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 gossamer, can be used by God to save a servant of His from the cruel hands of those who seek to kill him.
In the quiet village of Stambourne, 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 a party of officers were on the way to arrest him. There was no time to mount his horse and escape, so he ran into an old house close by, and crept into an empty kiln, where he lay silently praying that God would save him from his enemies. No sooner had he entered his strange hiding-place, then 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 spider complete his web, which stretched from side to side of the narrow opening. Presently voices were heard, and he could hear the tramp of feet passing the kiln in which he lay. Right up to the kiln’s mouth they came, searching 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 made 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: 9.
Messages of God’s Love 7/15/1923