Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/419

 quietly as he went along, while his comrade listened with intense earnestness. At the first verse Jim paused and said, "This wasn't written to holy and sinless men. 'Let not your heart be troubled,' was said to the disciples, one o' them bein' Peter, the man who was to deny Jesus three times with oaths and curses, and then forsake Him. The Lord came to save sinners. It would be a poor look-out for you. Stumps, if you thought yourself a good man."

"But I don't—oh! I don't, and you know I don't!" exclaimed the sick man vehemently.

"Then the Lord says, 'Let not, your heart be troubled,' and tells you to believe in God and Himself"

At the second verse Slagg remarked that it would be a sad sad thing if the mansion prepared, among the many mansions, for his friend were to be left empty.

"But how am I to get to it, Jim; how am I ever to find the way?"

"Just what the disciple named Thomas asked—an' he was a very doubting follower of Jesus, like too many of us. The Master said to him what He says to you and me, 'I am the way and the truth and the life; no one cometh unto the Father but by me.

At the ninth verse the sailor-missionary said,