December 1929
575
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
There was a little Scotch wife in it, with four or five bairnies, and she was a good Christian woman. All the way to her house I kept asking God to give me some word to say to her. When she opened the door she looked sus picious at once. She said, “Preacher, why so early? Is my husband dead?” I said, “Yes, he’s dead.” She backed down the hall into a little dining room and the children came and gathered around her. One little girl said, “Mamma, is daddy dead?” And then they all sobbed when the mother replied, “Yes, they’ve killed him.” I couldn’t do a thing but weep with them. After a while the woman looked up and said, “Preacher, do you think God Almighty knows about all this? Does God care ?” You may think that was a strange way for a Christian to speak. But, friends, have not our hearts, too, been wrung at times with that cry of anguish on dark nights and in bitter experiences through which we have passed? As I stood there almost dumb in the presence of such grief, I remembered that Jesus, our precious Saviour, passed through a night of great sorrow and that He cried out in anguish, “My God, my God, why?” 1 am so glad that Jesus went through that experience, because I could then say to the little Scotch woman, “Yes, He knows. Don’t you remember in that dark hour when He was hanging on the cross He said, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ” I have spent nearly all of my life among poor people. I have been going to deathbeds and homes of sorrow and trying to say something that would comfort wounded hearts. I think I would have committed suicide half-way back on the journey if I had not believed in the Old Book. Oh, why are preachers trying to take away faith in this wonderful Gospel? My baby son, my eighth son, was taken to the hospital one morning. I went there to see him and they put a white robe on me, for he was ill with diphtheria. When I went into the room the little fellow looked at me and said, “Daddy, why do you dress like that when you come here ?” I said, “Donnie, it is because the doctors and the nurses do and they won’t let me come in unless I put this robe on.” He said, “Daddy, am I going to die?” His little feet were in the cold waters even then. They were slipping over the brink. I asked him, “Are you afraid to die?” And do you know what my little lamb said? “No,' daddy, I ’m not afraid to die, Jesus is with me.” God pity you, you school teacher, you professor, if you dare to steak that faith away from my child! “Jesus is with me.” That was the testimony of my baby. He could say with David, “I fear no evil, for thou art with me.” Christ himself meets every saint as he comes to the “Does Jesus care when I’ve said good-by To the dearest on earth to me, When my sad heart aches, till it nearly breaks, Is it aught to Him? Does He see? 1 »., “Oh, yes, He cares, I know He cares, His heart is touched with my grief; Though the days be weary, The long nights dreary, I know my Saviour cares.”
No prophet’s voice in Bethlehem’s street had cried, None whisper’d of the Herald Angels’ song Which ushered in the world’s first Christmas- tide— Was Bethlehem’s slumber wrong? But what of those who hear yet never lift Their earth-bound hearts to heaven on Christmas Day, While all the time God’s wondrous priceless gift Is breathing round their way? And what of those who hear and look above, Whose hearts’ desire is for their Lord to live, Yet have not learned the fulness of His love, Nor all He waits to give? Nearer than Bethlehem’s Babe His Spirit now In many a heart seeks full unhindered sway; Not at Thy cradle, but Thy throne we bow, Lord, come to us today! —Constance Coote.
river’s brink, and He carries him safely over. “Precious in the sight o f the Lord is the death o f his saints.” , W e S hall B e W it h H im in E ternal D estiny We are to be with Him in eternal destiny. Wasn’t it Rowland Hill who used to say, “We two are so joined that He will not be in glory and leave me behind” ? When they stand at the altar—a man and a woman— and we make them husband and wife, they say, “Until death do us part.” But, bless God, here is a union that death cannot sever. Here is a bond that is greater than death. You remember how Paul speaks in the eighth of Romans. He says, “Who shall separate us from the love o f Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For I am per suaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin cipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love o f God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Oh, what a Gospel to give to a poor, troubled, weary world! I do not wonder that Paul said, “I am not ashamed o f the gospel.” “He who saves and they who are saved are all o f one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.”
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