By and by the clock struck ten, their usual hour of retiring.  But they made no move to go.  And the mother said quietly, “Aren’t you going to bed?” And he said, “I’m not sleepy, I think I’ll sit up a while longer; you go.”  “No, I guess I’ll wait a while too.”  And the clock struck eleven; then the hands clicked around close to twelve.  And they arose, and went to bed; but not to sleep.  Each one pretended to be asleep.  And each knew the other was not asleep.

After a bit she said—­woman is always the keener—­“Why don’t you sleep?” And he said softly, “How did you know I wasn’t sleeping?  Why don’t you sleep?” And she said, with that same queer catch in her voice, “I can’t, for thinking of Phil.”  He said, “That’s the bother with me.”  And the clock struck one; and then two; still no sleep.  At last the father said, “Mother, I can’t stand this. I’m going up-stairs with Phil.”

And he took his pillow, and went softly out of the room; climbed the attic steps softly, and pressed the latch softly so as not to wake the boy if he were asleep, and tiptoed across to the corner by the window.  There the boy lay, wide-awake, with something glistening in his eyes, and what looked like stains on his cheeks.  And the father got down between the sheets, and they got their arms around each other’s necks, for they had always been the best of friends, and their tears got mixed up on each other’s cheeks—­you couldn’t have told which were the father’s and which the son’s.  Then they slept together until the morning light broke.

When sleep-time came the second night the father said, “Good-night, mother.  I’m going up with Phil again.”  And the second night he shared his boy’s punishment in the attic.  And the third night when sleep-time came again, again he said, “Mother, good-night.  I’m going up with the boy.”  And the third night he shared his son’s punishment with him.

That boy, now a man grown, in the thews of his strength, my acquaintance told me, is telling the story of Jesus with tongue of flame and life of flame out in the heart of China.

Do you know, I think that is the best picture of God I have ever run across in any gallery of life?  It is not a perfect picture.  No human picture of God is perfect, except of course the Jesus human picture.  The boy’s punishment was arbitrarily chosen by the father, unlike God’s dealings with our sin.  But it is the tenderest and most real of any that has come to me.

God couldn’t take away sin.  It’s here.  Very plainly it is here.  And He couldn’t take away suffering, out of kindness to us.  For suffering is sin’s index-finger pointing out danger.  It is sin’s voice calling loudly, “Look out! there’s something wrong.”  So He came down in the person of His Son, Jesus, and lay down alongside of man for three days and nights, in the place where sin drove man.

That’s God!  And that suggests graphically the great passion of His heart.  Sin was not ignored.  Its lines stood sharply out.  The boy in the garret had two things burned into his memory, never to be erased:  the wrong of his own sin, and the strength of his father’s love.