A Face Illumined

by Edward Payson Roe

"My young friends," began the old main in tones of gentle dignity, "will you listen patiently and quietly to one that you see will not have the chance to speak many more words. My eyes are a little dim, but you all appear young and happy; and yet I am sorry for you, very sorry for you. You don't realize what you are and what is before you. You remind me of a number of pleasure boats just starting out to sea. I have been across this ocean, and have almost reached the other shore. I know what terrible storms and dangers you will meet. You can't escape these storms, my young friends. No one can, and you don't seem prepared to meet them.

"Your manner has pained me very much, and yet, as my Master said, so I have felt, you 'know not what you do.' There is a Kingly Presence in this place that you have not recognized. Do you not remember who it was that said, 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them'?

"I am very old, but my memory is good. It seems but a short time ago that I was as young thoughtless as any one of you, and yet it was seventy years ago. I have tested the friendship of Jesus Christ for over half a century. Have I not then a right to speak of it? Ought I not to know something about him?

"Do you ask me if my Master has kept me from trouble and suffering all these years? Far from it. Indeed, I think he has caused me a good deal of trouble and pain in addition to that which I brought on myself by my own folly and mistakes; but I now see that he caused it only as the good physician gives pain, in order to make the patient strong and well. But one thing is certainly true. He has stood by me as a faithful friend all these years, and has brought good to me out of all the evil. I have been in sore temptations and deep discouragement. My heart at times has seemed breaking with sorrow. Mine has been the common lot. But when the storm was loudest and most terrible, his hand was on the helm, and now I am entering the quiet harbor. There has been much that was dark and hard to understand; there is much still; but there is plenty to prove that my Heavenly Father is leading me home as a little child.

"It is a precious, blessed truth that I wish to bring you fact to face with to-night, and yet it may become a very sad and terrible truth, if you shut your eyes to it now and remember it only when it is too late. I wish to assure you, on the ground of simple, down-right experience, through all these years, that God's 'unspeakable gift,' his only Son, is just what our poor human nature needs. Jesus Christ 'is able to save them ot the uttermost that come to God by him.' He helps us overcome that awful disease—sin. He brings to our unhappy hearts immortal life and health. I know it as I know that I exist. He has helped me when and where there was no human help. I have often seen his redeeming work in the lives of other faulty, sinful people like myself.

"The question therefore which you must each decide is not whether you will believe this or that doctrine, or do what this or that man teaches. The question is this:—Here is a tender, merciful, Divine Friend. He offers to lead you safely through all the dangers and hard places in this world, as a shepherd leads his flock through the wilderness. Will you follow him, or will you remain in the wilderness and perish when the night comes, as it surely will? If you will follow him as well as you can, he'll bring you to a happy and eternal home. Thanks to his patient kindness which never falters, he has brough me almost there.

"And now, my young friends, beat with an old man, and let me say, in conclusion, that you all need the kind, patient, faithful Friend that I found so long ago. No evil, no misfortune can come into any human life that is beyond his power to remedy and finally banish forever. I you have not found this Friend, this Life-giver, I am younger and happier than you are to-day, although I am eighty-eight years old."

Once before a rash, despairing man lifted his hand against his life, but God's message to him, through his apostle, was, "Do thyself no harm." And now again a faithful servant, speaking for him whose coming was God's supreme expression of good-will towards men, had brought a like merciful message to another poor soul that had taken counsel of despair. Ida Mayhew might learn, as did the jailer of Philippi, that God has a better remedy than death for seemingly irretrievable disasters.

The old gentleman's words came home to her with such a force of personal application that she was deeply moved, and even awed. They seemed like a divine message—nay more, like a restraining hand. "How strange it was," she thought, that she had come to this place!—how strange that a serene old, man, with heaven's peace already on his brow, should have uttered the words best adapted to her desperate need. If he had spoken of duty, obligation, of truth in the abstract, his tones would have been like the sound of a wintry wind. But he had spoken of a Friend, as tender, patient, and helpful as he was powerful. What was far more, he spoke with the strong convincing confidence of personal knowledge. He had tried this Friend through all the vicissitudes of over half a century, and found him true. Could human assurance—could human testimony go farther? Deep in her heart she was conscious that hope was reviving again—that the end had not yet come.

The gay young party, touched and subdued, passed out quietly with the others. But Ida lingered.