By:
Edited by Heyman Wreford
THE following touching true story of a child, told by a colporteur, ought to move our hearts to do what we can now: A little girl of seven years of age came up to a Bible van with the request: “Three halfpenny Gospels of St. John, please.” “Yes, my dear,” said the colporteur at once. “What do you want them for?” “To give them to the soldiers,” she said. “Three are staying in our house. I want to give them one each, and I can write their names in them.”
The soldiers belonged to the Northampton Regiment, and were ordered to the Front. Not very long afterward one of them came back wounded. His two companions had been killed in battle. The wounded man took out of his pocket the halfpenny Gospel which the little girl had given to him. His name was written in it, and it was bloodstained. “We carried our Gospels with us into the trenches,” he said. “We could not part with them. They were given to us by a child at whose house we were billeted.”
But the child was not content with giving the three halfpenny Gospels. On her seventh birthday her father had placed five pounds in the bank for her. The next night her mother saw her deep in thought. Presently the little girl looked up and asked timidly: “Mother, how many soldiers are there in our town?” “Thousands, my dear,” the mother responded, wonderingly. “Mother, how many Gospels of St. John would five pounds buy?” the child questioned. “I would like to give all the soldiers one, mother.”
It was her one wish. She was as ready to part with her five pounds as the widow was to cast her two mites into the treasury. In the tender heart of this little child the love of our brave soldiers lay deep. Well might WE ask ourselves, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”
Refused — “Doctor,” a patient said to me, “I have been to the military doctor and I have been refused.”
Accepted — The Great Physician never refuses any. “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.”