GIVE UP BELIEVING ALTOGETHER.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 524, 22 February 1876, Page 3

GIVE UP BELIEVING ALTOGETHER.

'When I was a young man,' said the judge, mopping the beer off his trousers with a handkerchief which he had borrowed from Billy Wood, ' I knew a blacksmith in our village, who was one of the hardest tickets in the place. A revival preacher came along, and Tom was converted, It made a great change in him, and he was held up by church people as a signal example of the saving power of grace. After Tom had been travelling on the road to heaven for about three weeks his turn came to be examined on his fitness for church membership. Tom was an awful heathen, and, although he could sing and pray with the loudest, he couldn't read, and he knew no more about the Bible than a wild African. The session (I think that's what they call it) met one Saturday night, and Tom went in with his face washed and his cap in his hand, looking a little embarrassed, but as happy as new converts always are. After praying and other preliminaries, the parson got to work on Tom. He told him the story of Jonah and the whale, and asked him if he believed that. • Believed that a man was in a whale's belly an' come out alive ?' cried Tom. 'Do the Bible say that, parson?' 'Certainly, cer tainly, brother. ' Oh, yes, yes ; of course I believe it,' says Tom. 'Do you believe that the three Hebrew children, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were cast into- a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, and that they walked in the flame praising the Lord, and not even their garments were singed ?' Tom's eyes bulged out of his head as he looked at the parson and gasped : 'Do the Bible say that, parson?' ' Yes, of course, my brother.' ' That them fellars you spoke of walked around in fire seven times hotter'n I kin heat my forge ?' ' Yes, my brother ; do you believe it ?' Tome rose up and got out into the aisle. Then he sputtered : ' No, I don't. And I don't believe that damn fish story neither, now ?'