The missioner was told on all sides what a notoriously untrustworthy man George was: "You see, we know his past, and you have been here only two weeks, or you'd know better than to put any faith in what he did and said last night. It was just a passing emotion, and it won't mean anything." So George fulfilled their expectations when he returned from the city uproariously drunk one night three weeks after the mission closed.
The morning following the outbreak the minister's wife made a special trip down street. The door of the carpenter's shop was fortunately open, and George was leaning against his bench looking, as he felt, far from happy. Pleasantly the little woman greeted him, and passed on. Then, with an exquisite4 piece of deception5, she appeared to have a sudden after-thought, and turning quickly, she said, "Oh, George, the doors in the pantry cupboard are so swollen6 that I cannot close them. Could you fix them for me?"
The carpenter looked wearily at her. "I ain't feeling much like fixing anything, Mrs. Lamb, but I'd try to do most anything for you."
"Thank you, George," was the reply, "I believe you would; come as soon as you can."
George had said what was true; he believed in Mrs. Lamb, and what was still better, he felt that she believed in him. When, on the night of his confession7, she took his hand and said, "I'm so glad, George," he valued her word and tone, and look and hand-clasp, as only the friendless man can.
But George was thoroughly8 disheartened to-day. Everybody knew what he had said in the meeting, and by now they would know that he had failed. Yet no one would blame him more than he blamed himself. He called himself a fool for going to the city. The business could have been done equally well by correspondence. From the time he decided9 to go he feared that he would return home intoxicated10. He was quite aware of a terrible craving11, that he knew only too well made it dangerous for him to frequent the old haunts so soon, but in spite of inner warnings he made up his mind to go, so that the battle was lost before the temptation was actually met.
Twice that afternoon George took up a few tools to go to the Manse in response to Mrs. Lamb's request, and twice he put them down again. The prison cell would have been entered with less fear than the Manse that day. He felt he had betrayed one of the best friends he ever had. And so night came, and the pantry doors were untouched.
Family prayers were about to be conducted at the Manse. Baby Jean was on mother's knee, and Harold's chair was close to father's. Just before kneeling the good wife said quietly: "Please remember George, papa." There were tears in her eyes when the petition was offered "for those who have failed," and a whispered "Amen" followed each clause that was uttered in behalf of George.
The following morning George made his way to the Manse and attended to the pantry doors. When the work was finished, Mrs. Lamb led the way through the dining-room to the front door. Her hand rested on the door-knob, and she seemed in no hurry to let George out. It was evident she wanted to say something, but the words did not easily come.
At last George broke the silence, and his voice quivered with penitence12 as he looked for a moment into Mrs. Lamb's sympathetic eyes. "I suppose you've heard all about it, Mrs. Lamb, and the mess I've made of things?"
"Yes, George, I know, and I'm so sorry; but you are going to win yet: God's going to help you win. Perhaps, George, you trusted too much in your own strength, and you forget how weak we all are when we stand alone. You know the hymn13 that says—'Christ will hold me fast'? You cannot get along without Him, George. Tell Him all about it, when you and He are alone, and ask forgiveness, and, George, I know God can and will make you a good, strong, true man; He loves you, and we love you."
"You are going to win yet," and "He loves you, and we love you," were sentences that gave the man, overtaken in a fault, new hope. Deep yearnings were in his heart as he walked back to the shop. He believed his better moments were his truest moments, and yet it seemed to him that no one except Mrs. Lamb credited him with noble aspirations14. He knew very well that there were Christian people who were suspicious and unsympathetic toward him, and so his better nature seemed to retire in their presence.
Later on he told how he used to feel like saying, "Why won't you believe in me, and stand by me, and give me a fighting chance?" Often he felt like a man who had been injured, and who needed support until he could reach a place of safety; and yet few did more than look with disgust on him, and think it unlikely that he could make the journey without falling. But, despite his weakness and his sin, George believed there were possibilities of noble living even for him.
The following Sabbath he was back in his place in church, a humble15, penitent16 man. The sermon that day was different from the ones the people were used to hearing; not that it was better, for all Mr. Lamb's sermons were of a high order, but it had an element that was unusual, an element of great tenderness. The text was: "Go, tell His disciples17 and Peter." Peter's past, traitorous19 conduct was graphically20 pointed21 out, but so also was his weeping. "We cannot think too harshly of our sins," said the preacher, "but we may think too exclusively of them. Peter thought of his sins, but he also thought of His Saviour22, and when he saw his Risen Lord, the erring23 but penitent disciple18 said: 'Thou knowest that I love Thee,' and the Master forgave all and sent him out to service."
The God whom the Minister was accustomed to preach about was a splendid, strong, but rather pitiless Being; now they heard of a loving, pitiful Father who was ever seeking those who had turned from Him, and who was more than ready to receive them as they turned again home. All He wanted was to hear from their own lips, "Father, I have sinned." That confession opened Heaven's wardrobe for the man made disreputable by wandering.
At the close of the evening service George accepted Mrs. Lamb's invitation to "slip in and have a cup of cocoa." "Just the three of us," she added. "You know the way; walk right in." Hurriedly she passed on to give kindly24 greetings to a few strangers she had noticed.
For nearly two hours George and the Minister sat in the glow of the firelight. It was a great relief to the disheartened man to be with those who knew all, and who yet loved him, and who, by their faith in him, gave him a little more faith in himself and in God.
Referring to his drinking habit, he said, "Sometimes I feel I'd rather drop dead in my tracks than touch it again; and then there are other days when it seems as if some slumbering25 devil had awakened26 within me, and I'm so crazy for it that I'd give the whole of Canada, if I had it, for another drink." Then, after a pause, he continued, "I suppose a man shouldn't try to blame his sin on others, but one of the earliest things I can remember, Mr. Lamb, is being held in my mother's arms and putting my hands around the beer jug27 while she gave me a drink. Many a night, when I was 'knee-high to a grasshopper28' as we say, I have clung to her skirt, as she dragged me from bar to bar, around High Street and George Street in old Glasgow. I guess my father and mother were drunk every Saturday night for five years. One night I can remember as clear as if it was only yesterday. It was the time of the Glasgow Fair, and I was wishing they'd go home. I must have been about six years old, and my sister Janet was two years younger, and then there was a baby they called Bobbie. Mother had Bobbie fastened around her with an old shawl. She and father had been on a spree all the evening. Father was leaning against a lamp-post, just drunk enough to say the fool things that amuse some of them folks who don't think anything about the big price somebody is paying for that kind of fun. Maybe you think it's queer of me to talk that way, when God knows I've been guilty enough myself. Well! let me finish my story, anyway. My mother was dead drunk, sitting on the curbstone near him, and maybe Bobbie was stupefied with liquor like I had been many a time. Once in a while she'd rouse up, and press her hands against her maddened head and shriek29 all kinds of curses. Police! why, Mr. Lamb, the Glasgow police couldn't have handled the crowds that was drunk them days. I've seen hundreds of drunken men and women in one night around Rotten Row and Shuffle30 Lane, and other streets near the corner of George and High Streets: so long as they didn't get too awful bad the police let them alone. Mother was a very devil when she got fighting. I've heard father brag31 about what she could do in that line. When she used to roll up her sleeves for a fight, she was like a maddened beast. I tell you, there isn't much in the fighting line I haven't seen; but it makes me kind of shudder32 yet when I think of how she'd punch, and kick, and scratch, and all the time she'd be using language that would make a decent man's blood run cold. You were saying something about 'sacred memories around the word "mother"' in one of your sermons, but that was the kind of mother I had, Mr. Lamb.
"It must have been near Sunday morning when somebody helped to get us home. Janet and me had been sleeping in the gutter33, and I can remember the time they had getting father and mother up the stairs in the 'Close.' Somebody slipped near the top, and there was a heap of us jammed against the wall at the turning of the stairs. But we children were used to bruises34, and we learned to keep quiet, or we'd only get more for our trouble. I likely cried myself to sleep on the rotten old floor, and I suppose I'd never have remembered any more about it if it hadn't been for Bobbie. In the morning the poor wee chap was dead. He must have died through neglect; pretty close to murder I call it. Did the death make any difference to the parents? Not likely! At least I never remember them any different. I was ten years old when my mother died, and she died through stumbling in a drunken fight; her head struck the curb-stone, and she never spoke35 again. After her death I was taken care of in one of the Orphanages36 until I was sent to Canada, But what I often wonder about, Mr. Lamb, is whether God will be hard on those of us who've had parents like that, and who've been brought up where we didn't get a fair chance. God only knows what we kids had to see and hear and suffer. People don't make any allowance for bad blood, and bad food, and bad treatment, except in cattle. I wonder if God does? Yes, I know I'm having a chance now, and yet God must pity even me when He knows how I've been handicapped for these years; but some of those boys live and die right there, and they don't get even the chance I've had. It's easy for folks who know nothing about it to say the people should get out of such places; but some of them are like heathen, they don't know there's anything better. What did I know about a different kind of life? Where could I have gone? Who would have wanted me? How could a street youngster get out of the place, where a good many of his meals were picked off the streets and out of the ash-barrels, and he never had two coppers37 ahead? And there were thousands like I was. I think about these things once in a while, when I'm alone in the shop, and I've sometimes thought it was well-nigh a crime to allow children to be born in such hell-like places. And there are some people have no right to be fathers and mothers at all."
It was only rarely that George unburdened his mind to such an extent; but Mr. Lamb gave him "right-of-way" that night, and many perplexities were expressed with a candour that gave the Minister a larger sympathy with the handicapped man, and a resolve to deal more tenderly with men of George's type who had such terrific battles to keep the body under.
At the close of the conversation the evening prayer especially commended George to the Father's care, and while the encouraged man was walking back to his dwelling-place with thankful heart, Mr. and Mrs. Lamb were kneeling together, and in earnest petition were placing their home and all they might ever possess at the service of the One in whose hands things commonplace may be mighty38 with blessing39.
The missioner has been permitted to visit again the Manse where George did a bit of carpentering. It was a great pleasure to find that George was one of those invited to the evening meal. During the after-supper conversation he spoke confidentially40 to the visitor of the mistress of the Manse. "She's the greatest little woman in this country. God knows I'd have still been on the down-grade but for her; she never let me go. She told me one night how she'd told God that she couldn't go to heaven and leave me outside, and thank God He's taking her at her word."
The midnight chat which ministers are accustomed to have on such occasions revealed the story of George's many and sore temptations and hard battles, and of how the unfailing faith and patience of one in the Manse had heartened the discouraged man, had led him into active service, and had brought a new sense of responsibility and possibility to many of the church members who were beginning to practise Paul's injunction: "If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness41, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted42."
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1
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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antagonistic
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| adj.敌对的 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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intoxicated
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| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
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craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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penitence
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| n.忏悔，赎罪；悔过 | |
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hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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14
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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penitent
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| adj.后悔的；n.后悔者；忏悔者 | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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18
disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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traitorous
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| adj. 叛国的, 不忠的, 背信弃义的 | |
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graphically
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| adv.通过图表；生动地，轮廓分明地 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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saviour
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| n.拯救者，救星 | |
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erring
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| 做错事的，错误的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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slumbering
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式） | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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jug
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| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
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grasshopper
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| n.蚱蜢，蝗虫，蚂蚱 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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shuffle
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| n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走 | |
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brag
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| v./n.吹牛，自夸；adj.第一流的 | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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33
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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bruises
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| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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orphanages
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| 孤儿院( orphanage的名词复数 ) | |
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coppers
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| 铜( copper的名词复数 )； 铜币 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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40
confidentially
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| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
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41
meekness
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| n.温顺，柔和 | |
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42
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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