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about God? We see he is great and mighty, and can do what he will: we
are lost, as if we was struggling in great waters, when we try to think
of him.
"But perhaps doubts come into your mind like this: Can God take much
notice of us poor people? Perhaps he only made the world for the great
and the wise and the rich. It doesn't cost him much to give us our
little handful of victual and bit of clothing; but how do we know he
cares for us any more than we care for the worms and things in the
garden, so as we rear our carrots and onions? Will God take care of us
when we die? And has he any comfort for us when we are lame and sick and
helpless? Perhaps, too, he is angry with us; else why does the blight
come, and the bad harvests, and the fever, and all sorts of pain and
trouble? For our life is full of trouble, and if God sends us good, he
seems to send bad too. How is it? How is it?
"Ah, dear friends, we are in sad want of good news about God; and what
does other good news signify if we haven't that? For everything else
comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. But God lasts when
everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend?"
Then Dinah told how the good news had been brought, and how the mind
of God towards the poor had been made manifest in the life of Jesus,
dwelling on its lowliness and its acts of mercy.
"So you see, dear friends," she went on, "Jesus spent his time almost
all in doing good to poor people; he preached out of doors to them, and
he made friends of poor workmen, and taught them and took pains with
them. Not but what he did good to the rich too, for he was full of love
to all men, only he saw as the poor were more in want of his help. So
he cured the lame and the sick and the blind, and he worked miracles to
feed the hungry because, he said, he was sorry for them; and he was
very kind to the little children and comforted those who had lost their
friends; and he spoke very tenderly to poor sinners that were sorry for
their sins.
"Ah, wouldn't you love such a man if you saw him--if he were here in
this village? What a kind heart he must have! What a friend he would be
to go to in trouble! How pleasant it must be to be taught by him.
"Well, dear friends, who WAS this man? Was he only a good man--a very
good man, and no more--like our dear Mr. Wesley, who has been taken from
us?...He was the Son of God--'in the image of the Father,' the Bible
says; that means, just like God, who is the beginning and end of all
things--the God we want to know about. So then, all the love that
Jesus showed to the poor is the same love that God has for us. We can
understand what Jesus felt, because he came in a body like ours and
spoke words such as we speak to each other. We were afraid to think what
God was before--the God who made the world and the sky and the thunder
and lightning. We could never see him; we could only see the things he
had made; and some of these things was very terrible, so as we might
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