As the husband prayed, the wife thought, "but, oh, how can help come. It is as if we were praying for rain from a clear sky."
Two days later the answer did come,—not, indeed, as they expected, but above all they could have thought. The story of this must be left for our next sketch.
Part II. AS RAIN FROM A CLEAR SKY.
"Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me."
A poor broken opium slave lay on a kang or brick bed with only a thin straw mat between his emaciated form and the cold bricks. His livid color, with the peculiar dark shade of the moderate opium user, his sunken cheeks and labored breathing, all betokened the man had reached the stage when only a miracle could save him. Beside him stood a missionary, who was saying earnestly as he laid his hand kindly on the man's shoulder:
"Wang Pu Lin, I tell you God can save you."
"No, no, Pastor," the man replied sadly, "It's no use. I've tried and failed too often. I believe all you preach, but what is the use of believing when this opium binds me as with iron chains? Even Pastor Hsi's Refuge failed to cure me. No no, don't waste your time on me. I'm beyond hope." And the man turned again to his opium.
But the missionary was not the kind to be so easily rebuffed. The next day found Wang Pu Lin and the missionary on the Mission court en route for the station of Chu Wang.
For ten awful days Wang Pu Lin's body, mind and soul hung in the balance. The missionaries united in doing all that was possible to relieve the man's agonies. It was on the tenth night the crisis came. Many times later Wang Pu Lin told how that night he went out when in bitter agony into the darkness. To his distorted brain there appeared to him a horrible being urging him to jump the wall and get relief once more in opium. As he stood wavering a voice seemed to call to him, "Wang Fu Lin, Wang Fu Lin, beware! Yield now and you are lost." As he heard this voice he made one desperate effort, crying aloud, "Oh, God, help me. I will die rather than yield." Staggering back to his brick bed he threw himself upon it and slept till morning. He wakened, as the future proved, a new and victorious man.
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