I pause, pen in hand, to wonder how I can make plain to you that this is no made-up story; that Bud is a real character who lives and does his work in the world to-day. It is so natural in reading what people call fiction, to turn from the book with a little sigh, perhaps, and say: "Oh, yes; that is all very well in a _book_, but in real life things do not happen in this way; and there are no people so ignorant as that Bud, anyway." But some of us do not write fiction; we merely aim to present in compact form before thoughtful people, pictures of the things which are taking place all around them. Bud did live, and _does_ live; and he was just so ignorant, and he did hear with joy the simple, wonderful story of the way to the Jerusalem of his desires, and he did plant his feet firmly on the narrow road, and walk therein.
I want to tell you what that minister did after the door had been closed on Bud for a few minutes. He walked the floor of his limited study with quick, excited steps, three times up and down, then he dropped on his knees and prayed this one sentence, "Blessed be the Lord God, who only doeth wondrous things!" Then he went out to the kitchen, and kissed his wife, and made up the fire under her wash-boiler, and filled two pails with water, and carried Johnnie away and established him in a high-chair in the study, with pencil and paper and a picture-book; and then he took the five sheets of that sermon over which he had been struggling, and tore them in two, and thrust them, decrees and all, into the stove! Not that he was done with the decrees, or that he thought less of them than before; but a miracle had just been worked in his study, and he had been permitted to be the connecting link in the wondrous chain through which ran the message to a new-born soul, and the decree which held him captive just then was that one in which the Eternal God planned to give his Son to save the world. And he was so glad that this decree was inexorable, that its inscrutability did not trouble him at all. I am glad that he made up that fire, and filled those water-pails, and, busy as he had need to be, gave some gentle attention to Johnnie. A religious uplifting which does not bubble over into whatever practical work the heart or the hands find to do, is not apt to continue.