JACK was in a very doleful frame of mind. It was Sabbath morning, and as bright a day as even July could furnish to that part of the world. The birds in the trees, the leaves as they rustled, and the sweet odors in the air, all seemed to whisper that it was a perfect Sunday. Jack wanted to go to church. Not that he was devoted to church-going, either. The sermon often seemed long to him, and he sometimes grew very tired of counting the bits of stained glass of which the large round window was made; but on this particular morning, as he sat curled up in the large armchair with a great pillow at his back, he made himself believe that there was nothing in life he wanted so much as to go to church that day. It was not simply that the new carriage was to be used for the first time, and that Prince and Tony were harnessed together before it, and would look splendid, but in addition to these excellent reasons Jack had not been out of the house for nearly a week, and had not had a ride since last Sabbath, and it seemed to him he should fly if he had to stay in much longer. But then, Jack had the mumps, so it couldn’t be helped.

Uncle Jack was to stay with him; or rather he was to stay with Uncle Jack, which was pleasant, for although this favorite uncle always staid at home on Sundays, and could not take a single step without somebody on either side to help, yet his nephew considered him the “jolliest kind of a companion.” This may have been partly owing to the fact that Jack the uncle was quite young to have that title—only a boy of twenty—and he was as sunshiny, in fact more so than many boys of ten contrive to be.

On this particular day he exerted himself to his utmost to entertain his namesake, and succeeded so well that when the clock struck twelve the boy said, in round-eyed wonder: “Why, who would have thought it was so late? They will be home in a little while, won’t they?”

“That’s a fact,” said Uncle Jack. “I think there will be just time for us to have our Bible story together, and a little talk about it before they come. You know that was to finish the morning’s programme, Jack.”

“All right,” said Jack, settling back on his pillow, “go ahead; I like to hear you read the Bible better than anybody else, except mother, of course.”

This was no wonder, for Uncle Jack had a way of reading between the lines, something after this fashion: “‘And a certain man, lame from his mother’s womb, was carried.’ Just think of that, my boy! Forty years old, and never had walked a step! That is worse than being lame for two years, isn’t it?”

“How do you know he was forty years old? It doesn’t say so.”

“It does in another place; I hunted it up once, to see how long he had been a burden on his friends. And just listen to this as the best they could do for him: ‘Whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple.’”

“They were a mean lot,” said Jack; “they might have kept him at home and taken care of him.”

“Ah, my boy! that is much the way it is to-day in countries where Jesus Christ does not reign; still, we must not be too hard on these friends of his; they may have been miserably poor, and to carry the man to the gate and leave him there may have been the utmost that was in their power to give.”

“Then they ought to have taken him to the hospital.”

“There was none, Jackie. No provision whatever was made in that country for the suffering poor; such things belong to Christianity. Well, ‘Who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked an alms.’ He liked the appearance of those ministers, I fancy. I suppose he said, ‘They look kind, and I shouldn’t wonder if they would give me quite a lift.’”

“I should say they did,” chuckled Jack, who knew the outcome of the story. Reading in this way you can see how long it might take them to get through with even a short story; but Jack thought it a “tip-top” way to read.

He sat lost in thought for some minutes after the lame man had gone leaping into the temple, then said, half-doubtfully, as though not sure whether it were just the proper thing to say: “Uncle Jack, wouldn’t it be a splendid thing if Peter were alive now, and should come home from church with the folks, and cure you so you could run all around?”

Uncle Jack turned bright smiling eyes on his nephew. “You forget,” he said briskly; “it wasn’t Peter who did it; he was only the instrument. You might as well call the cup in which you take your beef tea the food, as to call Peter the physician in this case.”

“Well, then,” said Jack, looking resolute, “I don’t understand why he doesn’t cure folks now—Jesus, I mean. People say he is here all the time, though we can’t see him, and that he is just the same as ever he was; why don’t he cure you, Uncle Jack, just as he cured the man at the temple gate?”

“He has,” said Uncle Jack promptly; “He has performed a much greater cure for me than He did for the man at the gate.”

And then Jack looked astounded. As though he did not know that his Uncle Jack had not taken a step in two years, and even the great surgeon from the city could not be sure if he ever would.

The gay young uncle laughed over his astonishment, then said: “I see I shall have to tell you something, Jackie. Before I was hurt I was in a bad way—lame not only in my feet, but in my will power, which is much worse. I was making a headlong rush toward ruin, and when the accident happened which laid me flat on my back, I knew before many weeks that it was Jesus Christ trying to cure me.”

Little Jack stared. “Couldn’t He have done it without that?” he asked.

“No,” said his uncle confidently; “I don’t believe He could. I wouldn’t let Him, you see. He had called me hundreds of times, and urged me to let Him do the best things for me, but I wouldn’t. My will power, as I told you, was lame, sick—deathly sick; I couldn’t seem to want to be cured, nor to do any of my part of the work. There is always our part to do in a cure, you know.” Jack nodded, and remembered the bitter medicine which he had rebelled against swallowing. “Well, I wouldn’t do my part; refused out and out, and kept on refusing until I was placed on my back. I suppose the Lord Jesus knew that that only would bring me to my senses, and give him a chance to cure my heart sickness, so he let it come to me. Understand?”

Jack was not disposed to answer. He was thinking. “Why doesn’t He cure your back now?” he asked, speaking part of his thought.

His uncle’s voice was a trifle lower, and hinted at strong feeling which was being controlled. “I believe he will, Jackie, just as soon as it is best for me to be cured. I think I am going to get quite well; indeed, I may say I am almost sure of it, though the surgeon is not. I believe the Lord Jesus has decided to let me be well and strong again, so I can be a witness for him, as the lame man was, you remember. Why, we didn’t finish the story, did we? And there is no time now. Here come the people from church. You look that up, Jackie, in your Bible sometime, and see what an unanswerable argument the man was.”

Jack the younger thought over the entire story later, while he was eating his beef tea. Thought and thought, and by a way which was clear to himself, came at last to this point: “I wonder if He let me have the mumps so as to stop me from doing different from what mother says? If I hadn’t thought it wouldn’t do any harm to run into Judge Howell’s a few minutes, even after she had told me not to stop anywhere, why, I suppose I shouldn’t have had these horrid old mumps. Maybe He knows it was the only way to cure me. Well, I tell you what it is; I believe I’ll be cured. I guess, after this, I’ll do just exactly as I’m told, and be a ‘witness’ myself, so that folks will begin to say of me: ‘Jack Campbell won’t do it; his folks told him not to, and you can’t move Jack after that any more than you could a stone wall.’ I declare, that will be tip-top fun. I’ll do it!”

Pansy.