“Well,” said the old man, “some of ’em is a deal better for going, I must confess; but it ’pears to me you say things to them as if they were all alike, whereas some of them is a deal wickeder than others.”
I saw it would be quite impossible to separate in the mind of this veteran the offices of teacher of righteousness, and reprover of sin, or to make him comprehend how many enemies I should make, and what confusion there would be, if I adopted the course which he recommended. So I just remarked, “Well, you know I always ask God to give me a wise and understanding heart before I go amongst them, and I hope I shall be guided to do what is right. If I could see into the heart as God can, I might be able to adapt myself to individual cases; but as it is, I think it would be a worse mistake to distress and vex, by unjust comments, those already sufficiently weary and heavy laden. Encouragement in a right course will often do much more than finding fault with what is wrong. I believe, that whatever good has been done, has arisen from the reading together of God’s Word; whether comfort, counsel, or reproof has been wanted, they have come in this way, and the promise has been fulfilled, ‘My word shall not return unto me void.’”
“Ah!” said he, “that blessed book! I have lived in this place through a dark time, and I am sure I can say that it has been ‘a light to my feet, and a lamp to my path.’” Just then a sad fit of coughing came on, which seemed almost to deprive him of the power of breathing. When it was over, I said, “Do you often cough like that?” “I often do in the night,” he replied. “I can never quite lie down; for if the cough were to come on suddenly, I might be choked before I could be got up. The doctor says I shall go off in one of these fits some night.”
I asked the wife if any one was with them at night: she said, “Oh, no, John isn’t never afraid.” “The last thing that I and my old ’ooman does at night,” added John, “is to kneel down and commend ourselves to God’s keeping. I said to her last night, after we had been praying, ‘Jane, if I am sent for to-night, I am ready;’ and what it will be to leave this poor place, and go right off at once to the mansion my Saviour has provided for me!”
“Can you feel as trustful as your husband?” I asked Jane.
“Why, ma’am, I do try to, and I am as happy to think about heaven as he is; but you see, ma’am, the thing I feel is, that we must die first before we can go there, and death may be an awfuller thing than we think for.”
“Jane,” cried her husband, in a reproving tone of voice, “how often I have told you, that if death is to be a great trouble, then God is going to send us great help for it. He took care of me and helped me when I was a strong man, and now that I am as feeble as a child, He will be strength to me; and, Jane, I wish you would mind, that it isn’t any more hard to God to help us out of great troubles than out of little uns. You wouldn’t believe, ma’am,” he continued, “how happy I am at night, sometimes, when I am lying awake. He makes me to feel that love and trust in Him, that as sure as David I can say, ‘I fear no evil.’”
Blessed old man! The little room, with its close atmosphere, and many discomforts, seemed to me like the gate of heaven; and had he lived in Old Testament days, his name might have ranked with them of whom it is said, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
A few months after I had established the Mothers’ Society, one of the women brought a message from her husband, expressing his great wish to see me. I promised to call in the course of the week, and the next afternoon I found my way to a little low dwelling, which was pointed out to me as the residence I was seeking. It consisted of only two rooms—one in front, where the family seemed to live during the day, while that behind served as a bed-room. Three or four children were playing on the floor; the mother was busy at her washing-tub; and near the fire sat the husband, who, I saw, from his leather apron and the boot he held in his hand, was a shoemaker. The reception here was very different from the one previously described. When the wife announced me, the man rose from his seat; and, as his height exceeded six feet, his head scarcely cleared the ceiling. His fine figure, the form of his head, and the expression of his countenance, conveyed the idea that, had the man been born in a different position, he might have risen to be Lord Chancellor. After the usual greeting, he said (still standing)—
“Madam, I have wanted to see you for some time past, to thank you for what you have begun to do for us. You have thought of what we want done for us more than anything, and I hope, madam, you will go on with it; and God will bless you for this work, and so shall many of us; for we often think we might do better, if somebody would take the trouble to put us in the way of it.”