“One Sweetly Solemn Thought”
Dr. Russell H. Conwell was traveling in China and one day he entered a gambling house in a Chinese city. Two Americans were there, betting and drinking; the older one frequently using the filthiest profanity. The younger man had lost in two games and the third game had just begun. While the winner was shuffling the cards his companion sat lazily back in his chair. There was delay in dealing out the cards and while waiting, the other looked carelessly about the room and began to hum a tune and then to sing almost unconsciously. The words were:
“One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o’er and o’er;
I am nearer home today
Than I ever have been before.”
While the young man sang, his fellow gambler stopped dealing out cards, stared at the singer and exclaimed: “Harry, where did you learn that song?” “What song?” “Why, the one you have been singing.”
He said he did not know what he had been singing. The other repeated the words, with tears in his eyes, and the younger man said he had learned them in the Sunday School in America.
“Come,” said the elder gambler, getting up; “come, Harry, here’s what I have won from you; go and use it for some good purpose. As for me, as God sees me, I have played my last game and drunk my last bottle. I have misled you, Harry, and I am sorry. Give me your hand, my boy, and say that for old America’s sake, if for no other, you will quit this infernal business.”
This hymn was written by Miss Phoebe Cary while visiting a friend. She had attended church and was deeply stirred, and on returning to her friend’s house she retired to “the little back third-story bedroom” and wrote this expression of her experience. This incident in China gave her much happiness. After her death the older man in the above story wrote to Dr. Conwell saying that he was now a “hard working Christian” and that Harry had renounced his evil ways.
CHAPTER IX
“The Old Rugged Cross”
The Cross is the triumphant symbol of a militant and puissant Christianity. It tells of “love divine, all loves excelling.” It sustains hope in the final victory of good. It establishes faith in the persistent reality of truth. The Gospel of the Cross proclaims redemption from sin, reconciliation with God, realization of goodwill to all people. There is absolutely nothing else to equal the appeal of the Cross in its power to produce the most desirable changes in the individual and in society. Wherever it has been preached with the conviction of experience and the constraint of passion, the Holy Christ has won trophies in lives recovered from the waste of sin, renewed by the power of grace, enriched by the practices of purity and peace.
Indeed, the only cure for our distracted age is found in the Atoning Christ. This is endorsed by the voices of redeemed multitudes of every age and land. The testimony from life is conclusive. It holds us by a resolute determination to announce its message of pardon and joy to everyone. In the words of John Oxenham,
“Love, with the lifted hands and thorn-crowned head;
Still conquers death, though life itself be fled,—
His Cross still stands!
Yes,—Love triumphant stands, and stands for more,
In our great need, than e’er it stood before!
His Cross still stands!”[21]
The Cross makes a universal appeal, as in this incident related by Miss Margaret Sangster[22] when