Chapter 3
Who could doubt but he, the little child who never could walk, who in pain and auish had sighed all his short life, saw and held communion with the Lord? The little girl stood still; her red lips working as if to seize the thought and form it into something that could solve the mystery of his language, presently said,
“I wish father could see Him at his bedside; but he has a light all night; perhaps He only comes in the dark. I hear him groan, sometimes, when I wake up, and then he says he gets impatient and angry to lie hour after hour aching so. I wish he could see Jesus,” but her eyes dropped as she said, “but He couldn’t be with you, and him at the same time, you know.”
“O yes, He is everywhere. He can be there as well as here; mother tells me, He goes everywhere anybody wants Him. He’ll always come; tell your father I say so; tell him I only have to say “Jesus” in my heart and He’s sure to come and make me forget my pain.”
“I’ll go and tell him now, this minute,” said the child, and away she ran.
Her father was under the shade of the elm tree. The cushions had been placed so that he rested comfortably, and his sister stood near him humming a gay air, and his wife, Lilly’s mother, was bending over the invalid smoothing his brown hair.
“I am weary—weary of life,” he exclaimed, looking up with an impatient sigh. “I cannot even enjoy-this short ride, so terrible is this pain. O! for health, for health!”
“What in the world is Lilly running from the home in that style for?” cried Ellen Irving, the sick man’s sister; “the child will be heated to death,” as breathlessly the beautiful little girl unlatched the gate, and panting, she could hardly speak.
“O, dear father! that little sick boy in there says if you will only say ‘Jesus’ in your heart, he’ll be sure to come and make you forget your pain.”
The invalid looked with cold eyes; the mother gazed with a strange expression over lip and brow; the fashionable sister stopped the idle carol, and all seemed struck with Lilly’s words.
“O father! he looks so happy,” cried the child, “and he is much thinner than you are, and just as pale, but he says that though he has always been sick, he don’t mind much, because he sees Jesus standing at his bedside, and He fills his heart full of love, so that he does not mind his pain. Now father, you say ‘Jesus’, and perhaps He will come just so to you.”
“Stand out of the sun,” replied her father after a long pause, and his lips trembled so that he could scarcely utter it. “I believe we had better start now,” he added, lifting himself. “Come, Lilly, help father into the car,” and he held out his hand.
“O, father, just say ‘Jesus;’” repeated the child entreatingly.
“Well, well, wait a while, dear, perhaps I will; I must see first. Ah! now, we are snugly seated in the car. Would you like to take the little boy a plaything?”
“Perhaps so,” diverted from her precious train of thought, “but he cannot play much, for he never walked, just sat all the time.”
They drove into the city, and stopped at last before a beautiful mansion, in the center of a square, marble steps in front, stained glass windows, the surroundings all told of wealth. Up every step the sick man went, a voice seemed to ring in his ear,
“O, father, just say‘Jesus.’”
“Jesus! how much Thy name unfolds
To every opened ear;
The pardoned sinner’s memory holds
None other half so dear.”
ML 07/06/1941