WILL anyone who intends to read this narrative sit down and first read Acts 3 and 4. Perhaps then you will see why I give it this peculiar name of “The man who missed Jesus,” or, reverently, I would say, “the Lord Jesus Christ.” It has always been a puzzle to me until I had thought it out. How was it that he missed the Lord’s power to heal? for he was laid daily at the gate of the Temple that was called Beautiful. The man was above forty years old, and was carried and laid daily at this gate. Had he only been laid daily there since our blessed Lord’s crucifixion? Was he a new-comer to Jerusalem who had never seen or been seen by the Lord Jesus? or did our Lord never enter into the Temple by the gate Beautiful?
How was it that this “certain man” missed being healed during our Lord’s life? If the Lord passed him by, why did He pass him by? If so, surely our Lord had some good reason for so doing, for certainly this man missed being made “to leap and walk” by our blessed Lord. Now, whenever I read these chapters, the 3rd and 4th of Acts, and enjoy the account of this man’s wonderful recovery, I think the above questions, and I end with invariably sang to myself that there must have been a Divine reason; for our Lord was not slow to see if anyone needed healing.
Do you remember the blind man in the 9th chapter of St. John’s Gospel? It says of him, “And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.” This blind man used to sit and beg just as this lame man did who missed Jesus; but Jesus healed the blind man at once when He saw him. The same with the man at the pool of Bethesda. The Lord said to him, “Wilt thou be made whole?” immediately He saw him lie, and knew he had been thirty-eight years in his pitiful case. The same with the widow of Nain; directly the Lord saw her in her bitter grief He had compassion, and raised her son from the dead. And yet this poor man was passed by, if the Lord saw him.
In another Gospel (St. Luke) it says, “He healed them that had need of healing.” Had this man no need of healing? It is a remarkable fact that he was not healed by the Lord. Was he known to the Lord? Was he a secret disciple? Did our Lord say to him as He did to His mother, “Mine hour is not yet come”? for evidently this man was a godly Jew, for he began to “praise God” immediately when he found he could walk! Was it that, during our Lord’s ministry, the man’s faith was not ripe and the Lord knew he could not say to him as He did to blind Bartimeus, “Go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole”? Did the Lord say to him, “Wait on the Lord,” “Tarry thou the Lord’s leisure,” and was grace given to him to believe “the Lord’s time is best.”? Did the Lord cheer him with a smile and a “Fear not, in due season ye shall reap,” as He passed him by at the Beautiful Gate? or did he doubt the Lord’s power and refuse the proffered gift as so many do now with regard to their soul’s healing, who turn away and will not “listen to the voice of the charmer (who tells of Jesus and His willingness to save) charm he never so wisely.”
Ah! surely the Lord left the healing of this man to the time, the due season, when the miracle of his healing would bring most glory to God Ah! dear missionary, be sure of this, a harvest shall be reaped that will glorify God. The man missed Jesus, that Peter and John might find him, and so convince the Sanhedrin which said, “Indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.” “So all men glorified God for that which was done, for the man was above forty years old on whom this miracle of healing was showed.” Of Jesus they had said, “He deceiveth the people” (John 7:1212And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but he deceiveth the people. (John 7:12)); “We remember that deceiver said” (Matt. 27:6363Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. (Matthew 27:63)); but of the apostles St. Peter and St. John they no longer dared to say such a word.
So it is with miracles of grace now; one sows and another reaps. Men get missed by one sower, one missionary, one preacher, to be gathered in, in God’s own time, by a later ministry. How specially true this is in missionary work! So never, never be disheartened; the heart you think the hardest will be the one in God’s good time that will melt by His grace and be the softest. How many an instance there is in which, after years of patient labor, fruit seems unattainable! (Paul Legaic). But God knows He has reapers like Peter and John to reap what you have so patiently sown, and each will rejoice together when the harvest home comes.
We all, doubtless, remember how St. Augustine, that great saint who said in the largeness of his spirit, “The whole world is my parish”; how his sainted mother Monica sowed with tears for years and years to win his soul; but she was not the one to reap, although God allowed her the joy of seeing her prayers answered and the learned bishop’s prophecy fulfilled: “The time is not yet, it cannot be that the child of such tears shall perish.” So pray on, dear missionaries, for those you yearn over to become children in the faith. St. Augustine was reaped just in God’s own wonderful divine way, by the voice of a little, unknown child singing four simple words, “Take up and read; take up and read.” He forthwith obeyed, took up the word of God, and read, “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.” He was reaped at once and cried out, “O Lord, I am Thy servant; Thou breaketh my bonds.”
Take another instance from Cotta, Ceylon: —
“One of the adult converts I baptized was eighty-five years of age, and he told me that every missionary who had been at Cotta from the commencement of the mission eighty years ago had spoken to him about Christ. About a year ago ‘the fruit was found after many days,’ and I had not the slightest doubt that he was truly converted. I baptized him on what proved to be his death-bed, and in the presence of many of his relatives he boldly confessed Jesus to be his Saviour. As I was repeating the Creed he called out after each sentence, ‘I believe.’ He so rapidly grew in grace that from his conversation one would have thought that he was a Christian of many years’ standing.”
Another instance how God can use any instrument to bring about His will towards those who refuse His offers in the hardness of their hearts. This fact happened in New Zealand years ago: Ngakuku, a converted Maori, was sitting in his hut with his only boy and his little girl lying asleep. Now, this little Tarore loved the mission school, and always put her book (the New Testament, I suppose) under her pillow when she slept. Some murderous cannibals surprised Ngakuku; he snatched up his boy and fled. The little girl was instantly killed and scalped. At her funeral Ngakuku said to these murderous natives of Rotorua, “My heart is not dark for my Tarore, but for you. You urged teachers to come; they came, and you have driven them away.” So the sowing seemed no good!
Now listen to the reaping! When they killed little Tarore, they took the book she was sleeping on, for one of the number could read, and they thought the European’s book would give them importance in the eyes of their chiefs. And so it did. It reaped a splendid harvest, for the chiefs would have it read and re-read in their ears until their hearts were touched and softened. So they determined to send a party of natives to the Bay of Islands, where the missionary, the Rev. Henry Williams, lived, to ask for a teacher. The Rev. O. Hadfield volunteered to go back with them to Kapiti, where he had the honor of establishing that pre-eminently successful station—all, as it were, the reaping by Tarore’s Testament.
This missionary, the Rev. O. Hadfield, was elected to the Primacy of New Zealand in the year 1870. He died in 1904.
And yet another instance of delayed reaping, when God the Holy Spirit Himself brought the buried seed to light and harvest! In Flavel’s “Memorials” it is recorded that when he was preaching his last sermon on “Anathema Maranatha” a handsome and intelligent boy was greatly impressed as the venerable preacher said, with tears, “My poor hearers, if any of you do not love the Lord Jesus and continue so to the end of your life, the Lord, when He comes, will curse you,” etc. etc. The boy grew up, became prosperous, but quite forgot his God and the Lord Jesus, but when he was full eighty years of age, in spirit Flavel stood before him and repeated those words. The old man at once was convicted and converted. He went into his house, took out his old Bible, and in deep sorrow and repentance found mercy through our Lord Jesus Christ.
He lived to be a hundred, built a chapel, got a missionary to teach his relations and neighbors, and had the joy, before his death, of seeing a flourishing mission station in the wilds of America, whither he had emigrated in youth, lived in manhood, and grown rich in this world’s goods. Oh, how he blessed God after for opening his eyes to see the truth as it is in Jesus. Little the venerated Flavel could have conceived that after so many years the seed he sowed should spring up and bear such rich fruit to God’s glory.
In October, 1906, the Rev. W. Richards, of Allepie, Travancore, India, states that he baptized a Dhoby on his death-bed who acknowledged that seventeen missionaries had urged him to become a Christian, but he delayed, fearing relatives. At last he received grace to renounce all and be baptized.
One more instance let me give. A Mohammedan for twenty years refused to listen to God’s word by the missionary; but one day his wife heard the gospel and brought home the New Testament, which he read and believed. He became unhappy because he had refused Christ so long, so he boldly confessed his belief, and when thrown down and almost beaten to death he felt not the pain for joy that at last he was allowed to suffer for his Master and to be a witness for Christ. He was cast into prison and it was many months before he could put his feet to the ground.
Dear fellow workers, our beloved missionaries, fear not, whatever length of time occurs between earing and harvest, for you will be amazed when harvest home is called at the bounteous reaping.
It is by prayer, earnest and persistent prayer, that blessing comes. A perpetual “Go on, go on!” will doubtless end in shouts of joy, and oh! the angels sing for joy when the soul long prayed for is reaped, although, may be, it is reaped by another hand than yours. But you will have part in the reward. It certainly says in God’s precious word: “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters”; but nowhere does it say “Blessed are ye that reap beside all waters,” for our Lord knows the best reaping time. He has always His reapers ready. “The sower and the reaper shall rejoice together” (John 4:3636And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. (John 4:36)).
Emily P. Leakey