A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

“It ill befits me to try to say anything in introducing Mr. Whipple, of China. You all know of his thrilling escape, and of his wonderful success in rebuilding the work that the enemy had pulled down. I am sure you want to hear him tell his own story, and I will not take one moment of his precious time in anticipating it. Mr. Whipple.”

Then he would sit down again to listen to a tale of God’s care for His own, more thrilling than any that had ever come his way in story, drama, or life. And this was what men who knew the Lord had been doing with their lives! While he had been drivelling his away in childish nonsense, they had been risking their lives for the sake of telling the story of salvation. Salvation! Oh, Salvation! What a great word! He seemed never to have heard it before. What if some one had shouted that in his ear as he started away in the night from that hospital door? If it had been whispered behind him as he stood by Mrs. Chapparelle’s kitchen window and watched her go away to answer the door-bell! If he could have heard it as he lay on the trucks of the freight car and rode over the tortuous way! That there was salvation! Salvation for him! Why, he had not even realized then that he was a sinner. He had only thought of the consequences of his sin if he were found out. He had felt sorry for having hurt Bessie and her mother, of course, but he had no sense of personal sin. And now he had. Now he knew what the burden had been that weighted him down, growing gradually heavier and heavier through the weeks. And now it was gone! He wanted to run and shout that there was such a word as salvation, and that it was his! He did not quite know how he got it nor what it was, but he knew it was his, and that he had surrendered himself for life. He was not his own any more. He belonged to some one who would undertake for him. His old self was dead, and Christ had promised to see to all that. There would be things for him to do, of course, when this meeting was over. He did not know what they were, but he would be shown. He was like a person blinded now, groping, being led. It came to him that he was like Saul of Tarsus, waiting there in the street called Straight, for some one to say, “Brother Saul, receive thy sight!” Strange what an impression that first Bible story of his life had made upon him! It probably would not have been remembered if he had not heard it in such a peculiar way, first taught by his wild little Sunday-school class, and then read slowly, with original comments, by Mrs. Summers not many nights later at her evening worship. He realized that he had got a great deal of knowledge from Mrs. Summers. He put that away in his mind for future gratitude, and absorbed himself in listening to the speakers, who one and all seemed to have the same power and impetus back of their lives, whether they were from China or Oklahoma or Sayres’ Corners. Not all of them could speak good grammar. Not all of them knew how to turn a finished phrase, but all knew the Lord Jesus Christ, and seemed glad about it. Strange there could have been so many people in the world who knew and loved these things, and believed in a life that was invisible and eternal, and he had never come in contact with any of them before! He had known church people, not a few. His mother went to church sometimes, professed to be a member of one of the most fashionable congregations in his home city, but he felt positive his mother knew nothing of surrender to Christ. Why had no one ever told people in his home circle? His father! Did his father know?

It was undoubtedly Murray’s absorption in the great new peace that had come to his soul through simple self-surrender, that carried him through the entire services of those days without self-consciousness or fear. His quiet self-effacement made a deep impression on all. He did not seem to realize that he had evaded all attempts to bring him into the limelight. He had been so entirely taken up with his new thoughts that the old situation that had haunted him for weeks was gone for the time.

They came home on the midnight train, and it happened that the man from China was riding on that same train to the city farther on, and sat with Murray.

Now, Murray had never talked with a man face to face who had been through so many hair-breadth escapes as this man from China. Neither had he ever talked with a man or known a man who was so altogether consecrated. So it came about that he sat an entranced listener again to the words of a disciple who had given his life to preaching the gospel in China.

“And how did you feel the night they surrounded the Mission with the fire burning all about you, and creeping in the ceiling above?” asked Murray, wonderingly. To think that a man had been through that and could sit calmly and talk about it.

“Oh, well, I had to work all the time, of course, stamping out the fire that fell all about, but I kept all the time thinking in the back of my mind that perhaps I’d see the Lord Jesus Himself pretty soon. That was a great thought. There was only one thing held me back. I didn’t want to go till I had told a few more people about Him. I couldn’t bear to go when there were so few of us telling the story, don’t you see? Why, in China, do you know how many thousands of people there are to a missionary? People I mean who have never even heard the name of Jesus?”

“No,” said Murray, “but I’m beginning to have a realizing sense of how many thousands there are in my own land who don’t know Him, and haven’t even got one missionary to the whole bunch of them! I’m wondering if you could even get at some of them to tell them, they’re so full of their own matters. Take my own home city, now—.”

Murray had forgotten that he was Allan Murray now of Marlborough. He was thinking of his home and father and mother, and the fashionable circle from which he had fled. There is no telling what he might not have said had not some one plucked him by the sleeve and called:

“Hey, Murray! This is our station! Aren’t you going to get out? Not going on to China tonight, are you?” And they hustled him off into the night, with the stars looking down and a strange feeling that all the earth had been made over anew for him.