III
While all that has been said is true concerning the morning of the Eternal Day, in another sense it is true that already a brighter day is breaking.
First: A better day for Bible study. This old Book which people have feared was going to pass away is better to-day than ever. It is the object of deeper affection, and there is no question but that more people are believing in it to-day as the inspired Word of God than for years; and all because they have tested it and it has stood the test.
Second: A better day of prayer is dawning. Fifty thousand people in Great Britain are banded together to pray and to pray until the blessing comes if that be for years. Oh, that God would teach us to pray! We do not half understand what it means to ask God for blessings.
A story of prayer which would seem impossible if I did not know it to be true, for I have friends who have been in the town where it occurred and have met the descendants of the old sea captain, is the story of the captain who took his boy and others to fish and in the midst of the hurricane the boy was washed over board. Broken-hearted, he returned to the shore and the fisher wife, as was her custom, came down to meet them, only to sob her way back to her home because her boy was gone. They spent the night in the kirk in prayer, when the minister said, "Why not ask God to restore his body?" and they did. They put out to sea and journeyed sixty miles until he told them to stop and when they let over the grappling hooks they knew by the very tug of the rope that they had his body. They bore it back again to the broken-hearted captain and his wife, who had all the time been waiting in the kirk in prayer. May God teach us how to pray!
A brighter day is dawning, and while it may be that some of us cannot see it, while there may be skeptics who say it is not exactly true, yet I know from what I have seen myself that the darkness is passing away.
In June, 1897, the steamer Catalonia at ten o'clock at night was found to be on fire. One of my friends has told me that he paced the deck and considered himself lost because the flames were burning fiercely. Finally the fire was under control and the people sang, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." Telling me of the lessons that he learned on this awful journey, he said: "That night at twelve o'clock, when the pumps were being forced and the clouds of smoke were taking on new dimensions and we were wondering what the morning would bring us, the man on the bridge shouted, as he had at each midnight of the trip, 'Eight bells, all's well!'" Had the man down in a stateroom watching by the side of his sick wife heard the words, he might have said, "It's a falsehood," but that man's vision was restricted by the narrow walls of his stateroom. Had the mother and daughter, sitting in the cabin, with their arms about each other, wondering why they had been allowed to sail on the Catalonia and leave their loved ones behind, heard it, they might have said, "The man is beside himself," but they could not see beyond the cabin. Had the lonely traveler who stood near the hatchway given it a thought he might have said, "It's a lie," but he could not see through the clouds of smoke at which he stared silently. But the vision of the watch swept the horizon, and there was no obstruction in the ship's path. He knew that each revolution of the Catalonia's machinery pushed the ship on her way to Queenstown. He had a right to say it.
I somehow seem to hear the sound of the goings in the tops of the trees and have evidence that God is coming to his church with blessing. It is true there is in some quarters indifference, in many places worldliness, but I can see no insurmountable barrier in the way of the progress of the Kingdom of God.