THE following true account is given for the encouragement of those who have long been praying for and seeking after members of their families who are not manifestly the Lord’s. “The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruits of the earth, and hath long patience for it” (James 5:7).
Did Peter know what was passing in the mind of Cornelius while he was praying on the roof so far away? No, but the Lord did, and sent him in due time with a message of forgiveness of sins to him. And when Paul and Silas sang praises at midnight, did they guess that before morning God would bring so many around them to Himself? Christians must often go on singing and praying and preaching in ignorance of what is in the minds and hearts of people very near them, until God, the searcher of hearts, lets them know, and sometimes they have to wait for heaven to see the answer to their prayers.
A Christian mother sat in her room towards evening. She had a large grown-up family and many cares, chief among them just now being the health of a son which was increasingly bad.
She had that day been much moved at hearing of great blessing in a neighboring building through the preaching of a young man. Oh! if my dear boy were only like him, she thought; nay, if he could even hear him, how happy I should be. But she felt very faithless. R — (as we will call him) was almost too ill to go out at night, and moreover he was exposed to teaching the very reverse of what she craved. Still, “is anything too hard for the Lord”? and inwardly she resolved that, at all events, she would go to the preaching herself, for she felt that her own faith needed strengthening.
As she sat there that afternoon she listened and she prayed. She heard R — come home from the city, wearily climb the stairs, and go into his own room hard by; then she heard him throw himself upon his bed and — could her ears be mistaken? — she heard a groan and her own name. In an instant she is beside him, and, with her arms about him, she hears, “O mother, I’m so ill, and so miserable!” These were welcome words to her; even if his outward man was perishing, his soul was not, and she cared for it more than for his body now. Gently she told him what she had been thinking of, and asked him to escort her to the service, without saying that it was for his soul that she yearned.
They went; they found the place so full that they were obliged to stand, and then the mother lost sight of her son in the crowd, and again her faith failed. What if he had left in disgust? Should she follow him? no — she would listen for herself. At the close of the meeting she found him awaiting her in the porch with a changed face, and by degrees she learned that a gentleman seeing his delicacy had made room for him, and that every word the preacher spoke had come home to him. The tears had stolen to his eyes, and as he furtively brushed them away, he became aware of a lady sitting beside him with an earnest face, who was evidently prang for him. It made a deep impression on him, for he was aware that she knew what was passing in his soul, and before leaving she turned and grasped his hand. He was rescued from Satan and from death that night, and brought to God and life. There was joy in the hearts of mother and son as they walked home; joy too in the presence of the angels of God, for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had sought and found the lost. The son which had been dead was alive. He could say, “The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this day.... The Lord was ready to save me” (Isa. 38:19, 20).
As long as he could he attended the services where he had received so much blessing; and when he could no longer walk, his friend came to see him, and together they held sweet converse of Jesus and His love. R — ‘s inward man was renewed in measure as his outward man was perishing; he was “willing to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5) Knowing, too, the future of death and damnation for those out of Christ, he sought to “persuade men” to be reconciled to God.
Let each who reads this narrative ask himself, Do I know the One who has the keys of death and hell, and who says, “Fear not, I am alive for evermore” (Rev. 1:17, 18). He died, that we might live.
H. L. H.