VALENTINE BURKE was his name. He was an old-time burglar, with kit and gun always ready for use. His picture adorned many a rogues’ gallery, for Burke was a burglar and was clever at the job. Twenty years of his life Burke had spent in prison, here and there. He was a big, strong fellow with a hard face and a terrible tongue for swearing, especially at sheriffs and jailors, who were his natural-born enemies.
How God Works!
It was many years ago that it happened. Moody was young then, and not long in his ministry. He came down to St. Louis to lead a union revival meeting, and the Globe-Democrat announced that it was going to print every word he said, sermon, prayer, and exhortation. Moody said it made him quake inwardly when he read that, but he made up his mind he would weave in a lot of Scripture for the Globe-Democrat to print, and that might count, if his own words should fail. He did it, and his printed sermons from day to day were sprinkled with Bible texts. The reporters tried their cunning at putting big blazing headlines at the top of the columns. Everybody was either hearing or reading the sermons.
Burke was in the St. Louis jail, waiting trial for some piece of daring. Solitary confinement was wearing on him, and he put in his time railing at the guards or damning the sheriff on his daily rounds. It was meat and drink to Burke to curse a sheriff. Somebody threw a Globe-Democrat into his cell, and the first thing that caught his eye was a big headline like this.
“How the Jailor at Philippi Got Caught.”
It was just what Burke wanted, and he sat down with a chuckle to read the story of the jailor’s discomfiture.
“Philippi!” he said, “that’s up in Illinois. I’ve been in that town.”
Somehow the reading had a strange look, out of the usual newspaper way. It was Moody’s sermon of the night before.
“What rot is this?” asked Burke, “Paul and Silas—a great earthquake—what must I do to be saved? Has the Globe-Democrat got to print such stuff?” He looked at the date. Yes, it was the morning’s paper, fresh from the press. Burke threw it down with an oath, and walked about his cell like a caged lion. By and by he took up the paper and read the sermon through. The restless fit grew on him. Again and again he picked up the paper and read its strange story. It was then that a something from whence he did not know, came into the burglar’s heart, and cut its way to the quick. “What does it mean?” he began asking. “Twenty years and more I’ve been a burglar and jail-bird, but I never felt like this. What is it to be saved anyway? I’ve lived a dog’s life, and I’m getting tired of it.
If there is such a God
as that preacher is telling about, I believe I’ll find it out, if it kills me to do it.” He did find it out.
Away toward midnight, after hours of bitter remorse over his wasted life, and lonely and broken prayers, the first time since he was a child at his mother’s knee, Burke learned there is a God Who is able and willing to blot out the darkest and bloodiest record at a single stroke. Then he waited for day, a new creature, crying and laughing by turns. Next morning, when the guard came around, Burke had a pleasant word for him, and the guard eyed him in wonder. When the sheriff came, Burke greeted him as a friend, and told him how he had found God after reading Moody’s sermon. “Jim,” said the sheriff to the guard, “you had better keep an eye on Burke. He’s playing the pious dodge, and the first chance he gets he will be out of here.”
In a few weeks Burke came to trial; but the case, through some legal entanglement, failed, and he was released. Friendless an ex-burglar in a big city,
known only as a daring criminal,
for months he had a hard time of shame and sorrow. Men looked at his face when he asked for work, and upon its evidence turned him away. But poor Burke was as brave a Christian as he had been brave as a burglar. Moody told how the poor fellow, seeing that his sin-blurred features were all against him, asked the Lord in prayer if He wouldn’t make him a better-looking man, so that he could get an honest job. You will smile at this, but, nevertheless, a year from that time, when Moody again met Burke, he said he was as fine looking a man as he knew.
Shifting to and fro, wanting much to find steady work, he went to New York, hoping far from his old haunts to find peace and honest labor. He did not succeed, and after six months came back to St. Louis, much discouraged, but still holding fast to the God he had found in his prison cell. One day there came a message from the sheriff that
he was wanted at the Court-house,
and Burke obeyed with a heavy heart.
“Some old case they’ve got against me,” he said, “but if I’m guilty I will tell them so. I’ve done lying.”
The sheriff greeted him kindly. “Where have you been, Burke?”
“In New York.”
“What have you been doing there?”
“Trying to find a decent job.”
“Have you kept a good grip on the religion you told me about?”
“Yes,” answered Burke, looking him steadily in the eye. I’ve been having a hard time, sheriff, but I haven’t lost my religion.”
It was then the tide began to turn.
“Burke,” said the sheriff, “I have had you shadowed every day you were in New York. I suspected that your religion was a fraud. But I want to say to you that I know you’ve lived an honest Christian life, and I have sent for you to offer you a deputyship under me. You can begin at once.”
He began. He set his face like a flint. Steadily and with dogged faithfulness the old burglar went about his duties, until men high in business begun to tip their hats to him, and to talk of him at their clubs. Moody was passing through the city and stopped off an hour to meet Burke, who loved nobody as he did the man who was the means of his conversion. Moody told how he found him in a close room upstairs in the courthouse, serving as trusted guard over a bag of diamonds. Burke sat with a sack of gems in his lap and a gun on the table. There was
60,000 dollars worth of diamonds in the sack.
“Moody,” he said, “see what the grace of God can do for a burglar! Look at this! The sheriff picked me out of his force to guard it.”
Then he cried like a child as he held up the glittering stones for Moody to see.
Years afterward the churches of St. Louis had made ready and were waiting for the coming of an evangelist who was to lead the meeting; but something happened that he did not come. The pastors were in sore trouble until one of them suggested they send for Valentine Burke. Burke led night after night, and many hard men came to hear him, and many hearts were turned, as Burke’s had been, from lives of crime and shame to clean Christian living.
Mr. Moody told me of his funeral, and how the rich and the poor, the saints and the sinners, came to it. And to this day there are not a few in that city whose hearts soften with tenderness when the name of the ex-burglar is recalled. And now Moody and Burke have met, no more to be parted. — The Prophetic News.
(By courtesy of Living Links.)