"You went off in such haste yesterday that we'd not time to have out half our say," said Ben Stone to Ned Franks, as, called in by the carpenter's wife, he walked up to the patient's bedside.

Franks smiled, agreeably surprised to find that Stone wished to renew such a conversation.

"Take a chair, my good friend, and sit down. Bell, you needn't stop in for me. I know Franks won't grudge me a half-hour for once, even on a week day."

Mrs. Stone soon quitted the cottage, but not till she had warned her visitor with raised finger and shake of the head, "Don't you bother my husband about anything to make his mind uneasy."

When she had closed the door behind her, Ben Stone turned to Franks, and said, "I was looking over old papers, yesterday, which reminded me of my boyhood, and I suppose it's that which has brought back to me a bit of rhyme which I learned from my mother, and which has been running in my brain all this day, though it had gone clean out of my memory for years,—

"Now, do you suppose," said Stone, with an effort to speak in his usual careless tone, "that God keeps an account like that, as a creditor with his debtors, and that when folks die there are all the old bills, as it were, brought up, even debts that they'd clean forgotten?"

"Yes, assuredly, unless all those debts have been paid."

"That's the very nail that I want you to hit," cried the carpenter. "How are we to make sure that the debts are all paid,—I mean, that God has forgiven us outright? Are you sure that your debts are all paid?"

"Yes, thank God!" cried the sailor; "my debts were paid, every one of them, when my Saviour died on Calvary. Does not St. Paul say that Christ blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross?"

"Were every one's sins blotted out then?" asked Stone.

"The sins of all who have living faith in the Lord."

"Ah! faith; that's what you're always talking about, and I can never quite make out what it means."

"It simply means that we believe from the heart that the Son of God died for us," said Ned Franks.

"Is that all?" exclaimed Stone, in surprise. "Why, a poor wretch like Nancy Sands might believe that as well as yourself!"

"And if poor Nancy does believe that from the heart, her sins, be they few or many, are forgiven her for the sake of Him who bore the punishment for them all."

"That's a dangerous doctrine, a very dangerous doctrine," said the carpenter, shaking his head; "you wouldn't put Nancy, I hope, on the same footing as yourself or as me?"

"The ark of Salvation is as open to Nancy as to us," replied Franks; "and if any of us reach God's heaven, it can only be in that ark."

"I don't understand what you mean," said Ben Stone. "Would you put bad and good all together?"

"Perhaps I can explain myself best by referring to Noah's ark," replied Franks. "God made known that a deluge was coming on the earth, and that the only way of escaping it was by going into an ark which Noah was commanded to prepare. It is clear that those who were saved were those who believed. It was faith in God's word that made Noah and his family enter the ark; they were saved because they were in it, and not, as I tried to explain yesterday, because of their merits as sailors or swimmers. It is clear, also, that they could not be half saved by the ark, and half by their own boats or rafts. So, if we trust our souls to Christ, we must do so entirely; we must give up all notion of saving ourselves, and own that our hopes of forgiveness and heaven rest on nothing but his mercy and merits. We own ourselves, indeed, to be miserable sinners, but we are able to take our firm stand on the Gospel doctrine that Christ died for sinners,—for that is our ark."

"I'm afraid that people who make sure of being saved by faith will lead very careless lives," said the carpenter, who could not get over his repugnance to being classed with Nancy Sands.

"They can only be saved by living, true faith," replied Franks. "Merely to say that we believe is nothing; nay, a cold conviction that the Bible is true, is nothing,—the devils also believe and tremble."

"How are you to know true faith from false faith?" asked Ben, with rather a sarcastic smile, as if he thought he had driven Ned Franks into a corner.

"How do you know a real fire from a painted one?" asked Ned.

"Well, it does not need much wit to tell the one from the other, if the painting were ever so clear," replied Stone; "the real fire warms us, of course; it aint a thing only to be looked at."

"And so real faith warms the heart, fills it with a glow of grateful love towards Him who gave himself for us. And that love makes us loathe and detest sin, because it is displeasing to our Lord,—the one thing which he hates. True faith and sin are just as much opposed to each other as fire and water. You said just now that you were afraid that people would live very careless lives if they hoped to be saved by faith. Do you find it to be so in your experience of men, Ben Stone? Those who are the most active in good works, the most steady in conduct, the best husbands, parents, neighbors, are they not the very people who have no hope of heaven but in the great Sacrifice for sin?"

"I can't deny that," answered Ben Stone, who knew that Ned Franks himself had a standard of duty that made his own appear but a low one. "But I can't see how that should be."

"Because every man that hath that hope in Christ, purifieth himself even as he is pure; [J] because true faith is a gift of God's Holy Spirit, and it must be followed by two others,—the love of Christ and that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. [K] As a good man once said, 'We come to Christ just as we are, but not to remain as we have been.' When we are once in the ark, Stone, it will lift us above the waters of wilful sin, as well as the waves of destruction; none serve God like those who have received the assurance,—'Go in peace; thy sins are forgiven thee.'"

The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Leyton. Franks respectfully rose, and gave up his chair to the young clergyman, and, at his request, brought the large Bible, which always occupied a conspicuous place in Ben's home. Very few words were exchanged, but Franks felt that the portion of Scripture selected by the curate was peculiarly well suited to deepen any impression which the late conversation might have left. It was the fifty-first psalm which Mr. Leyton read, almost without comment, by the sick-bed of one just beginning to have his eyes opened to the truth that he, too, had need to cry, Have mercy upon me, O Lord! Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me!

The eyes of Ben Stone were never again to be utterly closed to that truth; as life's day waned, a better light dawned on the invalid's soul.