Poor Adam was beginning to feel after Him, though only as one who gropes in the dark.
Again rose the words,—
"Though I forget Him, and wander away,
Still He doth love me wherever I stray;
Back to His dear loving arms do I flee,
When I remember that Jesus loves me."
So on, through all the verses to the end, and still Adam's lips were closed. He was too true a man to say or sing words that had no meaning for him. These, though English words, spoke in an unknown tongue to Adam Livesey.
The mission preacher did not ask the people to kneel down at once, but, keeping the hymn-book open in his hand, said:
"I hope you who sang these words just now felt as well as uttered them. I mean those which speak of your love for Jesus. You are right about His love for you. He loves the sinner, the forgetful, the wanderer, the wilful, the disobedient. He would have the worst and vilest to be saved, and to come to a knowledge of the truth. It was love that brought the Son of God from heaven to redeem your souls and mine. It was love which made the Father willing to bestow on us His most precious gift. It was love that made Jesus die on the tree, to save us everlastingly. It was love which brought the Holy Spirit to show the sinner his need, and to lead him to Jesus.
"No doubt about all these things. They are true, for they come from Him who is the Truth. In believing them is life, for faith lays hold on Christ, who is our Life, and makes us one with Him.
"If you have found Christ you have also found the way to peace, joy, happiness, and to a new service and a new master. You have found the way to heaven, for Jesus is the new and living Way.
"All right to sing about His love. But how about yours? Are you carried away with the music with its joyful chorus? Or can you say from your hearts, 'Jesus loves me, and I know I love Him?' If there were doubts in your minds that kept you from joining, thank God that you kept silent. If you felt your hearts sink within you as you heard other voices take up the words, whilst you could only sigh and say within yourself, 'Oh, how I wish I could feel the love and the assurance that brings sweetest rest,' thank God for that. Your heart is no longer quite dead; there are stirrings of life in it. You are not wholly asleep, for the Holy Spirit has awakened you to a sense of want, and is striving with you now. You are beginning to feel after God."
Here the preacher paused, and said, "Let us pray, dear friends, that every soul in this place to-night may not only seek but find."