They moved silently back and forth for a few minutes, Lucilla apparently in deep thought, her father watching with keen and loving interest the changeful expression of her features.
"What is it, daughter? Of what are you thinking?" he asked at length.
"About the narrow escape of yesterday, papa," she answered, lifting to his a face full of solemn awe. "I was asking myself, as I have many times since my narrow escape of yesterday morning, Was I ready for heaven? Would I have gone there if I had been drowned without time to think and prepare to meet my Judge? Oh, father, can anyone be saved without time to think and repent of every wrong thought and feeling, and asking God's forgiveness for it? And how would it be possible to do all that while struggling for your life?"
"Daughter," he said in tender tones, "are you not forgetting these sweet words of Holy Writ: 'He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life?' Take notice, it is not shall have, but _hath_. It is not only the sins already committed which God forgives for Jesus' sake when He adopts us for His own, but those also which in His omniscience He sees that we will be guilty of before the work of sanctification is finished. If we are truly His, they are all forgiven in advance. He says: 'I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.' In another place he says, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me _hath_ everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation; but _is passed from death unto life_.' The one important question is, are we really His? Have we accepted His offered salvation and given ourselves entirely to Him? If that be so we have no cause for anxiety or fear; for the Lord knoweth them that are His, and will never suffer any real evil to befall them. Death will be but going home to Him, and that with all the sin taken away and we made perfect in holiness, no want of conformity to His holy will left in us."
"Oh, if I should be mistaken in thinking that I really belong to Him! Papa, how can I know it?"