No face was so bright, no heart more true,
And none were so sweet as he;
—and as the congregation caught up the refrain,—
O where is my boy tonight?
O where is my boy tonight?
My heart overflows, for I love him he knows,
O where is my boy tonight?
—a young man who had been sitting in a back seat made his way up the aisle and sobbed, “Mother, I'm here!” The embrace of that mother and her long-lost boy turned the service into a general hallelujah. At the inquiry meeting that night there were many souls at the Mercy Seat who never knelt there before—and the young wanderer was one.
Mr. Sankey, when in California with Mr. Moody, sang this hymn in one of the meetings and told the story of a mother in the far east who had commissioned him to search for her missing son. By a happy providence the son was in the house—and the story and the song sent him home repentant.
At another time Mr. Sankey sang the same hymn from the steps of a snow-bound train, and a man between whose father and himself had been trouble and a separation, was touched, and returned to be reconciled after an absence of twenty years.