 | Uncle Sam's emancipation |  |
The Two Bibles.
It was a splendid room. Rich curtains swept
down to the floor in graceful folds, half excluding
the light, and shedding it in soft hues over the
fine old paintings on the walls, and over the broad
mirrors that reflect all that taste can accomplish
by the hand of wealth. Books, the rarest and
most costly, were around, in every form of gorgeous
binding and gilding, and among them, glittering
in ornament, lay a magnificent Bible—a
Bible too beautiful in its appearance, too showy, too
ornamental, ever to have been meant to be read—
a Bible which every visitor should take up, and
exclaim, “What a beautiful edition! what superb
binding!” and then lay it down again.
And the master of the house was lounging on a
sofa, looking over a late review—for he was a man
of leisure, taste, and reading—but then, as to
reading the Bible!—that forms, we suppose, no
part of the pretensions of a man of letters. The
Bible—certainly he considered it a very respectable
an admirable book of moral precepts—but then,
as to its divine origin he had not exactly made up
his mind—some parts appeared strange and inconsistent
to his reason, others were very revolting
to his taste—true, he had never studied it
very attentively, yet such was his general impression
about it—but on the whole, he thought it well
enough to keep an elegant copy of it on his drawing-room
table.
So much for one picture, now for another.
Come with us into this little dark alley, and up
a flight of ruinous stairs. It is a bitter night, and
the wind and snow might drive through the crevices
of the poor room, were it not that careful
hands have stopped them with paper or cloth.
But for all this little carefulness, the room is bitter
cold—cold even with those few decaying brands
on the hearth, which that sorrowful woman is trying
to kindle with her breath. Do you see that
pale little thin girl, with large bright eyes, who is
crouching so near her mother? hark! how she
coughs—now listen:
“Mary, my dear child,” says the mother,
“do keep that shawl close about you, you are
speaks.
“No, mother, not very,” replies the child, again
relapsing into that hollow, ominous cough—“I
wish you wouldn't make me always wear your
shawl when it is cold, mother.”
“Dear child, you need it most—how you cough
to-night,” replies the mother, “it really don't seem
right for me to send you up that long street, now
your shoes have grown so poor; I must go myself
after this.”
“Oh! mother, you must stay with the baby;
what if he should have one of those dreadful fits
while you are gone; no, I can go very well, I have
got used to the cold, now.”
“But, mother, I'm cold,” says a little voice
from the scanty bed in the corner, “mayn't I get
up and come to the fire?”
“Dear child, it would not warm you—it is
very cold here, and I can't make any more fire
to-night.”
“Why can't you, mother? there are four whole
sticks of wood in the box, do put one on, and let's
get warm once.”
“No, my dear little Henry,” says the mother,
I haven't any money to get more.”
And now wakens the sick baby in the little cradle,
and mother and daughter are both for some
time busy in attempting to supply its little wants,
and lulling it again to sleep.
And now look you well at that mother. Six
months ago she had a husband, whose earnings
procured for her both the necessaries and comforts
of life—her children were clothed, fed, and
schooled, without thought of hers. But husbandless
and alone, in the heart of a great busy city,
with feeble health, and only the precarious resources
of her needle, she had come rapidly down
from comfort to extreme poverty. Look at her
now, as she is to-night. She knows full well that
the pale bright-eyed girl, whose hollow cough constantly
rings in her ears, is far from well. She
knows that cold, and hunger, and exposure of
every kind, are daily and surely wearing away her
life, and yet what can she do? Poor soul, how
many times has she calculated all her little resources,
to see if she could pay a doctor, and get
medicine for Mary—yet all in vain. She knows
that timely medicine, ease, fresh air, and warmth,
things are out of the question for her. She feels,
too, as a mother would feel, when she sees her
once rosy, happy little boy, becoming pale, and
anxious, and fretful; and even when he teases her
most, she only stops her work a moment, and
strokes his poor little thin cheeks, and thinks what
a laughing, happy little fellow he once was, till
she has not a heart to reprove him. And all this
day she has toiled with a sick and fretful baby in
her lap, and her little, shivering, hungry boy at
her side, whom poor Mary's patient artifices cannot
always keep quiet; she has toiled over the last
piece of work which she can procure from the
shop, for the man has told her that after this he
can furnish no more. And the little money that
is to come from this is already proportioned out
in her mind, and after that she has no human
prospect of more.
But yet the woman's face is patient, quiet, firm.
Nay, you may even see in her suffering eye something
like peace; and whence comes it? I will
tell you.
There is a Bible in that room, as well as in the
rich man's apartment. Not splendidly bound, to
worn book.
Hearken now, while she says to her children,
“Listen to me, my dear children, and I will read
you something out of this book. `Let not your
heart be troubled, in my Father's house are many
mansions.' So you see, my children, we shall not
always live in this little, cold, dark room. Jesus
Christ has promised to take us to a better home.”
“Shall we be warm there, all day?” says the little
boy earnestly, “and shall we have enough to eat?”
“Yes, dear child,” says the mother, “listen to
what the Bible says, `They shall hunger no more,
neither thirst any more, for the Lamb which is in
the midst of them shall feed them; and God shall
wipe away all tears from their eyes.'”
“I am glad of that,” said little Mary, “for
mother, I never can bear to see you cry.”
“But, mother,” says little Henry, “won't God
send us something to eat to-morrow?”
“See,” says the mother, “what the Bible says,
`Seek ye not what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall
drink, neither be of anxious mind. For your Father
knoweth that ye have need of these things.
“But, mother,” says little Mary, “if God is
so poor for?”
“Nay,” says the mother, “our Lord Jesus
Christ was as poor as we are, and God certainly
loved him.”
“Was he, mother?”
“Yes, children, you remember how he said,
`The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.'
And it tells us more than once, that Jesus was
hungry when there was none to give him food.”
“Oh! mother, what should we do without the
Bible!” says Mary.
Now if the rich man who had not yet made up
his mind what to think of the Bible, should visit
this poor woman, and ask her on what she grounded
her belief of its truth, what could she answer?
Could she give the argument from miracles and
prophecy? Can she account for all the changes
which might have taken place in it through translators
and copyists, and prove that we have a
genuine and uncorrupted version? Not she! But
how then does she know that it is true? How,
say you? How does she know that she has warm
life-blood in her heart? How does she know that
there is such a thing as air and sunshine?
She does not believe these things, she knows
them; and in like manner, with a deep heart-consciousness,
she is certain that the words of her
Bible are truth and life. Is it by reasoning that
the frightened child, bewildered in the dark, knows
its mother's voice? No! Nor is it by reasoning
that the forlorn and distressed human heart knows
the voice of its Saviour, and is still.
Go when the child is lying in its mother's arms,
and looking up trustfully in her face, and see if
you can puzzle him with metaphysical difficulties
about personal identity, until you can make him
think that it is not his mother. Your reasonings
may be conclusive—your arguments unanswerable—but
after all, the child sees his mother there,
and feels her arms around him, and his quiet unreasoning
belief on the subject, is precisely of the
same kind which the little child of Christianity
feels in the existence of his Saviour, and the reality
of all those blessed truths which he has told in his
word.
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