All He Knew | Page 8

to things in the road that I hadn't knowed about. He told me if I'd b'lieve in Jesus as I b'lieved in Andrew Jackson, I'd pull through in the course of time. I've been tryin' to do it, an' while I was in the jail I got lots of new idees of how I ort to behave myself, all from a little book that man left me, that didn't have nothin' in it but Jesus' own words. I'm a-goin' to keep on at it, an' if I can't live that way I'm goin' to die a-tryin'. I b'lieve that's all I've got to say, ladies and gentlemen."
There was an awkward silence for a moment after Sam sat down. The minister in charge of the meeting said afterwards that the remarks were not exactly what he had expected, and he did not know, at such short notice, how to answer them. Suddenly a hymn was started by a voice which every one knew, though they seldom heard it in prayer-meeting. It belonged to Judge Prency's wife, who for years had been the mainstay of every musical entertainment which had been dependent upon local talent. The hymn began,--
Am I a soldier of the cross,
and the assemblage sang it with great force and spirit. The meeting was closed soon afterwards; and as Sam, in spite of an occasional kind greeting, was endeavoring to escape from the hard stare of curious eyes, Mrs. Judge Prency, who was the handsomest and most distinguished woman in the village, stopped him, grasped his hand, and said,--
"Mr. Kimper, you gave the most sensible speech I ever heard in an experience meeting. I'm going to believe in you thoroughly."
Deacon Quickset, who was closely following his new charge, listened with fixed countenance to the lady's remark. He followed Sam from the church, snatched him away from the wife who had joined him, and said,--
"Samuel, that experience of yours rather disappointed me. It wasn't all there. There was something left out,--a good deal left out."
"I guess not, deacon. I said all I knowed."
"Then you ought to know a good deal more. You've only got at the beginning of things. No church'll take you into membership if you don't believe more than that."
"Maybe I'll know it in the course of time, deacon, if I keep on a-learnin'."
"Maybe you will,--if you do keep on. But you didn't say anything about your hope of salvation, nor the atonement, nor your being nothing through your own strength."
"I couldn't say it if I didn't know about it," Sam replied. "All my troubles an' wrong doin's have come of not livin' right: so right livin' is all I've had time to think about an' study up."
"You need to think about dying as well as living," said the deacon.
"Him that took care of another thief that was dyin' 'll take care of me if I get in that fix, I guess, if I hang on to Him tight."
"Not unless you hang on in the right way," said the deacon. "You must believe what all Christians believe, if you want to be saved. You don't feel that you're prepared to die, do you?"
"I felt it a good many times, deacon, when I was in that jail; an' sometimes I half wished I could die right away."
"Pshaw!" muttered the deacon. "You don't understand. You're groping in darkness. You don't understand."
"That's so, deacon, if you mean I don't understand what you're drivin' at."
"Don't you feel Christ in you the hope of glory?"
"I don't know what you mean, deacon?"
"Don't you feel that a sacrifice has been made to atone for your sins?"
"I can't follow you, deacon."
"I thought not. You haven't got things right at all. You haven't been converted: that's what's the matter with you."
"Do you mean, Deacon," said Sam, after a moment, "that what I'm believin' about Jesus is all wrong an' there ain't nothin' in it?"
"Why, no; I can't say that," the deacon replied, "but--but you've begun wrong end first. What a sinner needs most of all is to know about his hereafter."
"It's what's goin' on now, from day to day, that weighs hardest on me, deacon. There's nothin' hard about dyin'; leastways, you'd think so if you was built like me, an' felt like I have to feel sometimes."
"You're all wrong," said the deacon. "If you can't understand these things for yourself, you ought to take the word of wiser men for it."
"S'posin' I was to do that about everythin': then when Judge Prency, who's a square man an' a good deal smarter than I be, talks politics to me, I ought to be a Republican instead of a Jackson Democrat."
"No," said the deacon, sharply, for he was a Jackson Democrat himself. "I'll have to talk more to you about this, Samuel. Good night."
"Good night, deacon."
"He knows more'n you