"I WAS a rough, careless sort of chap, getting my living as a fireman on a railway-engine. One day a guard on the line, who was a good-living kind of man, though I don't believe, looking back, that he was a christian, called me into his van and read some bits to me out of a book of Moody's Sermons.' Well, I did not take much heed on him at first, till he comes to a story about a young fellow, and the case exactly fitted mine, and the conviction of sin came so strongly over me as he read, that I felt I must get outside or I should burst; so I said to the guard, That's plenty of that yarn—I'm off.' But the guard says to me, Wait a bit, Bill; I'm just at the end'; so I managed to hear him out, and then went off to my engine, and fairly broke down, and wept like a child.
“I was properly miserable, I tell you, on that engine; so after a time down I goes on my knees, and cried to the Lord to open my eyes, for I didn't know nothing about such things, being a gallus chap, you see.
“Just then up comes the engine-driver, and asks me what's up, and I told him. And he says, 'Well, you are a precious fool, taking on about something in them story books.' For he was a real bad tin', was that engine-driver, and so for a time he laughs me out of it. But somehow I couldn't get rid of it altogether.
“Shortly after this we were sent off to a branch line they were making, and had to sleep—a lot of us— in a temporary shed; and when we got there, the first night the engine-driver says, I say, chaps, what d'ye think? Bill's turned religious,' and they all laughed at me.
“But I says, 'Chaps, there's one thing certain; it's never too late to begin, or too early to make a start'; and feeling something down-like, I just prayed to God to shift that engine-driver of the same engine as me, or else to shift me.
“After that the engine-driver nagged on me uncommon, and gave me no peace, for, you see, I wasn't quite the same somehow since I heard that there tale. However, it weren't for long he nagged, for some few days later we had a collision, and two or three trucks were smashed up, and the driver had to go up before the board, and they warned him to be careful, as he'd have to go the next offense. Well, just after this he gets drunk, so they takes and sacks him, and who should be put driver of my engine but a Christian.
“I didn't like the looks on him much the first time I saw him. And the first day I was with him I jumped off the engine when we got to the junction, to get a glass of beer, for I was fond of that, for all I was more serious about the tale. But the driver, he says, Bill, where are you of to?'
“I says, To get a glass, surely.'
“He says, 'Come back, and I’ll tell you some facts of what they put in beer, and what it does for them as puts it into themselves.' And presently after that he says, Now you're not happy, I know you're not.'
“And I says, Well, mate, that is so.'
“And he says, D'ye know what you want to make all them things drop from you?'
“I says, 'No,' for, you see, I was as blind as an owl, and knew nothin' about conversion.
“Well,' he says, you want a new nature, and you can only get that in Christ.' And then when he tells me that it was only to believe on Him, I was surprised, and couldn't scarce believe him; but feeling strange-like on the engine as we went along, I called to God to have mercy on my soul, and somehow then and there it seemed that the light came in upon me, and little by little, creeping, as it were, I got to know the truth.
“For, you see, I'm no scholar, and don't know much; but this I do know, that I have everlasting life, believing in the Lord: and what that driver said is true, for after that the drink never troubled me again.
“He was a clever chap, was that driver; he wouldn't stop to argify, he wouldn't; he went straight to the book if any tried that on with him.”
This, in his own words, is the simple tale of the fireman; and as we consider how it was God used the engine-driver to bring him into calm and rest, may both anxious souls, and workers for souls, learn the lesson of going to "the book," there to have all questions settled. He was "clever" indeed! Oh! that all God's children would only "go straight to the book" in a spirit of simple dependence on Him. J. F.