I hear people say sometimes, “But I have prayed for So-and-so for weeks, for months, and I have received no answer.” This reminds me of a little boy who made some childish request of God, and ended his prayer by saying, “I will wait three weeks, God, and no more.” We limit God. We measure the great work of His Spirit by the span of our little lives. We must rise above that thought, with courage and patience, and persistent trust and confidence, remembering that His years are not limited. He has all eternity to work in, all eternity in which to remember and fulfil our hearts’ desires.
When the case is one the issues of which reach into eternity, when it is the bringing from darkness into light of an immortal spirit, when it is the training and teaching of a soul, the correction of faults which sometimes requires a whole life’s discipline, or the evolution of some great good from a family’s or a nation’s griefs, then all childish impatience is out of place, foolish, and fatal often to the very fulfilment of that which is desired. “Though it tarry, wait for it,” said the seer, “because it will surely come.”
But your sad hearts are asking still concerning the wanderers whom you love. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? There is, there is. There is hope, not only for the weak and erring, but for the criminal who has been guilty of the moral death of another, for him on whose head rests the guilt of cruelty and treachery. “Nazarene, Thou hast conquered,” were the last words of Julian the Apostate, at the close of a lifetime of rebellion and defiance. The Nazarene is a great conqueror. The heart of the most scornful of the rebels against God’s holy laws may be broken, softened and laid bare to the healing dews of heaven; and his eyes may be opened to see, like Hagar, close at hand a well of water which he knew not of.
In speaking of life and love to some of the most fallen and wrecked of men and women, it has sometimes appeared as if I were speaking into the ears of a corpse, of one in whom there remains no longer any conscience or will to respond to the call of God. Sometimes I have been answered by the wildest blasphemies on the part of men, who later asked with hungry eyes, “Tell me truly, is there any hope for me?” Love is not easily persuaded that the moment of death has arrived. Love, like Rizpah, watches with a constancy stronger than death by the silent corpses of her dearly beloved and longed-for, with all her strength denying that they shall be given as carrion to the wolves and the vultures.
Suffer me to recall an incident, one only. On entering the ward of a large city hospital, reserved for women of the lowest class, I met the chaplain leaving the ward, his hands pressed upon his ears in order to shut out the sound of a torrent of blasphemy and coarse abuse, hurled after him by one of the inmates to whom he had spoken as his conscience had prompted him, and under a sincere sense of duty. I drew near to that woman. She was hideous to look at, dying and raging; a married woman who had had children and lost them, who had lived the worst of lives, descending lower and lower. She had been kicked (as it proved, to death) by the man, her temporary protector. Her broken ribs had pierced some internal organ, and there was no cure possible. Though dying, she was hungry, as indeed she had been for years, and was tearing like a wild beast at some scraps of meat and bread which had been given to her. An unseen power urged me to go near to her. Was it possible for anyone to love such a creature? Could she inspire any feeling but one of disgust? Yes, the Lord loved her, loved her still, and it was possible for one who loved Him to love the wretch whom He loved. I do not recollect what I said to her, but it was love which spoke. She gazed at me in astonishment, dropped her torn-up food, and flung it aside. She took my hand, and held it with a death-grip. She became silent, gentle. Tears welled from the eyes which had been gleaming with fury. The poor soul had been full to the brim of revenge and bitterness against man, against fate, against God. But now she saw something new and strange; she heard that she was loved, she believed it, and was transformed.
I loved her. It was no pretence, and she knew it. At parting I said, “I will come again,” and she gasped, “Oh, you will, you will!” I came again the morning of the next day. The nurse told me that she died at midnight, quiet, humble, “as peaceful as a lamb,” always repeating, “Has she come back? She will come again. Is she coming? Yes, she will come again.” If I had been asked, as I sometimes am, “But had she any clear perception of her own sinfulness, did she understand, etc.?” I could give no answer. I know not. I only know that love conquered, and that He who inspired the love which brought the message of His love to the shipwrecked soul knew what He was doing, and does not leave His work incomplete.
It is told among the many beautiful incidents of the early Church, that a young Roman soldier, converted to Christianity, and received as a catechumen, awaiting baptism, was called to serve in the field with the legion to which he belonged. The night after a battle, he found himself lying under the stars wounded and faint. Near him a fellow-soldier in the same condition as himself was groaning heavily. The night was cold, and his comrade’s wounds were exposed to the frosty air. “Take my cloak,” whispered Martin; and though in sore pain, and shivering himself, he folded his cloak tenderly around his comrade and fell asleep. Then there arose before him in his sleep a strange and beautiful vision. He saw in the skies a number of angelic beings and saints in light, in the midst of whom stood the Saviour, clothed in “raiment white and glistening,” and—strange!—wearing on His kingly shoulders, over the resplendent white, the poor, torn, bloodstained cloak of a Roman soldier. As Martin gazed in astonishment, the Saviour smiled, and turning to His angelic attendants said, “Behold Me with the cloak which Martin the catechumen hath given Me! For inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
In one of the African provinces of Rome, partly Christianised, there occurred in the second century a sore famine. The inhabitants were driven to terrible straits. In a certain town, it is recorded by one of the old chroniclers, there lived a saintly bishop—not one of “my lords” of modern times, dwelling in a palace, but a humble shepherd or overseer of a scanty flock gathered out of the heathen city in which he dwelt. There lived in the same city a poor street musician, called Xanthus, an ignorant fellow of no good reputation. When the famine had endured some months, and Xanthus’ body presented the appearance of a walking skeleton, he saw, one evening in the twilight, a female form at the corner of a street, with the figure and bearing of a refined lady, though closely veiled and wearing a poor, used, black robe. She was holding out her hand for alms and receiving none, and worn and faint she yielded to the stress of hunger, and was about to accept the last terrible resource of selling her own person to a passer-by, who was apparently far above want. Penetrated with a sudden feeling of pity and horror, Xanthus interposed, and reverently begged the lady to accept of such poor help as he could give her. “Lady, I have little, but all I have shall be yours until these times of tribulation are over.” She moved towards him without replying, her tears alone proving her grateful acceptance of his aid. He led her back to her abode, and from that time forward he worked for her day and night, plying to the utmost his poor skill as a musician, affecting a cheerful manner, and adding to his fiddling various tricks and jokes to arrest the attention of the citizens who crossed his path. Every day he brought to the lady (for such she was) his modest gains, finding her food, and waiting on her, deeming it an honour that she should accept the help of such a creature as he.
The famine over, she was restored to her former position; but Xanthus fell ill, and his music and jokes were no more heard in the streets. Friendless and forlorn, he lay dying, when the good bishop above-named was visited in a dream by a heavenly messenger, who bade him go to such a street and such a house and find there a man called Xanthus, for “the Lord would have mercy on him.” Awaking from his sleep, the good bishop obeyed. He entered the place—more like a dog’s kennel than a human dwelling—where Xanthus lay. “Xanthus!” he cried, “the Lord Jesus Christ hath sent me to you to bring you glad tidings.”“How! to me—to me—your God has sent you to me! No, there is a mistake. I am the street-fiddler, Xanthus, the most miserable, God-forsaken of men—a man who has done nothing but ill all his life.” Then the good bishop recalled to the memory of Xanthus (this having been revealed to him) the day when he turned back a tempted fellow-creature from sin, and the weeks in which he sustained her, at the cost of his own life; and he added, “The Lord bids me say to you, that, for this cup of cold water you have given to one of His redeemed creatures, you shall in no wise lose your reward. Your sins are forgiven. Christ says to you, ‘This day you shall be with Me in paradise.’” And so it came to pass that Xanthus died that day, his poor heart, it is said, broken; but not with sorrow; broken through excess of joy, through the thrill of astonished gladness at the heavenly greeting, and the wondrous announcement that the Lord of Glory had deigned to notice and acknowledge the one redeeming act of his life. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”