84. Our Model

Our Model

WILD MAGGIE.—A fallen girl of New York, called Wild Maggie, had frequently attended the services of the city missions, and the superintendent had obtained considerable influence over her. After being missed for some time, he heard that she was in the hospital, dying of consumption. He visited her several times, to her great joy. The last time, a little before her death, both conversed as if they should see each other no more. “I’m dying!” she said. “Would you—be willing to stoop down and kiss my forehead?” “Most certainly, my child,” was the reply; and he reverently kissed the face of the dying girl. “Thank God!” said she; “if men on earth can so forgive, why should I not trust my Father which is in Heaven?”

KING IN PRISON.—The story goes that Henry the Eight, wandering one night in the streets of London in disguise, was met at the bridge by some of the watch, and not giving a good account of himself, was carried off to prison, and shut up for the night without fire or candle. On his liberation, he made a grant of coal and bread for night prisoners. Experience brings sympathy.

CONDESCENSION OF JESUS.—The most delicate and sensitive being, trained from infancy in a home of purity and love, sheltered from the very breath of pollution, and then forced to live in some haunt of iniquity, among the shameless and abandoned, would not undergo the transition with such shrinking abhorrence as did Jesus that transition which he underwent for us.

I HAVE REVENGE.—A young girl in South Africa was seized by a savage enemy of her father’s, who cut off both her hands, and then sent her, bleeding, home. Many years passed; the poor girl recovered from her wounds. One day, there came to her father’s door a poor man who asked for alms. The girl knew him at once as the cruel man who had cut off her hands. She went into the hut, ordered a servant to take him bread and milk, as much as he could eat; and sat down and watched him. When he had done, she dropped the covering that had hid her hand-less wrists from view, and, holding them up before him, uttered a sentence meaning) “I have had my revenge!”

CANNOT I WAIT?—It is said that the astronomer whose genius discovered the laws which govern the movements of the planets, saw his great labors despised. Reduced to extreme misery, he was on his deathbed, when a friend asked him if he did not suffer in dying thus without seeing his discoveries appreciated. “My friend,” replied Kepler, “God waited five thousand years for one of His creatures to discover the laws which He has given to the stars, and cannot I wait also until justice is done me?”

I WILL NOT DIE A MOSLEM.—A Turkish grandee in Hungary made a Christian nobleman his prisoner, and treated him with the utmost barbarity. He was yoked with an ox, and compelled to drag the plough. But the fortune of war changed, and the Turk fell into the hands of the Hungarians. The Turk, supposing that he would be tortured to death, had already swallowed poison, when a messenger came from his former Christian slave, telling him to go in peace; he had nothing to fear. The Moslem was so impressed with this heavenly spirit, that he proclaimed with his dying breath, “I will not die a Moslem; but I die a Christian; for there is no religion but that of Christ which teaches forgiveness of injuries.”