighbours, whom I have been visiting, that your child is seriously unwell, and I thought you would excuse me intruding upon you to inquire for him.”William made him welcome and begged him to be seated. The call was specially acceptable to Jeanie. Old David, I should have mentioned, was an “elder” in a most worthy dissenting congregation, and his strong religious convictions and church views formed in his mind a chief objection to the marriage of his daughter with a man “who was not,” as he said, “even a member of any kirk.” Jeanie had often wished her husband to be more decided in what she felt herself to be a duty and a privilege. The visit of the Doctor, whose character was well known and much esteemed, was therefore peculiarly welcome to her. In a little while the Doctor was standing beside the little bed of the sufferer, who was asleep, and gently touching “wee Davie’s” hand, he said, in a quiet voice, to the smith, “My brother, I sincerely feel for you! I am myself a father, and have suffered losses in my family.”At the wordlosses, William winced, and moved from his place as if he felt uneasy.The Doctor quickly perceived it, and said, “I do not, of course, mean to express so rash and unkind an opinion as that you are to lose this very beautiful and interesting boy, but only to show you how I am enabled, from experience, to understand your anxiety, and to sympathize with you and your wife.” And noiselessly walking to the arm-chair near the fire, he there sat down, while William and Jeanie sat near him. After hearing with patience and attention the account from Jeanie of the beginning and progress of the child’s disease, he said, “Whatever happens, it is a comfort to know that God our Father is acquainted with all that you suffer, all you fear, and all you wish; and that Jesus Christ, our Brother, has a fellow-feeling with us in all our infirmities and trials.”“The Deity must know all,” said William, with a softened voice; “He is infinitely great and incomprehensible.”“Yes,” replied the Doctor; “and so great, that He can attend to our smallest concerns; yet not so incomprehensible but that a father’s heart can truly feel after Him, so as at least to find Him through His Son. Ah! my brother,” continued the Doctor, “what a comfort and strength the thought is to all men, and ought to be to you working men, and to you parents, especially with your dear child in sickness, that He who marks a sparrow fall, smitten by winter’s cold, and who feeds the wild beasts, is acquainted with us, with our most secret affairs, so that even, as it were, the hairs of our heads are numbered; that He who is the Father, Almighty Maker of the heavens and the earth, knows the things which we need; that He has in us, individually, an interest which is incomprehensible, only because His love to us is so in its depth; that He considers each of us, and weighs all His dealings towards us with a carefulness as great as if we alone existed in His universe; so that, as a father pitieth his children, He pitieth us, knowing our frames, andrememberingwe are dust.”William bent his head and was silent, while Jeanie listened with her whole soul.“It is not easy, minister,” said William, breaking silence, “for hard-wrought and tried men to believe that.”“Nor for any man,” replied the Doctor. “I find it very difficult to believe it myself as a real thing, yet I know it to be true; and,” he continued, with a low and affectionate voice, “perhaps we never could have known it and believed it at all, unless God had taught it to us by the life of His own Son, who came to reveal Him. But as I seeHimtaking up little children into His loving arms, when others would keep them away who did not understand what perfect love was, and as I see in such doings how love cannot but come down and meet the wants of its smallest and weakest object, oh! it is then I learn in what consists the real greatness of God, ‘whose name is Love.’” The Doctor paused for a moment, and then went on: “Because, my brother, I see in this love of Christ more than the love of a good man merely; I see revealed in it the loving tenderness towards us and ours of that God whom no eye hath seen or can see, but whom the eye of the spirit can perceive; for, as Jesus said, ‘He who seethMe, seeth the Father.’”“I believe a’ ye say, Doctor,” said Jeanie meekly. “Iwadna like to keep my bairn frae Him; but, oh! sir, I hope—I hope He wull lift him up, and do to us now as He did to many distressed ones while on earth!”“I hope,” said the Doctor, “God will spare your boy; but you must ask Him sincerely so to do, and you must trust Him, and commit your child into His hands without fear, and acquiesce in His doing towards you and your boy as He pleases.”“That is hard!” remarked William.“Hard?” mildly replied the Doctor. “What would you choose else, had you the power of doing so, rather than of acquiescing in the will of God? Would you trust your own heart, for instance, more than the heart of God? or would you rather have your child’s fate decided by any other on earth than by yourself?”“No, for I know how I love the boy.”“But God loves him much more than you do; for he belongs to God, and was made by Him and for Him.”“Excuse me, Doctor, but yet I canna thole the thocht o’ parting wi’ him!” said Jeanie.“May God spare him to you, my friends!” replied the minister, “if it be for your good and his. But,” he added, “there are worse things than death.”This remark, made in almost an under voice, was followed by silence for a few moments. The Doctor’s eyes were cast down as if in meditation or prayer.“Death is hard enough!” said the smith.“But hard chiefly as a sign of something worse,” continued the minister. “Pardon me for asking you such questions as these:—What if your child grew up an enemy to you? What if he never returned your love? What if he never would trust you? What if he never would speak to you? What if he always disobeyed you? Would this not bring down your gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?”“Eh! sir,” said Jeanie, “thatwouldbe waur than death!”“But excuse me, Doctor, for just remarking,” interrupted William, “that I never knew any child with a good parent who would so act. I really don’t think it possible that our ain wee Davie, even with our poor bringing up, would ever come tothat. It would be so unnatural.”“God knows, Thorburn,” said the Doctor. “There are many unnatural things in this world. Listen to me kindly; for I sincerely thank you for having allowed one who is a stranger to speak so frankly to you, and for having heard me with such considerate patience.”“Oh, gang on, gang on, Doctor; I like to hear you,” said Jeanie.“Certainly, sir,” added the smith.“Well, then,” said the Doctor, “I have no wish to appear even to find fault with you at such a time. I feel more disposed to weep with you in your sorrow than to search your heart or life for sin. But I feel at such solemn times as these, solemn to you and to your wife, that the voice of a Father is speaking to you in the rod, and it ought to be heard; and that His hand is ministering discipline in time, and you ought to give Him reverence, and be in subjection to the Father of our spirits that you may live; and therefore, in order to impart to you more strength and comfort in the end, let me beseech of you, after I am gone, to consider candidly whether you have not perhaps been acting towardsyourFather in heaven in the very way in which did your child grow up and act towards you would be reckoned as worse than death. Therefore honestly ask yourselves whether there has been from you love to God your Father in return for His love to you. Has there been cordial friendship or the reverse? Confidence or distrust? Disobedience or rebellion? Communion in frank, believing, and affectionate prayer, or silence? I do not ask you to reply to me; but I wish you and myself, as loving fathers of our children, to ask whether we have felt and acted towards the best and most loving of fathers as we wish our children to feel and act towards ourselves.” The Doctor paused for a moment. Jeanie shook her head slowly, and the smith stared with her at the fire. “My friends, we have all sinned, and this is our sin of sins, that we havenot known nor loved our Father, but have been forgetful of Him, strange, shy to Him; yes, we have been cold, heartless, prodigal, disobedient children.” Another short pause, and the Doctor then spoke on in the same quiet and loving voice—“But whatever we are or have been, let us hope in God, or we perish. Every sinner is doomed, but no man is doomed to be a sinner. God is our Father still; and just as you both have nourished and cherished your dear boy, and have been loving when he knew it not, nor could understand that great love in your hearts which, sure am I, will never grow cold but in the grave, so has it been with God to us His children. Open your hearts to His love, as you would open your eyes to the light which has been ever shining. Believe it as the grand reality, as you would have your boy open his heart to and believe in your love when he awakens from his sleep. Your love, as I have said, is deep, real to your boy, irrespective of his knowledge or return of it. But what is this to the love of God? ‘Hereinis love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.’ Let us, my friends, never rest till we are enabled in some degree to see and to appreciate this, and to say, ‘We have known and believed the love which God has to us.’”“Dr. M‘Gavin,” said William, “you have spoken to me as no man ever did before, and you will believe me, I am sure, when I say that I respect you and myself too much to flatter you. But there is surely a meaning in my love to that boy which I never saw before. It begins to glimmer on me.”“Thank God if it does! But I do not speak to you—and this you must give me credit for—as if it were my profession only; I speak to you as a man, a father, and a brother, wishing you to share the good which God has given to me and gives to you. So I tell you again, and would repeat it and repeat it, that if we would only have to God that simple confidence, hearty love, frank, cheerful communion, peace and joy, which we wish our children to have towards us, we would experience a true regeneration. And what was the whole life of Jesus Christ save a life of this blessed, confiding, obedient, childlike sonship? Oh, that we would learn of Him, and grow up in likeness to Him! But this ignorance of God is worse than death. For if knowledge be life, spiritual ignorance is death. My good friends, I have been led to give you a regular sermon!” said the Doctor, smiling; “but I really cannot help it. To use common everyday language, I think our treatment of God has been shameful, unjust, and disgraceful on the part of men with reason, conscience, and heart. I do not express myself half so strongly as I feel. I am ashamed and disgusted with myself, and all the members of the human family, for what we feel, and feelnot, to such a Father. If it were not for what the one Elder Brother was and did, the whole family would have been disgraced and ruined most righteously!”“Doctor,” said William, with a trembling voice, “thank ye, thank ye, from my heart. I confess I have been very careless in going to the church, but—”“We may talk of that again, if you allow me to return to-morrow. Yet,” continued the Doctor, pointing to the child, “God in His mercy never leaves Himself without a witness. Look at your child, and listen to your own heart, and remember all I have said, and you will perhaps discover that though you tried it you could not fly from the Word of the Lord. A father’s voice by a child has been preaching to you. Yes, Thorburn, when in love God gave you that child, He sent an eloquent and holy missionary to your house to preach the gospel of what our Father is, and what we as children ought to be. Only listen to that sermon, and you will soon be prepared to listen to others.”The Doctor rose to depart. Before doing so, he asked permission to pray, which was cheerfully granted. Wishing to strengthen the faith of those sufferers in prayer, he first said, “If Godcannothear and answer prayer, He is not supreme; if Hewillnot, He is not our Father. But blessed be His name, His own Son, who knew Him perfectly, who Himself prayed, and was heard in that He prayed, has enabled our parental hearts, from our love to our own children, to feel the beauty and truth of this His own argument, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him!’” And then the Doctor poured forth a simple, loving, and most sympathizing prayer, in which he made himself one with his fellow-worshippers, and expressed to a common Father the anguish of the hearts around him. When it ended, he went to the bed, and looked at the sleeping child, touched its white hand, and said, “God bless your little one! May this sleep be for health!”“It’s the first sleep,” said Jeanie, “he has had for a lang time. It may be a turn in his complaint.”Without waiting to force the parents to give him an immediate reply to what he had taught them, the Doctor shook them warmly by the hand, and gazed on them with a world of interest in his eyes, asking them only kindly to consider what he had said. The silence which ensued for a few minutes after his absence, as William and Jeanie returned from the door and stood beside the bed, was broken by the smith observing, “I am glad that man came to our house, Jeanie. Yon was indeed preaching that a man can understand and canna forget. It was wee Davie did it.”“That’s true,” said Jeanie; “thank God for’t!” And after gazing on the sleeping child, she added, “Is he no’ bonnie? I dinna wunner that sic a bairn should bring gude to the house.”That night William had thoughts in his heart which burned with a redder glow than the coals upon the smithy fire! I am much mistaken if he did not begin to feel that God had sent him a home missionary in “wee Davie.”
Myheart is sore as I write it, that “wee Davie” got ill. He began to refuse his food, and nothing would please him; then to get peevish and cross, so that he would hardly go to his father, except to kiss him with tearful cheeks, and then stretch out his hands with a cry for his mother. His mother nursed him on her knee, and rocked him, and walked with him, and sang to him her own household lullabies; and put him to bed, and lifted him up, and laid him down, and “fought” with him day and night, caring for neither food nor sleep, but only for her child’s ease and comfort. What lessons of self-sacrificing love was she thus unconsciously taught by her little sufferer! The physician was at last called in, who pronounced it “a bad case—averyserious case.” I forget the specific nature of the illness. The idea of danger to Davie had never entered the minds of his parents. The day on which William realized it, he was, as his fellow-workmen expressed it, “clean stupid.” They saw him make mistakes he had never made before, and knew it could not be from drink, but could not guess the cause. “I maun gang hame!” was his only explanation, when, at three o’clock, he put on his coat and stalked out of the smithy, like one utterly indifferent as to what the consequences might be to ploughs or harrows, wheels or horse-shoes. Yet taking an old fellow-workman aside, he whispered to him, “For auld friendship sake, Tam, tak’ charge this day o’ my wark.”
“What ails Willie?” was the only question put by him and others, to which no reply could be given.
It was on the afternoon of next day that “the minister” called. It must here be confessed that William was a rare attender of any church. The fact was, he had been hitherto rather sceptical in his tendencies; not that his doubts had ever assumed a systematic form, or had ever been expressed in any determined or dogmatic manner. But he had read Tom Paine, associated the political rights of man with rebellion against all old authorities, all of whom seemed to him to have denied them, and he had imbibed the idea at the old “philosophical” club, that ministers, especially those of the Established Church, were the enemies of all progress, had no sympathy with the working classes, were slaves to the aristocracy, preached as a mere profession and only for their pay, and had, moreover, a large share of hypocrisy and humbug in them. The visit of Dr. M‘Gavin was, therefore, very unexpected.
When the Doctor entered the house, after a courteous request to be allowed to do so, as it was always his principle that the poorest man was entitled to the same respect as the man of rank or riches, he said, “I have just heard from some of your neighbours, whom I have been visiting, that your child is seriously unwell, and I thought you would excuse me intruding upon you to inquire for him.”
William made him welcome and begged him to be seated. The call was specially acceptable to Jeanie. Old David, I should have mentioned, was an “elder” in a most worthy dissenting congregation, and his strong religious convictions and church views formed in his mind a chief objection to the marriage of his daughter with a man “who was not,” as he said, “even a member of any kirk.” Jeanie had often wished her husband to be more decided in what she felt herself to be a duty and a privilege. The visit of the Doctor, whose character was well known and much esteemed, was therefore peculiarly welcome to her. In a little while the Doctor was standing beside the little bed of the sufferer, who was asleep, and gently touching “wee Davie’s” hand, he said, in a quiet voice, to the smith, “My brother, I sincerely feel for you! I am myself a father, and have suffered losses in my family.”
At the wordlosses, William winced, and moved from his place as if he felt uneasy.
The Doctor quickly perceived it, and said, “I do not, of course, mean to express so rash and unkind an opinion as that you are to lose this very beautiful and interesting boy, but only to show you how I am enabled, from experience, to understand your anxiety, and to sympathize with you and your wife.” And noiselessly walking to the arm-chair near the fire, he there sat down, while William and Jeanie sat near him. After hearing with patience and attention the account from Jeanie of the beginning and progress of the child’s disease, he said, “Whatever happens, it is a comfort to know that God our Father is acquainted with all that you suffer, all you fear, and all you wish; and that Jesus Christ, our Brother, has a fellow-feeling with us in all our infirmities and trials.”
“The Deity must know all,” said William, with a softened voice; “He is infinitely great and incomprehensible.”
“Yes,” replied the Doctor; “and so great, that He can attend to our smallest concerns; yet not so incomprehensible but that a father’s heart can truly feel after Him, so as at least to find Him through His Son. Ah! my brother,” continued the Doctor, “what a comfort and strength the thought is to all men, and ought to be to you working men, and to you parents, especially with your dear child in sickness, that He who marks a sparrow fall, smitten by winter’s cold, and who feeds the wild beasts, is acquainted with us, with our most secret affairs, so that even, as it were, the hairs of our heads are numbered; that He who is the Father, Almighty Maker of the heavens and the earth, knows the things which we need; that He has in us, individually, an interest which is incomprehensible, only because His love to us is so in its depth; that He considers each of us, and weighs all His dealings towards us with a carefulness as great as if we alone existed in His universe; so that, as a father pitieth his children, He pitieth us, knowing our frames, andrememberingwe are dust.”
William bent his head and was silent, while Jeanie listened with her whole soul.
“It is not easy, minister,” said William, breaking silence, “for hard-wrought and tried men to believe that.”
“Nor for any man,” replied the Doctor. “I find it very difficult to believe it myself as a real thing, yet I know it to be true; and,” he continued, with a low and affectionate voice, “perhaps we never could have known it and believed it at all, unless God had taught it to us by the life of His own Son, who came to reveal Him. But as I seeHimtaking up little children into His loving arms, when others would keep them away who did not understand what perfect love was, and as I see in such doings how love cannot but come down and meet the wants of its smallest and weakest object, oh! it is then I learn in what consists the real greatness of God, ‘whose name is Love.’” The Doctor paused for a moment, and then went on: “Because, my brother, I see in this love of Christ more than the love of a good man merely; I see revealed in it the loving tenderness towards us and ours of that God whom no eye hath seen or can see, but whom the eye of the spirit can perceive; for, as Jesus said, ‘He who seethMe, seeth the Father.’”
“I believe a’ ye say, Doctor,” said Jeanie meekly. “Iwadna like to keep my bairn frae Him; but, oh! sir, I hope—I hope He wull lift him up, and do to us now as He did to many distressed ones while on earth!”
“I hope,” said the Doctor, “God will spare your boy; but you must ask Him sincerely so to do, and you must trust Him, and commit your child into His hands without fear, and acquiesce in His doing towards you and your boy as He pleases.”
“That is hard!” remarked William.
“Hard?” mildly replied the Doctor. “What would you choose else, had you the power of doing so, rather than of acquiescing in the will of God? Would you trust your own heart, for instance, more than the heart of God? or would you rather have your child’s fate decided by any other on earth than by yourself?”
“No, for I know how I love the boy.”
“But God loves him much more than you do; for he belongs to God, and was made by Him and for Him.”
“Excuse me, Doctor, but yet I canna thole the thocht o’ parting wi’ him!” said Jeanie.
“May God spare him to you, my friends!” replied the minister, “if it be for your good and his. But,” he added, “there are worse things than death.”
This remark, made in almost an under voice, was followed by silence for a few moments. The Doctor’s eyes were cast down as if in meditation or prayer.
“Death is hard enough!” said the smith.
“But hard chiefly as a sign of something worse,” continued the minister. “Pardon me for asking you such questions as these:—What if your child grew up an enemy to you? What if he never returned your love? What if he never would trust you? What if he never would speak to you? What if he always disobeyed you? Would this not bring down your gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?”
“Eh! sir,” said Jeanie, “thatwouldbe waur than death!”
“But excuse me, Doctor, for just remarking,” interrupted William, “that I never knew any child with a good parent who would so act. I really don’t think it possible that our ain wee Davie, even with our poor bringing up, would ever come tothat. It would be so unnatural.”
“God knows, Thorburn,” said the Doctor. “There are many unnatural things in this world. Listen to me kindly; for I sincerely thank you for having allowed one who is a stranger to speak so frankly to you, and for having heard me with such considerate patience.”
“Oh, gang on, gang on, Doctor; I like to hear you,” said Jeanie.
“Certainly, sir,” added the smith.
“Well, then,” said the Doctor, “I have no wish to appear even to find fault with you at such a time. I feel more disposed to weep with you in your sorrow than to search your heart or life for sin. But I feel at such solemn times as these, solemn to you and to your wife, that the voice of a Father is speaking to you in the rod, and it ought to be heard; and that His hand is ministering discipline in time, and you ought to give Him reverence, and be in subjection to the Father of our spirits that you may live; and therefore, in order to impart to you more strength and comfort in the end, let me beseech of you, after I am gone, to consider candidly whether you have not perhaps been acting towardsyourFather in heaven in the very way in which did your child grow up and act towards you would be reckoned as worse than death. Therefore honestly ask yourselves whether there has been from you love to God your Father in return for His love to you. Has there been cordial friendship or the reverse? Confidence or distrust? Disobedience or rebellion? Communion in frank, believing, and affectionate prayer, or silence? I do not ask you to reply to me; but I wish you and myself, as loving fathers of our children, to ask whether we have felt and acted towards the best and most loving of fathers as we wish our children to feel and act towards ourselves.” The Doctor paused for a moment. Jeanie shook her head slowly, and the smith stared with her at the fire. “My friends, we have all sinned, and this is our sin of sins, that we havenot known nor loved our Father, but have been forgetful of Him, strange, shy to Him; yes, we have been cold, heartless, prodigal, disobedient children.” Another short pause, and the Doctor then spoke on in the same quiet and loving voice—“But whatever we are or have been, let us hope in God, or we perish. Every sinner is doomed, but no man is doomed to be a sinner. God is our Father still; and just as you both have nourished and cherished your dear boy, and have been loving when he knew it not, nor could understand that great love in your hearts which, sure am I, will never grow cold but in the grave, so has it been with God to us His children. Open your hearts to His love, as you would open your eyes to the light which has been ever shining. Believe it as the grand reality, as you would have your boy open his heart to and believe in your love when he awakens from his sleep. Your love, as I have said, is deep, real to your boy, irrespective of his knowledge or return of it. But what is this to the love of God? ‘Hereinis love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.’ Let us, my friends, never rest till we are enabled in some degree to see and to appreciate this, and to say, ‘We have known and believed the love which God has to us.’”
“Dr. M‘Gavin,” said William, “you have spoken to me as no man ever did before, and you will believe me, I am sure, when I say that I respect you and myself too much to flatter you. But there is surely a meaning in my love to that boy which I never saw before. It begins to glimmer on me.”
“Thank God if it does! But I do not speak to you—and this you must give me credit for—as if it were my profession only; I speak to you as a man, a father, and a brother, wishing you to share the good which God has given to me and gives to you. So I tell you again, and would repeat it and repeat it, that if we would only have to God that simple confidence, hearty love, frank, cheerful communion, peace and joy, which we wish our children to have towards us, we would experience a true regeneration. And what was the whole life of Jesus Christ save a life of this blessed, confiding, obedient, childlike sonship? Oh, that we would learn of Him, and grow up in likeness to Him! But this ignorance of God is worse than death. For if knowledge be life, spiritual ignorance is death. My good friends, I have been led to give you a regular sermon!” said the Doctor, smiling; “but I really cannot help it. To use common everyday language, I think our treatment of God has been shameful, unjust, and disgraceful on the part of men with reason, conscience, and heart. I do not express myself half so strongly as I feel. I am ashamed and disgusted with myself, and all the members of the human family, for what we feel, and feelnot, to such a Father. If it were not for what the one Elder Brother was and did, the whole family would have been disgraced and ruined most righteously!”
“Doctor,” said William, with a trembling voice, “thank ye, thank ye, from my heart. I confess I have been very careless in going to the church, but—”
“We may talk of that again, if you allow me to return to-morrow. Yet,” continued the Doctor, pointing to the child, “God in His mercy never leaves Himself without a witness. Look at your child, and listen to your own heart, and remember all I have said, and you will perhaps discover that though you tried it you could not fly from the Word of the Lord. A father’s voice by a child has been preaching to you. Yes, Thorburn, when in love God gave you that child, He sent an eloquent and holy missionary to your house to preach the gospel of what our Father is, and what we as children ought to be. Only listen to that sermon, and you will soon be prepared to listen to others.”
The Doctor rose to depart. Before doing so, he asked permission to pray, which was cheerfully granted. Wishing to strengthen the faith of those sufferers in prayer, he first said, “If Godcannothear and answer prayer, He is not supreme; if Hewillnot, He is not our Father. But blessed be His name, His own Son, who knew Him perfectly, who Himself prayed, and was heard in that He prayed, has enabled our parental hearts, from our love to our own children, to feel the beauty and truth of this His own argument, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him!’” And then the Doctor poured forth a simple, loving, and most sympathizing prayer, in which he made himself one with his fellow-worshippers, and expressed to a common Father the anguish of the hearts around him. When it ended, he went to the bed, and looked at the sleeping child, touched its white hand, and said, “God bless your little one! May this sleep be for health!”
“It’s the first sleep,” said Jeanie, “he has had for a lang time. It may be a turn in his complaint.”
Without waiting to force the parents to give him an immediate reply to what he had taught them, the Doctor shook them warmly by the hand, and gazed on them with a world of interest in his eyes, asking them only kindly to consider what he had said. The silence which ensued for a few minutes after his absence, as William and Jeanie returned from the door and stood beside the bed, was broken by the smith observing, “I am glad that man came to our house, Jeanie. Yon was indeed preaching that a man can understand and canna forget. It was wee Davie did it.”
“That’s true,” said Jeanie; “thank God for’t!” And after gazing on the sleeping child, she added, “Is he no’ bonnie? I dinna wunner that sic a bairn should bring gude to the house.”
That night William had thoughts in his heart which burned with a redder glow than the coals upon the smithy fire! I am much mistaken if he did not begin to feel that God had sent him a home missionary in “wee Davie.”