His sublime idea of the "red hand" was ever present. He had told me some years before, that when he had lain a good while in the grave, God would call aloud, "Jack!" and he would start, and say, "Yes, me Jack." Then he would rise, and see multitudes standing together, and God sitting on a cloud with a very large book in his hand--he called it "Bible book"--and would beckon him to stand before him while he opened the book, and looked at the top of the pages, till he came to the name of John B----. In that page he told me, God had written all his "bads," every sin he had ever done: and the page was full. So God would look, and strive to read it, and hold it to the sun for light, but it was all "no, no nothing, none." I asked him in some alarm if he had done no bad. He said yes, much bads; but when he first prayed to Jesus Christ _he_ had taken the book out of God's hand, found that page, and pulling from his palm something which he described as filling up the hole made by the nail, had allowed the wound to bleed a little, passing his hand down the page so that, as he beautifully said, God could see none of Jack's bads, only Jesus Christ's blood. Nothing being thus found against him, God would shut the book, and there he would remain standing before him, till the Lord Jesus came, and saying to God, "My Jack," would put his arm around him, draw him aside, and bid him stand with the angels till the rest were judged.
All this he told me with the placid but animated look of one who is relating a delightful fact: I stood amazed, for rarely had the plan of a sinner's ransom, appropriation, and justification, been so perspicuously set forth in a pulpit, as here it was by a poor deaf and dumb peasant boy, whose broken language was eked out by signs. He often told it to others, always making himself understood, and often have I seen the tears starting from a rough man's eye as he followed the glowing representation. Jack used to sit silent and thoughtful for a long time together in his easy-chair, when too weak to move about, and then catching my eye, to say with a look of infinite satisfaction, "Good red hand." I am persuaded that it was his sole and solid support; he never doubted, never feared, because his view of Christ's all-sufficiency was so exceedingly clear and realizing. It certainly never entered his head to question God's love to him. One night a servant went to his room, long after he had gone to bed: he was on his knees at the window, his hands and face held up towards a beautiful starlight sky. He did not perceive the servant's entrance: and next morning when I asked him about it, he told me that God was walking above, upon the stars; and that he went to the window and held up his head that God might look down into it and see how very much he loved Jesus Christ.