“We work by faith every day of our lives; we plant seed in the dark earth, believin’ that though the seed perishes, it will break the bands of death, and rise in greenness and bloom; though jest how it does that job you cant tell, nor I cant, nor Josiah. They needn’t talk to me about not believin’ anything they don’t understand; for what _do_ we understand come to look at the matter fair and square?” Says I, “Life itself is a sober riddle, the solemnest conundrum that was ever put out to humanity. Who has ever been able to git the right answer to it by reasonin’ it out himself, and if he did cypher out an answer, to suit himself, how would he know it was the right one? We see that things be, but why they be so, you can’t tell, nor I, nor Josiah.
“Truly, if anybody gits to pryin’ into hidden things, and reasonin’ on first causes, he finds that the flood is deep and the rain is descendin’ onto him, and the proud peaks of his own reason and judgment is drownded completely out. But God has sent forth an ark that rides triumphant on the face of the waters; His revealed word floats above the rainy deluge of our fears and wonderments. Not to have any faith would tucker me completely out; there would be a looseness to it I couldn’t stand, a waverin’ unstiddyness that would upset me, and take me offen my feet.”
Says I, “Faith and works ort to be twisted in one strand, and when they are, they make a cord that anchors the soul to the Rock of Ages, and holds it there fast and firm, so that change, and chance, and sin, and temptation, and all the storms of this stormy life will beat ag’inst it in vain, and bime-by that very cord will draw the soul right up through the pearly gates into the city of our Lord.”
I declare I didn’t hardly know where I was, nor who I was, I was so almost lost and carried away some distance by my emotions. But I was soon drawed back to the realities of this life by Zebulin Coffin. His mind was a roamin’ back to the subject on which he had went on, and again he spoke out with a groan: “To think! to think I have lived to see and hear a church member uphold dancin’.”
“I haint a holdin’ it up,” says I, coldly. “With the firm cast-iron principles I have got, I never would dance a step with anybody but my Josiah; and it haint much likely we shall begin to learn the trade now, as old as we be, and most dead with the rheumatiz, both on us. Why, if we should waltz together, as lame as I be, I couldn’t keep my feet half a minute; and if I should fall on my pardner, he would be a dead man, and I know it; I am hefty, very, and he is small boneded, and weighs but little by the steelyards. I love that man devotedly, and I don’t want to dance; but I say and I contend for it, if I was a follerin’ up ‘Wink-em-Slyly’ and etcetery, I wouldn’t have too much to say ag’inst other kinds of caperin’ round the floor, such as dancin’ and so 4th.”