01.08. Our Happy Instance

One Happy Instance

Before closing we desire to bring before the reader just one happy instance of a self-denying soul seeker. The incident was related to the writer by an aged, sober-minded Christian in South Wales, and having come under his personal notice, he vouched for the truth of it. The incident transpired some years since while my informant was on a railway journey between Bristol and Southampton.

Two passengers were in the compartment with him - one a Christian minister, the other a man of the respectable working-class type. The unassuming simplicity of the speech and manner of the latter at once enlisted my friend’s interest in him, especially when he gathered the object of his present journey. He was travelling from some village near Exeter to Portsmouth, in order to see and speak to an old “chum” of his who was lying ill.

“He is not likely to get better”, he said, “and I am not sure abut the safety of his soul!”

“And are you going all that distance on purpose to see him?”

“Yes, I am”.

“May I ask if you are a family man?”

“Yes, but I am a widower; my daughter lives with me”.

“And do your earnings enable you to take such a journey as this?”

“Well, yes; though I have never known the colour of a pound a week!”

“This - said my informant, “astonished me greatly, especially as the man spoke of it in a way that made me feel he did not regard it as anything very extraordinary”.

“But”, said he, “I was still more astonished when he added, ‘I have always a lost man in hand!”

It appears he had himself been met by God in grace in the depths of misery and on the very verge of utter despair, and that, after the light had dawned upon him, he not only sought to walk according to it, but to do his utmost to bring others into it. A little later in the conversation, he said in his simple, unassuming style, “I never yet lost my man!” though he had, it would appear, bestowed long and patient labour on some before the desired end was reached. In one case, he confessed, he had made a great mistake. His lost man was a poor enslaved drunkard. “My object”, he said. “was first to make him a teetotaller and then to see him converted.

It was not until he had ten times broken the pledge, which I persuaded him to sign, that I saw where I was wrong.

Then, no longer waiting for reformation, I pointed him to the cross. His soul was saved and he has since led a consistent Christian life and never returned to his drinking habits”.

Well, dear reader, it is with much exercised before the Lord that we leave our little paper in your hands.

All our knowledge of Scripture, all our discussion of what the gospel is and how the work should be done, are surely not enough, if, through lack of heart, or love of ease, we shirk the labour of carrying the message to those who need it.

“Faith cometh by hearing; and how shall they hear without a preacher?” From an old record comes an important inquiry - most important, for it is God’s: Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?

Labourers He wants, and every heart that loves Him is eligible. Shall not reader and writer humbly but eagerly and joyfully answer: Here am I; send me?

“The morning cometh, and also the night”. Let us redeem the time because the days are evil.

Since life’s short span will soon be past, Let every day be as our last, And this our sole endeavour - Each hour to list what He doth say, Serve His blest wishes all the way, Then dwell with Him for ever.

Now is our opportunity. With Him is our account. by George Cutting