"Ah! glad to see ye, Ned Franks, always glad to see ye!" cried Ben Stone, holding out both his hands to the school-master of Colme. "I sent my Bell off to afternoon church, for I said, says I, there will be Ned Franks sure to drop in and give me a bit of the news. There, take a chair, my good fellow, you're always heartily welcome."

Stone himself was reclining on a bed, and well propped up with soft cushions; a flannel dressing-gown wrapped round his large form, and a scarlet shawl over that, with a red nightcap on his head. There was an air of comfort and of neatness visible in the partly darkened room. Stone liked, as he said, "to have things look respectable-like" about him. The appearance of the sick man would have conveyed to none but a practised eye the idea of serious illness. There was no wasted cheek, no hollow eye, to tell the insidious fatal disease within. Even the voice of Ben Stone, though not perhaps as strong, sounded as jovial as ever. Franks could hardly realize, as he drew his chair near to the bed, that he who rested upon it was actually dying by inches. Ned made inquiries how the patient was feeling that afternoon.

"Not just up to felling an oak-tree, or splitting it up into planks," said the carpenter, gayly; "the doctor says I can't last till winter; but who knows? 'the greatest clerks are not always the wisest men,' as good Queen Bess once said."

"No one can indeed know whether you or I will be taken first," observed Ned; "but it's well to be prepared for the end, whether it comes sooner or later than we have been led to expect."

"Yes, yes, I'm not one of those as is afraid of hearing the worst," said Stone, still in the same easy manner. "Death must come one day or another to all, and it's no such great odds when we go."

"The question is certainly not when, but whither we go," remarked Franks.

"There's the comfort of religion," said the carpenter, complacently folding his hands. "Don't we all hope to go to heaven when we die?"

"Yes, heaven's the port we all hope to land in," replied Ned Franks; "but I should just like, neighbor, for us to talk the matter over a little together; to see if you and I have embarked in the same boat, since we wish our cruise to end in the same harbor. Would you mind now telling an old friend what reason you have for thinking that you're bound for heaven?"

Ben Stone looked half perplexed, half amused, at the question. "It's not for a man to speak up for himself," he said good-humoredly; "but you and all the village know that I've not wandered far astray. I don't pretend to be such an out-and-out saint as you are," he added with a smile; "but I'm not worse than my neighbors, and I don't doubt but that we'll both land in heaven at last."

"And do you suppose that I dare start in the voyage to eternity in such a cockle-shell as my own merits, all leaky and worthless!" exclaimed Ned Franks. "No, no, neighbor; I know too well that if I did so, I must go to the bottom. As when the flood was coming upon the world, there was but one safe vessel, and that was the ark, so there is now but one means of salvation, which God himself has provided,—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Can we fancy that in those old days of the flood there were no boats and no sailors,—that none could row, and none could swim? It's likely that there were men who had vessels, and trusted in them, and were proud of them, too,—who believed that these vessels could ride through the fiercest storm that ever blew; and that may have been the very reason why, despite of warning, these men would not fly to the ark; and so, when the flood came, they perished. My only hope of heaven is in the merits and death of my Lord. I don't fear death, because I know that I've already taken refuge in the ark of salvation, which is faith in Christ, the Saviour of sinners."

"These things are too deep for me," said the carpenter. "I'm a simple, plain man, and don't puzzle my head with matters of doctrine. I never can make out what you thorough-going people consider yourselves to be. There are saints and sinners in the world, that's clear. Nancy Sands is a sinner, and you are a saint,—nay, don't stop me, I must have out my say. Now, I don't count myself much either of a saint or a sinner; I'm a plain, honest man, who don't like extremes, and I dare say that I shall do just as well as others in the end. But what puzzles me," continued the carpenter, "is that the saints will insist upon it that they are the sinners; they flare up, as you did now, at the very notion of being taken to heaven because they are good, and seem to think that they can't be safe unless they declare that they are sinful!" The invalid would have laughed aloud, had there not been a grave earnestness in the face of Franks, which checked any such unseemly mirth.

"And is not the prayer in the Litany, Have mercy upon us miserable sinners, put into every mouth?" observed Franks, who had a clear recollection of the very audible tone in which Ben had joined in that prayer when attending church-service.

"Yes, to be sure. I could say half the Litany by heart."

"What a wide difference there is," thought Ned Franks, "between saying it by heart, or from the heart! Do you think," he asked aloud, "that that prayer is suited for every one who repeats it?"

Ben Stone hummed a little before he replied. "Well, I should say, suited better for some than for others; but there's no harm in any one saying it."

"There would be harm in any one calling himself a sinner before God if he did not believe himself to be one," observed Franks. "But I've no doubt, neighbor, that if St. Paul and St. Peter had lived in these days, they'd have been able to cry from the bottom of the heart, 'Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.'"

Ben Stone gave a look which seemed to say that he neither understood nor cared to understand how that could be. Ned Franks's feelings were much like what Mr. Curtis had described as his own. It seemed a hopeless matter to try to make any real impression upon that mass of quiet, self-complacent, good-humored insensibility. Ned had to repeat to himself, "He's a dying man, and dying without looking to the Saviour," in order to overcome his own strong inclination to give up in despair all attempt to convince or to move.

"I suppose that you'll agree," said the school-master aloud, "that Job was a saint if there ever lived one in this world; God himself declared that there was none upon earth like him; and yet, what were the words of Job? I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

"I never can make out why Job should feel that," observed Stone; "there was nothing in what the Almighty had said to him to bring him to such a confession."

"I believe that it was not so much what God had said, as what he had found God to be, that so humbled Job as to make him confess himself to be a miserable sinner. The truth is, neighbor, we think so little of our own sinfulness, because we think so little of God's holiness. The clear light of his purity does not stream into our souls, and therefore we don't mark the spots and the stains in those souls. We think sins small and trifling which in the Lord's eyes are hateful and deadly. Eve plucks a forbidden fruit, Moses loses his temper, a man of God lets himself be drawn into what we might deem a small excusable act of disobedience: it is clear enough from the punishments which followed, that a holy God did not regard these things as trifles, though man in his blindness might do so."

"Ah! all these examples are from the Old Testament," said Ben Stone; "as for me, I hold by the New. There's none of that terrible strictness now."

"The God of the New Testament is the God of the Old," observed Franks; "the same just and holy Being who hath declared, The soul that sinneth, it shall die."

"You talk like a Jew," said Stone; "yet you know as well, and better than I do, that we've the gospel to look to now, and that's all mercy and love."

"The New Testament rests on the Old; it has grown out of it; it forms with it a complete whole. We cannot really accept the one without the other," replied Franks, with an animation of manner which strongly contrasted with the carpenter's stolid composure.

Ben Stone shook his tasselled cap, and half smiling observed, "The New is enough for me."

Ned Franks glanced around for something that might serve to illustrate the important truth which his companion could not, or would not, understand. He took up a cut flower which had been placed in a glass of water on the table.

"The Old Testament is the bud of the New; or rather as the green sheath enclosed the bud, so in the Old-Testament Scriptures is the precious gospel held and enclosed," he said, looking down on the flower.

"Granted, if you wish it," said the carpenter; "but now we've done with the sheath, and only the flower is left."

"Not so," cried the school-master eagerly; "look here, this is the green sheath of the bud, the green cup or calyx, as they call it, still holding and supporting the flower; less noticed, certainly, under the bright petals, but keeping them all together. What would happen, Ben Stone, were we to tear that green part away?"

"Why, the flower would of course fall to pieces."

"And if it were possible to separate New-Testament truth entirely from that contained in the Old Testament,—but it is not possible," exclaimed Franks, interrupting himself in the midst of his sentence. "The word of the Lord endureth forever! The Old Testament is the very support and foundation of the gospel. If we would know who the Lord Jesus is, we learn, from the Old Testament, that he is the mighty God,[C] whose goings forth have been from everlasting; [D] the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord God of Hosts. [E] If we should know why he died, again we find the gospel enclosed in the ancient Scriptures, like the bud in the sheath: He was wounded for our transgressions; the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." [F]

"Still, there's ever so much in the Old Testament that does not concern us Christians at all," said the carpenter; "and though I don't pretend to have the Bible at my finger-ends, as you have, I can show you that in a moment. We have no concern whatever with all those endless sacrifices of bullocks and lambs, which the Jews were perpetually making; you might cut out of the Bible every chapter about them, and we should never miss them at all."

Franks's expressive face showed surprise at the utter ignorance betrayed by such a remark. "Why, the very keystone of Gospel truth rests on the doctrine taught by those very sacrifices!" he exclaimed, bending forward in his eager earnestness. "There were two mighty lessons taught by those sacrifices, which were ordained by God himself; these lessons were, that without shedding of blood there is no remission,[G] and that justice would accept of one life as given instead of another. No Israelite, no, not even the holy Moses, could be forgiven and accepted without a sacrifice for sin, the sprinkled blood of atonement; no Christian, not even a St. Paul, can be forgiven and accepted, without a sacrifice for sin; and ours, in One of which all the burnt-offerings made by the Jews was but a type, the sacrifice, once and forever, made on the cross by Him who is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world! O Ben Stone, my friend," continued the sailor, with emotion, "I believe, from my soul I believe, that there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, [H] but the name of Him who died for sinners; that there is nothing that can make the soul pure, but the blood of Christ which cleanseth from all sin.[I] Faith in that name is the ark in which alone I dare hope for salvation, and through that blood shed for me, I have the blessed assurance of being received after death into that heaven which the Lord hath prepared for them that love him!"

Ned Franks rose hastily from his seat as he concluded the last sentence; for, after what had been uttered on a subject so solemn, he could enter on no common theme. He pressed the hand of the sick man, and, with no other form of taking leave, quitted the carpenter's cottage. The sailor sighed heavily as he passed from the darkened sick-room into the glowing sunshine without.

"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!"