HE was only a poor, underpaid Brazilian soldier in the far interior―no very happy lot, under the best of circumstances, for it is hard work to make both ends meet with a salary of only twelve shillings a week and nothing found―even in a land of plenty―especially, too, when a man is addicted to tobacco and rum, as are ninety-nine in every hundred who follow this calling.
But in Genadio’s case this was aggravated. He was the worst drunkard in his regiment, and always under the influence of the fiery stuff they call “cachaca,” except when he was locked up in the guard house―which was pretty often―as the result of some drunken misbehavior.
Somehow or other Genadio suddenly manifested great interest in the Gospel. just how it began I cannot say—perhaps as an answer to somebody’s prayers; but the fact remains that he was very serious and in earnest when he paid me his first visit. It was true he was rather unsteady on his legs when he entered, and a little thick in his speech, but even so I could not fail to note a despairing desire to know “this Gospel,” which he understood had power to deliver him. “I’m going to leave all this,” he muttered; “I want to join this religion; I want to save my soul.” I spoke to him as well as I could, and gave him some good advice, but he seemed too stupefied with rum to understand. Finally he asked for a Gospel, and left. This was the first of his visits, which he repeated every few days, in more or less the same condition, and each time he carried away a tract or a different Gospel with him.
His visits to the house of the “Protestante” were soon noticed, and provoked great hilarity among his companions, with whom the idea of Genadio’s reformation was an impossible absurdity. They chaffed him unmercifully, and gave me a fair share of it, though at long range. “Oh,” they cried, “if Genadio gets converted, we will all join this religion, too!” But the poor fellow continued his visits, and redoubled his assertions and good resolutions with evident sincerity.
One day, however―on his sixth visit― I thought the matter had gone far enough, and when he started with the usual string of good intentions for the future, I stopped him abruptly with an emphatic “Never!” He stopped and looked up at me in stupid surprise. What! he thought, was there then no hope for him? Had he been deceived all along with a vain idea that this new religion might deliver him from a bondage he loathed? “Never!” I repeated. “You never will be able to leave these vices, and all your good resolutions will NEVER save you from Hell―the end of every Christless life.” He had nothing to say, so I continued: “Look here! You have been trying now for about two weeks, and far from improving, you even seem to get worse and worse, and you may as well know it sooner or later. You never can free yourself. You have tried and failed. Now give God a chance; trust in the power of Jesus, Who is able to save to the uttermost. He will not, cannot fail you.”
There and then we knelt down together, and he prayed; and that poor, miserable drunkard in a moment was set free, and passed from death unto life.
Everybody was astonished, and could hardly believe their eyes when they saw Genadio out, with a steady step and a transformed look on his face. He left his old associates, burnt his pipe and tobacco, crowning it all three weeks later when he was baptized (together with some other soldier converts) into what they called “the new faith.” With God nothing is impossible.