e
did ken. There was something atween God and him. An' I think he wasna
likely to be wrang; an' sae I tak courage to believe as muckle as I can,
though maybe no sae muckle as I fain wad.'

Robert, who from experience of himself, and the observations he had made
by the bedsides of not a few dying men and women, knew well that nothing
but the truth itself can carry its own conviction; that the words of our
Lord are a body as it were in which the spirit of our Lord dwells, or
rather the key to open the heart for the entrance of that spirit, turned
now from all argumentation to the words of Jesus. He himself had said
of them, 'They are spirit and they are life;' and what folly to buttress
life and spirit with other powers than their own! From that day to the
last, as often and as long as the dying man was able to listen to him,
he read from the glad news just the words of the Lord. As he read thus,
one fading afternoon, the doctor broke out with,

'Eh, Robert, the patience o' him! He didna quench the smokin' flax.
There's little fire aboot me, but surely I ken in my ain hert some o'
the risin' smoke o' the sacrifice. Eh! sic words as they are! An' he was
gaein' doon to the grave himsel', no half my age, as peacefu', though
the road was sae rouch, as gin he had been gaein' hame till 's father.'

'Sae he was,' returned Robert.

'Ay; but here am I lyin' upo' my bed, slippin' easy awa. An' there was
he--'

The old man ceased. The sacred story was too sacred for speech. Robert
sat with the New Testament open before him on the bed.

'The mair the words o' Jesus come into me,' the doctor began again, 'the
surer I am o' seein' my auld Brahmin frien', Robert. It's true I thought
his religion not only began but ended inside him. It was a' a booin'
doon afore and an aspirin' up into the bosom o' the infinite God. I
dinna mean to say 'at he wasna honourable to them aboot him. And I never
saw in him muckle o' that pride to the lave (rest) that belangs to the
Brahmin. It was raither a stately kin'ness than that condescension which
is the vice o' Christians. But he had naething to do wi' them. The first
comman'ment was a' he kent. He loved God--nae a God like Jesus
Christ, but the God he kent--and that was a' he could. The second
comman'ment--that glorious recognition o' the divine in humanity makin'
't fit and needfu' to be loved, that claim o' God upon and for his ain
bairns, that love o' the neebour as yer'sel--he didna ken. Stil