KING GEORGE IV. was nearing the end of his reign, but the Pavilion at Brighton was still gay with the court who accompanied their sovereign to his favorite seaside resort, when the subject of this narrative was left a helpless, homeless orphan at the age of three and a half years. There were no “Dr. Barnardo’s Homes” in those days, but there were kind hearts beating even under rough jerseys, and the fishermen on the beach took pity on the tiny waif, supplying him with food, and letting him curl up at night in one of their boats! Such was the upbringing of this poor child, earning as soon as able a livelihood among his kind but rough protectors, and even when arrived at manhood, for five years never sleeping in a house, but always on the beach, on one occasion at least having to be dug out of the snow under the cliff after a heavy fall!
It may well be imagined that “God was not in any of his thoughts.” Sunday and week-day alike his hoarse rough voice, the result no doubt of the years of exposure, could be heard about the town calling out his fish; and when he married, it was to a woman of bad character he united himself. But though he had no thought or care for God, he was the subject of God’s thoughts, nay, of His predestinating, calling, saving grace. First, his wife was brought where another “woman of the city” had been drawn—to the feet of Jesus; and there she too had heard the blessed words, “Her sins which are many are all forgiven,” and had gone in peace to lead henceforth, even up to the present moment of writing this, a God-fearing consistent life as a Christian.
Was it the testimony of this life that God used to bring about the purposes of His grace, when the former homeless waif, now nearly sixty years of age, was induced to enter a mission room? The word that night was preached in the power of the Holy Ghost, and the poor man found out he was a guilty sinner in the presence of a holy God. Too shy to stay behind when the invitation was given at the close for any anxious about their sins to wait for further conversation, he hastened home, and falling on his knees alone before God, he, with tears, confessed his sinfulness, and claimed the work which the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished on Calvary as wrought for him. And He who said, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out,” received and accepted the poor guilty sinner, who rose from his knees assured that he was pardoned and “reconciled to God by the death of His Son.”
“If any man be in Christ he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new”; and among the “old things,” now gone forever, was the Sunday trading. No longer was the gruff voice, so well known, heard in the streets on the Lord’s day, “the first of the week,” the day on which his Saviour and Lord rose from the grave, and appeared to His own when gathered together, was henceforth sacred to him, and to be used for His glory, not as hitherto for business or pleasure. Good was it that when he heard the word of God, he “received it not as the word of men but, as it is in truth, the word of God,” for before long the seeds of consumption sown during his youth developed themselves, and after a long illness, which was “a great blessing” to him, as he confessed, leading him into a deeper, fuller knowledge of Him who had loved him and given Himself for him, the once outcast homeless orphan passed into the presence of His Saviour to be forever “at home with the Lord.”
T.