THE KING’S BUSINESS
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He shut it up, and put it where it was before, and said that he would not look into ‘that cursed old chest’ again. But that did hot matter, for the prayer had got into his heart, and he could not lock his heart up in that chest. He became thoroughly miserable; and the wretched woman with whom he lived asked him what was the matter with him. He told her what he had read in that paper, and she said she hoped he would not become a hypocrite. , All the jokes and frivolities of his companions could not take out the dart which God had sent into his heart; and, ere long, by true repentance and by living faith, that man was in Christ a saved soul, married honorably to. the woman with whom he had iived in sin, and walking in uprightness, serving his father’s God, as the result of a prayer which had lain in an old chest for fifty-four years, but which God’s eye had seen all the while, and which, at last, He had answered when the set time had come. Be of good courage, all ye who are pleading for your children, for God will yet answer your supplications. Just Now By Rev. GEORGE COATES V ERY interesting was another case — that of a young man whom I found bowed down in one of the pews in a country chapel, in the West Riding. On my asking him if he was saved, he said: “No, and I think I .never shall be.” “Why not?” “Why, because I ’m such a big sinner,” “Not too big,” was my answer. “Well, I ’m trying to be a bit better, and when I ’m a bit more fit, I’ll come and be saved.” I asked him if he thought he would
Ireland, or even to visit her parents in her native village, where she has been on two or three occasions since her return. Kate met the arguments and intimidations of Rome in the name of the Lord of Hosts, and she ¡prevailed. The Yet Unborn Child By C. H. SPURGEON T HERE was a captain, whose name I will not give in full just now—-I will call him Mitchell. This captain was a goodly man, and he once went to sea, leaving his wife at home expecting soon to give birth to their first-born child. While he was at sea, one day a time of deep solemnity came over him, in the course of which he penned a prayer. ’ This prayer was for his yet unborn child.. He put the prayer into the oak chest in which he kept his papers. He never came home again, for he died* at sea. His chest was brought home to his wife. She did not open it to look at his papers, but she thought they might be of use to her son when he should grow up. That son lived; and, at the age of sixteen, he joined a regiment at Boston. In that regiment he became exceedingly debauched, profane, blasphemous, and sinful in every way. At the age of fifty-four while he was living in sin with a wicked woman, it struck him that he would like to look through the contents of the old chest which his father had left. He opened it, and at the bottom found, tied up with red tape, a paper, on the outside of which was written, “The prayer of Mitchell K----- for his wife and child.” He opened it and read it; it was a most fervent plea with God that the man’s wife and child might belong to Christ, written fifty-four years back, and before ,that child was; .hdTP-
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