TROPHIES OF GOD’S GRACE: A STIRRING PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF SALVATION /t yeu* ‘yttuU t%e By Daniel Rose (as told to Anne Bazelton ) Part I T he throbbing organ notes seemed to fall all around us as we turned
from light. I had been avoided by the other boys and girls on the play ground but laughter swelled behind me as I passed and once I heard some one mutter, “ Christ-killer! ” The worst was yet to come. Classes were dis missed at the end of that very long day and I set out on my walk home, the joy and excitement stilled. Sud denly the air seemed full of flying fists as a half dozen fellows jumped out at me. Around me tumbled the words, “ Christ-killer!” and “ Shee- ney!” shouted with each blow directed at me. “Father, why did they say / killed Christ?” I sobbed later when I escaped my tormentors and reached the safety of our home. The awful things Father said then about the Lord and the look on his face had frightened me almost as much as what the boys had done. But my heart had hardened against any mention of Christ from that day. Numerous people had spoken to me of Christ in the years that followed, but I was always resentful and pri vately thought them to be demented. And while, as I grew older and much more worldly I became more tolerant of other faiths, nevertheless I wanted nothing to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. I liked to sing and I was even willing to sing Christian songs but I could not sing the name of Christ. I did not dream I would ever enter the church again. I had gone on im pulse and Selina had dutifully fol lowed me. But we had a full social life and while I loved music there was no need to satisfy that interest in a church. Yet, the very next Sunday evening Selina and I were back at the Ninth Street Baptist Church. And g r a d u a l l y , without any conscious thought, going to church replaced at tendance at the theater, and worldly things began to be distasteful to me. I found myself disliking profanity, although I could not have explained the cause. And I still paused in my singing while the others sang the name of Jesus Christ, and would then rejoin them. All unknown to me, events were shaping that were to change my en tire life. My sister Carrie and I had married brother and sister and we four had been very close in our fam ily, business, and social lives. Then Carrie and Charles moved to another
the comer on Ninth Street in Cincin nati, Ohio. I felt the inner tension within me ease and I realized how eagerly I had been waiting for those first strains of music. “ Far away in the depths of my spirit tonight,” sang the choir and congregation of the Ninth Street Bap tist Church; “ Rolls a melody sweeter than psalm; In celestial-like strains it unceasingly falls, O’er my soul like an infinite calm.” The melody, even more than the words, reached down into my heart and stilled the tumult that was grow ing with each day. Every Sunday night it was the same. We started out to attend a burlesque show in a near by theater as had been our habit of late, but each time I waited, almost with baited breath, for that moment of first hearing the music from the church we had to pass. I had won dered for weeks now if Selina had noticed how my feet slowed as we passed the beautiful church building. But I had never suggested we go in. I was a Jew and a Jew did not enter a Christian church — not one who had been reared as I. Yet each Sun day night I walked as slowly as I could, prolonging the moment before we passed out of earshot. There was a sense of reluctance in going on and an undefined longing to toss all ob jections and restraints of race and re ligion aside and go in to hear more. This night my feet slowed to a stop. “ Shall we go in, my Selina?” I sug gested softly, almost as surprised as sh e at m y involuntary w o r d s . I thought I read in the swift, startled look she threw at me something of dismay. Selina had been a Catholic when we were married, but she had renounced her family to marry a Jew. “ I -— I like the music . . . ” I ex plained. “ If you wish, Daniel,” she answered quietly. I looked about us to make sure no one we knew had noticed us. It wouldn’t do for any of my fellow- Jews to see me entering a Christian church. Then we went in . . . all the way up to the balcony, well shielded from the sight of any passer-by who might recognize me.
Mr. Rose and sister, Mrs. Chas. Menard We stood with the congregation to sing the next hymn, and I sang as firmly as anyone, “ The Church’s one foundation is . . .” and then stopped and quickly placed my fingers over the next two words. It was an invol untary action — dating back to my childhood. I could not bring myself to speak the hated name, JESUS CHRIST. As a child I had thought if I covered up the two words, I would not have to see them. But / had seen them. The lofty walls of the church where we stood seemed to fade from my immediate sight and I saw instead the small room that was familiar to me as a boy. I was six years old and had come home from my first day at school . . . a frightened, confused, and tearful small lad. Because my father was religiously orthodox, and ours was a Jewish home in which the laws and cere monies of Judaism were strictly fol lowed, I had from my earliest remem brance a deep desire to know more about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. With religious zeal I always observed the fast days and the holy days. I would even refrain from clean ing my teeth at those times for fear of accidentally getting a drop of water down my throat. My father had a deep hatred for Jesus Christ and be cause of the things I had heard him say, the name of Jesus conjured up in my young mind all the persecutions of my people for centuries past and I, too, hated Him. I hated Him more than ever after that first day at school. The day had begun with high ex citement, for at last I was old enough to go to the public school. Getting there was accomplished without inci dent for Father took me. But the day at school had been as different from my eager anticipations as darkness is
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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