And how God made it a Shield for His Persecuted Servant.
YOU have seen the spider weave his web in the summer sunshine. How fragile it looks! A breath of wind would almost break it, yet that weak thing of goss mer, can be used by God to save a servant of His from the cruel hands of those who seek to kill him. Let me tell the story.
In the quiet village of Stambourne, in the county of Essex, there lived in the year 1662, a godly preacher of the Gospel, named Henry Havers. There was a great persecution at that time, and this earnest man was hunted from place to place by the soldiers, who were sent out to take him a prisoner. He was preaching one day in the country to a number of eager listeners, who delighted to hear the simple Gospel of God’s salvation from the aged preacher’s lips, when an alarm was given that party of officers were on the way to arrest him. There was no time to mount his horse and es cape, so he ran into an old malt-house close by, and crept into an empty kiln, where he lay silently praying that. God would shield him from his enemies. No sooner had he entered his strange hiding-place, than a spider lowered himself across the mouth of the kiln,, and began to weave his web. Forgetting his perilous position, the man of God watched the busy spicier complete his web, which . stretched from side to side of the narrow opening. Presently voices were heard, and he could hear the frame of feet with in the malt-house in which he lay. Right up to the kiln’s mouth they came, search ing for their prey. “It’s no use looking in the kiln,” said one officer to another. “The old villain can’t be in there. Don’t you see a spider’s web across the mouth of it? He could never have got in without breaking it.” So off they went, leaving the man of God safe in the place which God had wade a sure refuge to him, by means of a fragile spider’s web. When all was quiet, he crept from his hiding-place, and looking on the feeble thing which God had used as a shield to protect him, he exclaimed—”It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes” (Psa. 118:99It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. (Psalm 118:9)).