"How to Forget"

In the year 1884 I wrote about my darling little friend Patty, whom I wrote about for the “Friendly Visitor,” such a dear who had been led by God to lead her grandfather to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour and his God. When I first saw her she was resting her head on the curbstone and crying as if her heart would break. I said, “What is the matter?” and she thrust into my hand a little picture and said, “Why did ‘ey do it?” saying granddad says I helped to put the great nails in. “No, no, I begged ‘em not to, and. I’ve picked myself to feel what Jesus felt” (true). “I thank God He has filled you with love to Him.” “‘Es, I do love Him, and so does granddad and daddy and mammy. Will ‘ou come up and see granddad? “We went, and her mother said, “It is only a year ago that he saw himself a sinner, and Christ a willing Saviour from sin, but he was always saying bad words and swearing, and used to say ‘I am always running the nails into · His dear hands afresh when I use those dreadful words’; but the Lord used Patty to help him. He was reading the fourteenth of John to her one morning, and at the twenty-sixth verse, ‘Bring to remembrance,’ he said, ‘Patty, darling, you will remember Jesus?’ ‘Yes, but won’t you pray that you may forget? ‘What!’ said he, ‘forget Jesus? My child, no, never!’ ‘No,’ said Patty, ‘forget Jesus, I s’ould sink not, but pray to forget those naughty words you’s always so sorry ‘bout afterward.’ Granddad said, ‘Scales fell from my eyes,’ so he at once knocked down for his daughter and said, ‘Never mind the shop, but let us all kneel down together and pray. Let us ask God to make me forget all my bad words.’ It is now three weeks ago, and I have never heard a bad word pass his lips since, nor has he had evil thoughts.” He says that God made little Patty the instrument of curing him, truly as it says in Isaiah, “A little child shall lead them.” Emily P. Leakey.