LET me take you with me into a tramps’ kitchen, in which it has been my privilege to work, and where for fifteen years a weekly Sunday evening meeting has been continuously held in connection with the― Mission.
The room, which runs the whole length of the building, holds some 425 people, and is generally well filled. I am usually accompanied by some ten or fifteen helpers, forming a choir, who, as soon as they enter the kitchen, strike up one familiar Sankey’s hymn after another, while the cooking and washing and mending are going on as usual. After a while I call out: “Now, friends, we have had our innings; it is your turn, and if you will choose some of your favorite hymns we will gladly help you to sing them.”
One after another, chosen by the tramps themselves, is sung, and gradually the noise ceases, and sufficient quiet is obtained to enable speakers to give short, simple, pointed addresses. At a mission room in the neighborhood, to which these men are often invited, with a view to help them both temporally and spiritually, we meet with many interesting cases.
The character of these smaller meetings is as follows: From 7:30 to 8 o’clock, the names and all particulars that we can obtain are taken down in a book kept for the purpose, with a view of helping the poor men to start afresh in life or to communicate with their friends.
One evening while this preliminary part of the meeting was going on I heard the remark, “What’s the good of saying ‘The ‘Lord’s my Shepherd; I shall not want’; I am always in want!” When our mission service began I told the men what I had heard, and that I could not allow the remark to pass without notice, and that for two reasons. First, it betrayed great ignorance on the part of the one that uttered it; and secondly, it was calculated to do sad harm to those who heard it, and I claimed their attention while I gave them the Bible account. Turning to Psalms 22, I said: “Our friend wants to experience the blessing of the 23rd Psalm before he has learned the lesson conveyed in the 22nd. The 22nd Psalm tells of the Provision God has made for the salvation of sinners; the 23rd Psalm tells of the Protection the Good Shepherd affords to the sheep of His pasture; and the 24th Psalm tells of the future glorious Prospect assured for the redeemed.” Thus the interruption of the objector furnished me with three subjects, containing the very pith and marrow of the Gospel in a nutshell.
Some days afterward I was summoned to the miserable bedside, in the same lodging-house, of a man supposed by himself and others to be in a dying state. I was most agreeably surprised when he said to me, “I have a Bible in my locker, and I want you to mark those three Psalms.” “What Psalms?” I inquired. “Those three you explained to us on Tuesday.”
“What shall I mark them?” “Oh,” he said, “the three P’s.” I marked the Bible, pointing out again the teaching in the light of the New Testament, and it was quite evident the light of God’s Holy Word was effectually working in this poor fellow’s mind. On my next visit he said, “I have added another ‘P.’ “Indeed,” I replied; “what might that be?” He answered with much feeling, “Precious.”
In a moment I saw, through the rags and filth and wretchedness, that I was in the presence of an educated man. “Yes,” he said, “I am an Oxford graduate. My game and my father’s address are so-and-so. Will you write and tell my people that I have accepted the three P’s? Jesus, the Saviour of sinners, is my Provision. Jesus, the Good Shepherd of His sheep, is my Protector. Jesus, who, having overcome the sharpness of death, has opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers, is my future Prospect.” With a joyful and thankful heart a lady friend of mine wrote to the father of the dying man, rejoicing to be the messenger of tidings that we thought would cheer his heart, and open the door of his house to the repentant prodigal; but the only reply received was, “I repudiate him; he is no son of mine.”
In our deep disappointment this kind lady at once procured a ticket of admission to the Brompton Hospital, that the last days of the invalid might be passed amid more congenial surroundings than those which for some time past his wretched life had made a dire necessity.
I hastened to impart the good news to my poor friend and arrange for his removal.
To my amazement the sick man seemed to be endued with a fresh lease of life.
He was deeply grateful to the lady for her kindness to one so unworthy of consideration, especially from a stranger, but said: “I rejoice to believe I have already got what I wanted―not a bed in the Brompton Hospital, but a high stool in an accountant’s office at a good salary, which has been secured for me by a kind friend, where I hope I may, in some measure, retrieve the past. All I now want to effect a cure is work, work, work, and having got it I shall soon get well.”
I would not discourage him, but I judged otherwise. From the experience of years of similar cases I felt pretty confident that this apparent recovery was but the effect of mind over matter. The joy which followed upon a sense of sins forgiven, spiritual life imparted, the knowledge of acceptance through the finished work of Christ, and the assurance of eternal rest and peace in the immediate presence of his Saviour, infused the enfeebled frame with renewed vitality; but disease, resulting from long indulgence in vicious courses, and succeeding destitution and exposure, had done their fatal work. This apparent recovery was but the final flicker of the candle ere the mortal life should be quenched in the darkness of the grave. However, a suitable outfit was provided, and the pauper left behind him forever the tramps’ lodging-house. He was duly installed in the accountant’s office, but it was evident that the high stool would soon be exchanged for one of the many mansions.
He worked steadily for a month, notwithstanding ever increasing weakness, giving entire satisfaction to his employers, when the final flicker died out, and he fell asleep in Jesus.
His life had been spared long enough to afford indisputable testimony to the fact that he had, in truth, accepted in all its fullness the Provision of the 22nd Psalm―the sufferings and death of Christ in his, the sinner’s, place; he rejoiced, moment by moment, in the keeping power―the Protection which the Good Shepherd affords to every one of His trusting, submissive, obedient sheep; and with his last expiring breath he doubtless entered into the realization of the Prospect, the expectation of which had cheered him as he passed through the valley of the shadow, when the gates of pearl rolled back and the redeemed soul entered within the portals of the heavenly kingdom.
My lady friend wrote yet once again to the young man’s father, telling him that his son had departed to be with Christ, which is far better, but the answer to her letter was couched in terms similar to that which had preceded it.
ANON.