NOT long ago a missionary was traveling among the mountains of Galilee. He was not alone, for his wife, a lady lately come from England, accompanied him. As she was not very strong, nor well accustomed to ride for many hours together, her husband had arranged with the Arab, who was their guide, that they should make the journey to the place where they were going in two days, not traveling more than seven hours a day. The guide readily agreed, and was paid accordingly. But an Arab cannot be trusted, and so, as the travelers rode on, hour after hour, and did not come to the place where they had arranged to spend the night, they began to fear that their guide had deceived them. It was even so. In order to get two days’ wage for one day’s work he had purposely led them past the halting-place, and intended to push on to the journey’s end that night.
What was to be done? The missionary feared for his wife to take such a long ride, so he resolved to stop at the first village they came to, and try to get shelter for the night.
At last they reached a small village on a mountain height, but they were not well received. “You must wait,” they were told, “till the chief comes home; we shall then know whether to let you in or not.” As the weary travelers stood waiting in the yard they remembered that it was the time of the evening meal, and, as they knew that it is the custom of the country if a guest arrives after three o’clock to give him whatever may be in the house, they were the less surprised a not having been welcomed more warmly.
“These people are very poor,” they said to each other. “It must seem hard to them to give the meal they have prepared for themselves to strangers whom they have never seen, and yet they would consider the honour of the house gone forever if they let us it and did not offer us all they had. Let us tell them we have our supper with us, and only desire a room in which to lie down and rest.”
When the poor people heard that the strangers were provided with food, they willingly admitted them, and offered to cook the chicken they had brought with them. After supper they were shown to the guest chamber. I daresay you have never been in such poor room as this was; its only furniture was a mat spread for sleeping upon, and a small oil lamp, but the missionary and his wife were very thankful even for such a resting place. Utterly wearied, the poor lady threw herself upon the mat, and had all but fallen asleep when she heard a noise as of footsteps at the chamber door, and, raising her head, saw two old women creep cautiously into the room. What could they want? You may imagine the joyful astonishment of the missionaries when, after the evening greeting, quickly came the question which you saw at the beginning of this paper; “Can you tell us the story of Jesus?”
Forgetting his weariness, the missionary began at once, in that bare room in the little village standing alone on one of the mountain heights of Galilee, to tell to those simple country-women, whose hearts GO had touched, the wonderful story they had asked for. He had lately been thinking much of the life, and death, and ascension of our Lord, for he was writing, in very simple words, a little book about these things for the Arab children. So he just told them the “old, old story, simply, as to a little child,” and, as the hours went on, the missionary’s wife, still laying on her mat, too tired to speak, heard her husband’s voice as he—
Told “the story” slowly
That they might take it in;
That wonderful redemption,
God’s remedy for sin,
She saw the rapt faces of the eager listeners, to whose ears it was no twice-told tale, but the “good news of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
N. N.