SOME MIRACLES

"You orter been here a short while ago," Jim chuckled, as he addressed his friend Bob McCartney, who entered soon after Mr. Jewett had left. "We had a queer one here who believed you and I and the rest o' the sinners were out o' sight of the Lord. Told us the Lord didn't know nothing except the good and this world was just shadows and delusions."

"Well," said Bob, "there's a few real things left and last night Harry Marchant got up agin one of 'em. Towards night I met him on the Bowring Road. He motioned to me afore I got to him to keep my side o' the road. He acted just as though he had leprosy. When he got within hearing he shouted:

"'Bob, you never did me a bad turn and I'm not agoin' to do you one. You keep your side of the road and don't ever speak to me when I go by. I was comin' along a spell back and I met some skunks, not one, but a mother and father and two children. They was walkin' separate and I tried to dodge, but I couldn't dodge four ways at the same time. I'm goin' home now to bury my clothes, scour my skin and try to forget myself.' Now, Harry Marchant didn't meet no shadow and he was bathed in the very oil o' gloom."

We all laughed, but Jim was the first to sober up. "See here, boys, we mustn't poke fun at the queer one. Some folks probably get a blessing without thinking straight. Mebbe he's on the way to a great faith. There's more'n one way across the sea and we all got to go thru the same narrows to get into the Harbor.

"There's this much to be said in favor of the fellow, he's beginning to read his Bible. Seems strange though that outen the same book men draw so many different things. Then, it was written by many a different one and it's intended for all. Perhaps when we get too far astray He'll send us another Son and a new Book.

"Though I don't believe in his notion of getting rid of a real world with real things in it, an' pushin' God out of this world, I do believe in miracles. Now some folks come to a miracle in the Bible and they sit down in front of it like the Marys at the tomb and they never are able to roll it away or pass it. Just beyond that miracle is a great truth, there always is, and these folks never get beyond wondering and doubting about how it happened to be there.

"Take the story of the miracle that happened to Jonah. I don't pretend to say whether he ever had a berth in a real whale or not. It may be the boat was called a whale and he took passage on her against orders. But either way it's a beautiful truth we find, after we get over worrying about the whale. The point, I take it, is, the man was trying to run away from his duty and the story tells how he fared and how he came back and was established as a prophet. A good many folks seem to be still worrying about the whale and forgetting all about the truth. I'm not sayin' it didn't happen. It could a happened and stranger things have happened, I am only saying that whatever you believe about the whale the truth is there to help just the same.

"I don't like the way a good many folks talk about miracles, anyhow. They look at 'em once or twice and then they say that it couldn't a happened. Why it doesn't follow because the Lord couldn't work a miracle on them He couldn't on somebody else. It may only prove they was too hardened in their sins and their doubts to be worked on, at least, for the present. Then it may be the thing has happened, right before their eyes only when it comes to great things and spiritual facts they are more'n half blind.

"Raisin' from the dead I suppose would be considered the biggest miracle of all, and perhaps it's about the hardest to believe. But at some time or other, I have never been able to tell when, and I don't knows any one else can either, the Lord God puts a soul into every child of His. It is something that a father or a mother cannot put in of themselves, and it is something that can't be destroyed. A good many have tried to destroy their souls; but it's my belief they haven't succeeded, not any one of all that have tried. Now, if He is the only one that can put a soul into this earth house, He's the one that knows best when to take it out, and it might be very easy, on an important occasion, for Him to slip the soul back in again for a few days. He did that in the case of His Divine Son and the Son did it on several occasions, when He thought the soul ought to keep in its earth house a while longer."

"Did you ever hear anything about reincarnation, Jim?" I inquired.

"Big word, isn't it," said Jim, immediately giving full attention to my subject. "No, I don't know as ever I did. What is it, a doctrine or a medicine?"

"It's the belief, Jim, that souls return to the earth again in new bodies. Some believe that only in animals and lower forms does this happen and others that even when souls have been on this earth, they return again to complete their experiences. I was thinking that your idea of the ease with which God might slip in or out a soul might make it easy for you to believe in this rather strange doctrine of reincarnation. What do you think of it?"

"Sounds fairly sensible to me, on first thought. I don't remember anything in the Book about it, though I don't pretend to say I know all that's in that Book. It might explain some things that's hard to explain now with our present eye-sight. There's old lady Farrar, that I was a'telling you about, who cured herself of weakness and was about twenty years younger at eighty-five than eighty. She never had any real luck or any great blessings until she cured herself. She was one of the unfortunate kind, most always ailin' and when you went to see her she had some new misfortune to tell you about. She lost every one of her children and two husbands besides. Folks said it wasn't any great loss, so far as the husbands were concerned, but then they were hers and she took on considerable. Yet she has always been a decent woman, kept the commandments far as her neighbors could judge; paid her bills, when she could; went to church and said her prayers; and she had only a triflin' amount of good fortune. She had to wash and scrub for the neighbors to make ends meet and the splicin' was often poor.

"Just compare her life with the lives of other women folks whose husbands usually had a good catch and got good prices, whose children never died and who prospered thru the years and even handled the commands in a slippery fashion. It is hard to think justice has been done in both cases or perhaps in either case. But if this miracle of slipping a soul back into a body and sending it to school again is true, that you are telling me about, why it clears up a lot of the problems. Mrs. Farrar didn't pass the examinations the first or second time she was here and she was sent back to study more and she is getting about what she ought to have in His judgment.

"I think, however, that reincarnation idea that you mention, I would need to think a good deal about before I cared to tie too fast to it. I presume I'll end up in putting it into quite a big package of goods I am saving for shipping across the stream when I take passage. I've marked them 'For His Judgment' and when I get over there, I'll sort 'em and see if they're worth saving, and if I'm still doubtful about any on 'em I'll just get Him to pass judgment on them. That's seems to be a sensible thing to do.

"But we was talking about miracles here and now. To me the greatest miracles Christ worked were not in curing diseases, but in curing sins. I have always thought it a miracle that He could take Peter with his stubbornness and his habit of speaking up too quick and make him strong enough, sound enough, to be a real corner stone in His new church. I callate Peter was pretty well along in years when the Master called him and old folks ain't as easy to work on as those that are young and more pliable. I count it a miracle that He made over Peter so well.

"I have always been a good deal interested to find out what became of Judas Iscariot who betrayed Him. He wasn't a fisherman like Peter and he was harder still to work on. I know some of the ministers have got rid of him, by tossing him over board and letting him drown in perdition. But the Lord God that went after the sheep would a some day heared the moaning of Judas and a-gone to his rescue, seems though. If the Lord could work a miracle on Peter couldn't He some time, some how do it on Judas? He must a had some beginning points on him some wheres."

"I tell you the Lord has plenty a chances to work miracles if He wishes, right round here. There's Rascal Moore. He ain't been converted yet."

"Rascal Moore, did you say, Jim?" I interrupted.

"Well that wasn't the name his mother gave him, but she didn't know he would take all his father's bad points and add a few more evil ways. She named him, Pascal. But Rascal fits him better and everybody knows him by that name, and I have to think twice to remember he ever had another name.

"Rascal has done more to hurt the salt-fish business than any fisherman I know. He manages to get hold of the most ornery, two-cent fish there are in the sea. These fish have a hankering for Rascal, I guess, and they scoot straight for his nets. When he gets 'em, he never cleans well and he always hurries the curing, and he is none too particular about either counting or weighing. He'll sell a little cheaper or lie a little stronger and get rid of 'em, usually to an exporter and they go perhaps to Naples and they're so poor, the folks who buy them never want any more Newfoundland cod-fish. The government ought not to wait for the Lord to punish Rascal, they should get after him right away.

"Rascal has other sins to account for. Everybody feels, though they don't hardly dare say so, that he killed his wife, and he's so mean he's never married since. If there's been a piece of deviltry carried out anywheres within fifty miles of St. John's that he hasn't had a part in, I have yet to learn o' the fact.

"I say to convert Rascal Moore would be a real miracle. And it will be done and I would be glad to see it done on short order. I know it can be done, for I have seen other folks as mean, ornery and selfish as Rascal come meekly to the judgment seat, I have seen 'em rise outen their old selves and become new and clean as a sunshiny morning after the air has been washed in a fog. I have seen so much done by the Lord on His own account and working thru the hands of His servants that I never doubt that Rascal Moore will be made right.

"Yes, sir, I believe in miracles and I see them every day. Brown earth a-turning into blades and blossoms, in some wonderful way that He planned. No less wonderful I see bad men becoming good men; sick men becoming well men; and they that have been under the heels of sin and slavery standin' up on their own feet. When I can't explain something I still feel it is happening under the law and it's another of His miracles."