I wasn't
even frightened at the awful things my father said about hell,
and the certainty of our going there if we didn't lay hold upon
the Saviour; for, all the time, he showed but such a ghost or
cloud of a man that he called the Saviour as it wasn't possible
to lay hold upon. Not that I reasoned about it that way then; I
only felt no interest in the affair; and my conscience said
nothing about it. But after my father and mother were gone, and I
was at work away from all my old friends--well, I needn't trouble
you with what it was that set me a-thinking--it was only a great
disappointment, such as I suppose most young fellows have to go
through--I shouldn't wonder," he added with a smile, "if that was
what you ladies are sent into this world for--to take the conceit
out of the likes of us, and give us something to think about.
What came of it was, that I began to read my mother's big
Testament in earnest, and then my conscience began to speak. Here
was a man that said he was God's son, and sent by him to look
after us, and we must do what he told us or we should never be
able to see our Father in heaven! That's what I made out of it,
miss. And my conscience said to me, that I must do as he said,
seeing he had taken all that trouble, and come down to look after
us. If he spoke the truth, and nobody could listen to him without
being sure of that, there was nothing left but just to do the
thing he said.
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