第43章

"Then what does he live for?"

Davie was once more silent.

"Do you think if a man died for a thing, he would be likely to forget it the minute he rose again?"

"No, sir."

"Do you not think he would just go on doing the same thing as before?"

"I do, sir."

"Then, as he died to take away our sins, he lives to take them away!"

"Yes, sir."

"What are sins, Davie?"

"Bad things, sir."

"Yes; the bad things we think, and the bad things we feel, and the bad things we do. Have you any sins, Davie?"

"Yes; I am very wicked."

"Oh! are you? How do you know it?"

"Arkie told me."

"What is being wicked?"

"Doing bad things."

"What bad things do you do?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Then you don't know that you are wicked; you only know that Arkie told you so!"

Lady Arctura drew herself up; but Donal was too intent to perceive the offence he had given.

"I will tell you," Donal went on, "something you did wicked to-day."

Davie grew rosy red. "When we find out one wicked thing we do, it is a beginning to finding out all the wicked things we do. Some people would rather not find them out, but have them hidden from themselves and from God too. But let us find them out, everyone of them, that we may ask Jesus to take them away, and help Jesus to take them away, by fighting them with all our strength.--This morning you pulled the little pup's ears till he screamed." Davie hung his head. "You stopped a while, and then did it again! So I knew it wasn't that you didn't know. Is that a thing Jesus would have done when he was a little boy?"

"No, sir."

"Why?"

"Because it would have been wrong."

"I suspect, rather, it is because he would have loved the little pup. He didn't have to think about its being wrong. He loves every kind of living thing. He wants to take away your sin because he loves you. He doesn't merely want to make you not cruel to the little pup, but to take away the wrong think that doesn't love him.

He wants to make you love every living creature. Davie, Jesus came out of the grave to make us good."

Tears were flowing down Davie's checks.

"The lesson 's done, Davie," said Donal, and rose and went, leaving him with lady Arctura.

But ere he reached the door, he turned with sudden impulse, and said:--

"Davie, I love Jesus Christ and his Father more than I can tell you--more than I can put in words--more than I can think; and if you love me you will mind what Jesus tells you."

"What a good man you must be, Mr. Grant!--Mustn't he, Arkie?" sobbed Davie.

Donal laughed.

"What, Davie!" he exclaimed. "You think me very good for loving the only good person in the whole world! That is very odd! Why, Davie, I should be the most contemptible creature, knowing him as I do, not to love him with all my heart--yes, with all the big heart I shall have one day when he has done making me."

"Is he making you still, Mr. Grant? I thought you were grown up!"

"Well, I don't think he will make me any taller," answered Donal.

"But the live part of me--the thing I love you with, the thing I think about God with, the thing I love poetry with, the thing I read the Bible with--that thing God keeps on making bigger and bigger. I do not know where it will stop, I only know where it will not stop.

That thing is me, and God will keep on making it bigger to all eternity, though he has not even got it into the right shape yet."

"Why is he so long about it?"

"I don't think he is long about it; but he could do it quicker if I were as good as by this time I ought to be, with the father and mother I have, and all my long hours on the hillsides with my New Testament and the sheep. I prayed to God on the hill and in the fields, and he heard me, Davie, and made me see the foolishness of many things, and the grandeur and beauty of other things. Davie, God wants to give you the whole world, and everything in it. When you have begun to do the things Jesus tells you, then you will be my brother, and we shall both be his little brothers, and the sons of his Father God, and so the heirs of all things."

With that he turned again and went.

The tears were rolling down Arctura's face without her being aware of it.

"He is a well-meaning man," she said to herself, "but dreadfully mistaken: the Bible says believe, not do!"

The poor girl, though she read her bible regularly, was so blinded by the dust and ashes of her teaching, that she knew very little of what was actually in it. The most significant things slipped from her as if they were merest words without shadow of meaning or intent: they did not support the doctrines she had been taught, and therefore said nothing to her. The story of Christ and the appeals of those who had handled the Word of Life had another end in view than making people understand how God arranged matters to save them.

God would have us live: if we live we cannot but know; all the knowledge in the universe could not make us live. Obedience is the road to all things--the only way in which to grow able to trust him.

Love and faith and obedience are sides of the same prism.

Regularly after that, lady Arctura came to the lesson--always intending to object as soon as it was over. But always before the end came, Donal had said something that went so to the heart of the honest girl that she could say nothing. As if she too had been a pupil, as indeed she was, far more than either knew, she would rise when Davie rose, and go away with him. But it was to go alone into the garden, or to her room, not seldom finding herself wishing things true which yet she counted terribly dangerous: listening to them might not she as well as Davie fail miserably of escape from the wrath to come?