“Nothing; it’s free.”
“That’s liberal anyhow,” observed Bones, as they pushed in.
The room was crowded by people of the lowest order—men and women in tattered garments, and many of them with debauched looks. A tall thin man stood on the stage or platform. The singing ceased, and he advanced.
“Bah!” whispered Aspel, “it’s a prayer-meeting. Let’s be off.”
“Stay,” returned Bones. “I know the feller. He comes about our court sometimes. Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”
“Friends,” said Mr Sterling, the city missionary, for it was he, “I hold in my hand the Word of God. There are messages in this Word—this Bible—for every man and woman in this room. I shall deliver only two of these messages to-night. If any of you want more of ’em you may come back to-morrow. Only two to-night. The first is, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool.’ The other is, ‘It is God who giveth us the victory.’”
Bones started and looked at his companion. It seemed as if the missionary had caught up and echoed the parting words of the colporteur.
Mr Sterling had a keen, earnest look, and a naturally eloquent as well as persuasive tongue. Though comparatively uneducated, he was deeply read in the Book which it was his life’s work to expound, and an undercurrent of intense feeling seemed to carry him along—and his hearers along with him—as he spoke. He did not shout or gesticulate: that made him all the more impressive. He did not speak of himself or his own feelings: that enabled his hearers to give undistracted attention to the message he had to deliver. He did not energise. On the contrary, it seemed as if he had some difficulty in restraining the superabundant energy that burned within him; and as people usually stand more or less in awe of that which they do not fully understand, they gave him credit, perhaps, for more power than he really possessed. At all events, not a sound was heard, save now and then a suppressed sob, as he preached Christ crucified to guilty sinners, and urged home the two “messages” with all the force of unstudied language, but well-considered and aptly put illustration and anecdote.
At one part of his discourse he spoke, with bated breath, of the unrepentant sinner’s awful danger, comparing it to the condition of a little child who should stand in a blazing house, with escape by the staircase cut off, and no one to deliver—a simile which brought instantly to Bones’s mind his little Tottie and the fire, and the rescue by the man he had resolved to ruin—ay, whom he had ruined, to all appearance.
“But there is a Deliverer in this case,” continued the preacher. “‘Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the lost;’ to pluck us all as brands from the burning; to save us from the fire of sin, of impurity, of drink! Oh, friends, will you not accept the Saviour—”