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February 1927
T h e
K i n g ’ s
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realized a sense of sins forgiven. After his conversion his joy was great and continuous. He had special pleasure in talking about the “old, old story of Jesus and His love,” and had bright visions of “the home over there.” With the closing hours of the year 1882, it was cheering to hear him repeat, as he was crossing the. b a r: Then let my way appear ’ Steps unto heaven; All that Thou sendest me, In mercy given— Angels to beckon me Nearer, my God, to Thee, ' Nearer to Thee. “ T he C ross ” C an R a is e / Years ago, a Christian minister in a northern town was asked to visit a dying member of a Unitarian congre gation, who had expressed a wish to see him. “There need not,” it was said, “be any allusion to her religious views: deal with her as you would one of your own hear ers.” He went. The advice given him was followed. The poor lady, however, soon disclosed her mental condition. “I was born of Unitarian parents,” she said; “I was brought up a Unitarian, trained to take the Old Testament as my guide, and the Unitarian minister visits me as one of his flock. But the future is dark to me. I seem to have hold of nothing. I want to be right, right for the future, right with God. Still, I feel as if I cannot be. I want to get at Cod, so to speak, but cannot. I think of Him as a Father, yet He is absent. I am like Job—‘I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him.’ I think, and try to pray; and then I repeat from my heart a hymn I learned; ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee.’ What shall I do?” The visitor said: “Let the Cross raise.you. Come to your heavenly Father by the Cross, through the Crucified, through Jesus Christ, His Son.” She was advised to read the Gospel of John; and to read with prayer and expectation that the way to God would be made plain. At the next visit, what a change there was! John the evangelist had introduced her to Jesus. “Oh, how blessed! How beautiful!” said she. “Now I have found what I wanted—-a Saviour, a Father, my reconciled God through Jesus Christ.” tle of Chatterton Hill, General Washington, in the presence of the members of the family and others offered prayer, during which he quoted Joshua 22:22 : “The Lord God of gods, the God of gods, he knoweth, and Israel he shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord, save us not this day.” The Yonkers Statesman says of this incident: “When it is considered that the words were uttered by the Commander- in-chief of the Revolutionary forces at such a supreme crisis in the long struggle for independence, when the chances of suc cess seemed more than doubtful, all that read them will regard this utterance as being eloquent and impressive to a degree not equalled by any other human expression of which history con tains a record.” If No Ch ris t- - What did Darwin mean when he said, “A man about to be shipwrecked on some unknown coast will devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary will have reached that far?” He meant that where the Gospel has not gone civilization has not gone, and such a shipwrecked man would likely find himself in the soup tureen of a tribe of husky cannibals. Take Christianity out of civilization; take it out of art,- music, literature, and most of all of the human heart and life, and you’d have mighty little left worthy of the name.
ley-cars and nearly all machinery in the United States were stopped for five minutes, and “Nearer, my God, to Thee” was sung in numberless churches in the land. Bishop Marvin, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was traveling during the American Civil War, in the wilds of Arkansas. He was feeling much depressed, for the Union troops had driven him from his home. As he approached a dilapidated old log cabin, he heard someone singing “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” He alighted, and entered the house. There he found a poor woman, wid owed and old, who was singing in the midst of such pov erty as he had never seen before. His despondency van ished, and he went on his way happy and trustful, because of the faith which he had seen and the hymn which he had heard. A little drummer boy was found, after the .battle of Fort Donelson, by one who visited the field. The poor lad had lost an arm, which had been carried away by a cannon-ball, but even as life was ebbing he was singing, “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” For over thirty years the late Rev. Dr. Moulton was a missionary in the Tongan Islands. On one of his period ical visits to the smaller islands, he landed at one rarely visited even by missionaries, and there heard that an old Tongan, who had some years before been converted to Christianity, was dying. The doctor hastened to the hut of the sufferer, and there a curious sight met his view. The old man had been propped up by his friends so that he clung by his two arms to a beam stretching across the room; there he half hung with closed eyes and a face drawn with agony, constantly murmuring some words. The doctor drew silently near to him, thinking that the dying man was making some last request. “Judge of my astonishment,” he said, in relating the incident, “when I heard these words uttered over and over again—in Ton gan, of course—“Nearer, my God, to Thee! Nearer to Thee.” Another touching story:—Caleb C. Spratt was born at Geneva, Wisconsin, U. S. A., in February, 1855, and died at La Crosse, Wisconsin, December 31, 1882. From infancy he was familiar with Christian duty and privil eges, and was brought up in a godly home. His parents and sisters were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but it was not until his last illness that Caleb Washington and Lincoln as Christians J-TEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH, in writing of Abraham Lin- ■L -• coin as a Christian, said: “One day Mr. Lincoln met an army nurse, a woman of true Christian character. ‘I have a question to ask you.’ He said in effect. ‘What is a religious experience?’ It was the most important question that one can ask in the world. “The woman answered, ‘It is to feel one’s need of divine help and to cast one’s self on God in perfect trust and know His presence,’ or words to that effect. “ ‘Then I have it,’ he answered. ‘I have it, and I intend to make a public profession of it.’ “About the same time, or later, he said to Harriet Beecher Stowe: ‘When I entered the White House I was not a Chris tian. Now I am a Christian.^ “In this second period of divine trust he made a vow to God to free the slaves by a proclamation. “At a Cabinet meeting he said: ‘The time has come to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation. The people are ready for it, and I promised God on my knees I would do it.’” A writer in the New York Observer gives an anecdote of Washington, which came to him directly from a relative who died in 1854, and who was a child in the family which Washing ton was visiting at the time of the incident narrated. On the morning of his departure for White Plains, just before the bat
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