In Answer to Prayer

by William Boyd Carpenter; Theodore L. Cuyler; W. J. Knox-Little; Ian Maclaren; William Quarrier

It was a new song of praise to God that day, I can tell you, and we went on to build our church. Now, even it we find too small, and we are praying to the Lord for £2500 to enlarge the building, and enable us to accommodate five hundred more worshippers.

I thought that, having got the church, we might, as we were building a tower to hold the tank for our water supply, also get a clock and chimes to enliven the village. So we prayed that the Lord would send money for that purpose. I thought that about £500 or £600 would be sufficient. While the building was going on, we prayed for the money, and I was certain it would come. The architect was hurrying me and pointing out that if the clock and bells were really to go into the tower, the work must be done at once. I told him there was no fear that the money would not come. If the money had not come, and the tower was completed, the placing of the clock and bells at a later period would have mean practically taking down and rebuilding, because with our water tank in position, the work would have been impossible. My architect kept bothering me, but I was sure the money would come, and one night I went home and found a cheque for £200—£1500 to build a house, and £500 for the clock and bells. The clock and bells cost £800, and the lady who sent the money paid the additional £300.

A village like our Homes, with 1200 of a population, needed a good water supply for sanitary purposes. For a very long time we depended on a well, and stored the water in tanks, but frequently the supply fell short, and we felt that if we could get the proprietors in the upper district—none of the surrounding proprietors, by the way, had ever taken much interest in the work of the Homes—to give us the privilege of bringing water into the grounds, we should be able to do much to improve that state of matters. Sir Michael Shaw Stewart gave us the right to use our own burn higher up for the purpose, and gave us a piece of ground at a nominal rent of 12s. a year, for a reservoir and filter, but the money to carry out the work was not in hand, and we prayed to the Lord to send us from £1200 to £1400, which we anticipated would be the cost of the undertaking.

Some time later a lady called at James Morrison Street (Glasgow), and left word that an old woman who lived in Main Street, Gorbals, wished to see me. On the following day I called at the address given, and found the person who had sent for me. She was an old woman living in a single apartment, and she was very ill and weak. "Are you Mr. Quarrier?" she asked. I said I was. "Ye were once puir yersel'," she went on; "I was once a puir girl with naebody to care for me, and was in service when I was eleven years old. I have been thankful for a' the kindness that has been shown me in my life."

She went to a chest of drawers in the corner of the apartment, and after a little came and gave me two deposit receipts on the Savings Bank, each for £200 and on neither of which any interest had been drawn for twenty years. When I cashed them I received £627.

I said "Janet"—Janet Stewart was her name—"are you not giving me too much?" "Na, na, I've plenty mair, an' ye'll get it a' when I dee."

We did the best we could for Janet, but she did not live much longer. Within a week I received a telegram that Janet was dead, and she had died, I was told, singing "Just as I am without one plea."

In her will she left several sums to neighbours who had been kind to her in life, and to our Homes was bequeathed the balance. Altogether the Orphans' share was £1400. The money defrayed the cost of our water scheme, and I always think how appropriate the gift was, for nearly all her life Janet had been a washerwoman and had earned her bread over the wash-tub.

The direct answers to prayers of which I could tell you would fill a volume, and what I have mentioned are only those fixed in my memory. I have always asked God for a definite gift for a definite purpose, and God has always given it to me. The value of the buildings at Bridge-of-Weir is £200,000, and since we started, the cost of their "upkeep" has been £150,000. And we are still building as busily as in the beginning.