Down by the river-side, in an out-of-the-way and unsavoury neighbourhood, George Aspel and Abel Bones went one evening into a small eating-house to have supper after a day of toil at the docks. It was a temperance establishment. They went to it, however, not because of its temperance but its cheapness. After dining they adjourned to a neighbouring public-house to drink.
Bones had not yet got rid of his remorse, nor had he entirely given up desiring to undo what he had done for Aspel. But he found the effort to do good more difficult than he had anticipated. The edifice pulled down so ruthlessly was not, he found, to be rebuilt in a day. It is true, the work of demolition had not been all his own. If Aspel had not been previously addicted to careless living, such a man as Bones never could have had the smallest chance of influencing him. But Bones did not care to reason deeply. He knew that he had desired and plotted the youth’s downfall, and that downfall had been accomplished. Having fallen from such a height, and being naturally so proud and self sufficient, Aspel was proportionally more difficult to move again in an upward direction.
Bones had tried once again to get him to go to the temperance public-house, and had succeeded. They had supped there once, and were more than pleased with the bright, cheerful aspect of the place, and its respectable and sober, yet jolly, frequenters. But the cup of coffee did not satisfy their depraved appetites. The struggle to overcome was too much for men of no principle. They were self-willed and reckless. Both said, “What’s the use of trying?” and returned to their old haunts.
On the night in question, after supping, as we have said, they entered a public-house to drink. It was filled with a noisy crew, as well as with tobacco-smoke and spirituous fumes. They sat down at a retired table and looked round.
“God help me,” muttered Aspel, in a low husky voice, “I’ve fallen very low!”
“Ay,” responded Bones, almost savagely, “very low.”
Aspel was too much depressed to regard the tone. The waiter stood beside them, expectant. “Two pints of beer,” said Bones,—“ginger-beer,” he added, quickly.
“Yessir.”
The waiter would have said “Yessir” to an order for two pints of prussic acid, if that had been an article in his line. It was all one to him, so long as it was paid for. Men and women might drink and die; they might come and go; they might go and not come—others would come if they didn’t,—but he would go on, like the brook, “for ever,” supplying the terrible demand.
As the ginger-beer was being poured out the door opened, and a man with a pack on his back entered. Setting down the pack, he wiped his heated brow and looked round. He was a mild, benignant-looking man, with a thin face.
Opening his box, he said in a loud voice to the assembled company, “Who will buy a Bible for sixpence?”
There was an immediate hush in the room. After a few seconds a half-drunk man, with a black eye, said— “We don’t want no Bibles ’ere. We’ve got plenty of ’em at ’ome. Bibles is only for Sundays.”
“Don’t people die on Mondays and Saturdays?” said the colporteur, for such he was. “It would be a bad job if we could only have the Bible on Sundays. God’s Word says, ‘To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.’ ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.’ ‘Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.’ It says the same on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and every day of the week.”
“That’s all right enough, old fellow,” said another man, “but a public is not the right place to bring a Bible into.”
Turning to this man the colporteur said quietly, “Does not death come into public-houses? Don’t people die in public-houses? Surely it is right to take the Word of God into any place where death comes, for ‘after death the judgment.’ ‘The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.’”
“Come, come, that’ll do. We don’t want none of that here,” said the landlord of the house.
“Very well, sir,” said the man respectfully, “but these gentlemen have not yet declined to hear me.”
This was true, and one of the men now came forward to look at the contents of the box. Another joined him.
“Have you any book that’ll teach a man how to get cured of drink?” asked one, who obviously stood greatly in need of such a book.
“Yes, I have. Here it is— The Author of the Sinner’s Friend; it is a memoir of the man who wrote a little book called The Sinner’s Friend,” said the colporteur, producing a thin booklet in paper cover, “but I’d recommend a Bible along with it, because the Bible tells of the sinner’s best friend, Jesus, and remember that without Him you can do nothing. He is God, and it is ‘God who giveth us the victory.’ You can’t do it by yourself, if you try ever so much.”
The man bought the booklet and a Testament. Before he left the place that colporteur had sold a fourpenny and a twopenny Testament, and several other religious works, beside distributing tracts gratuitously all round. (See Report of “The Christian Colportage Association for England,” 1879, page 12.)
“That’s what I call carryin’ the war into the enemy’s camp,” remarked one of the company, as the colporteur thanked them and went away.
“Come, let’s go,” said Aspel, rising abruptly and draining his glass of ginger-beer.
Bones followed his example. They went out and overtook the colporteur.
“Are there many men going about like you?” asked Aspel.
“A good many,” answered the colporteur. “We work upwards of sixty districts now. Last year we sold Bibles, Testaments, good books and periodicals, to the value of 6700 pounds, besides distributing more than 300,000 tracts, and speaking to many people the blessed Word of Life. It is true we have not yet done much in public-houses, but, as you saw just now, it is not an unhopeful field. That branch has been started only a short time ago, yet we have sold in public-houses above five hundred Bibles and Testaments, and over five thousand Christian books, besides distributing tracts.”
“It’s a queer sort o’ work,” said Bones. “Do you expect much good from it?”
The colporteur replied, with a look of enthusiasm, that he did expect much good, because much had already been done, and the promise of success was sure. He personally knew, and could name, sinners who had been converted to God through the instrumentality of colporteurs; men and women who had formerly lived solely for themselves had been brought to Jesus, and now lived for Him. Swearers had been changed to men of prayer and praise, and drunkards had become sober men—
“Through that little book, I suppose?” asked Bones quickly.
“Not altogether, but partly by means of it.”
“Have you another copy?” asked George Aspel.
The man at once produced the booklet, and Aspel purchased it.
“What do you mean,” he said, “by its being only ‘partly’ the means of saving men from drink?”
“I mean that there is no Saviour from sin of any kind but Jesus Christ. The remedy pointed out in that little book is, I am told, a good and effective one, but without the Spirit of God no man has power to persevere in the application of the remedy. He will get wearied of the continuous effort; he will not avoid temptation; he will lose heart in the battle unless he has a higher motive than his own deliverance to urge him on. Why, sirs, what would you expect from the soldier who, in battle, thought of nothing but himself and his own safety, his own deliverance from the dangers around him? Is it not those men who boldly face the enemy with the love of Queen and country and comrades and duty strong in their breasts, who are most likely to conquer? In the matter of drink the man who trusts to remedies alone will surely fail, because the disease is moral as well as physical. The physical remedy will not cure the soul’s disease, but the moral remedy—the acceptance of Jesus—will not only cure the soul, but will secure to us that spiritual influence which will enable us to ‘persevere to the end’ with the physical. Thus Jesus will save both soul and body—‘it is God who giveth us the victory.’”
They parted from the colporteur at this point.
“What think you of that?” asked Bones.
“It is strange, if true—but I don’t believe it,” replied Aspel.
“Well now, it appears to me,” rejoined Bones, “that the man seems pretty sure of what he believes, and very reasonable in what he says, but I don’t know enough about the subject to hold an opinion as to whether it’s true or false.”
It might have been well for Aspel if he had taken as modest a view of the matter as his companion, but he had been educated—that is to say, he had received an average elementary training at an ordinary school,—and on the strength of that, although he had never before given a serious thought to religion, and certainly nothing worthy of the name of study, he held himself competent to judge and to disbelieve!
While they walked towards the City, evening was spreading her grey mantle over the sky. The lamps had been lighted, and the enticing blaze from gin-palaces and beer-shops streamed frequently across their path.
At the corner of a narrow street they were arrested by the sound of music in quick time, and energetically sung.
“A penny gaff,” remarked Bones, referring to a low music-hall; “what d’ee say to go in?”
Aspel was so depressed just then that he welcomed any sort of excitement, and willingly went.
“What’s to pay?” he asked of the man at the door.
“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—”
“Yes! yes!” shouted Bones, in an irresistible burst of feeling, “I do accept Him!”
Every eye was turned at once on the speaker, who stood looking fixedly upwards, as though unaware of the sensation he had created. The interruption, however, was only momentary.
“Thanks be to God!” said the preacher. “There is joy among the angels of heaven over one sinner that repenteth.”
Then, not wishing to allow attention to be diverted from his message, he continued his discourse with such fervour that the people soon forgot the interrupter, and Bones forgot them and himself and his friend, in contemplation of the “Great Salvation.”
When the meeting was over he hurried out into the open air. Aspel followed, but lost him in the crowd. After searching a few minutes without success, he returned to Archangel Court without him.
The proud youth was partly subdued, though not overcome. He had heard things that night which he had never heard before, as well as many things which, though heard before, had never made such an impression as then. Lighting the remnant of the candle in the pint-bottle, he pulled out the little book which he had purchased, and began to read, and ever as he read there seemed to start up the words, “It is God who giveth us the victory.” At last he came to the page on which the prescription for drunkards is printed in detail. He read it with much interest and some hope, though, of course, being ignorant of medicine, it conveyed no light to his mind.
“I’ll try it at all events,” he muttered in a somewhat desponding tone; “but I’ve tried before now to break off the accursed habit without success, and have my doubts of this, for—”
He paused, for the words, “It is God that giveth us the victory,” leaped again to his mind with tenfold power.
Just then there arose a noise of voices in the court. Presently the sound of many footsteps was heard in the passage. The shuffling feet stopped at the door, and some one knocked loudly.
With a strange foreboding at his heart, Aspel leaped up and opened it.
Four men entered, bearing a stretcher. They placed it gently on the low truckle-bed in the corner, and, removing the cover, revealed the mangled and bloody but still breathing form of Abel Bones.
“He seemed to be a bit unhinged in his mind,” said one of the men in reply to Aspel’s inquiring look—“was seen goin’ recklessly across the road, and got run over. We would ’ave took ’im to the hospital, but he preferred to be brought here.”
“All right. George,” said Bones in a low voice, “I’ll be better in a little. It was an accident. Send ’em away, an’ try if you can find my old girl and Tottie.—It is strange,” he continued faintly, as Aspel bent over him, “that the lady I wanted to rob set me free, for Tottie’s sake; and the boy I cast adrift in London risked his life for Tottie; and the man I tried to ruin saved her; and the man I have often cursed from my door has brought me at last to the Sinner’s Friend. Strange! very strange!”
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