The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1903, Page 43

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The Lutheran. Pioneer.

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43

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A Simple, but Searching Question.

| to the close of your brief mortal existence,
| God will assuredly shut you up in hell; for

Several years ago a prominent minister in| He will not permit you to count the blood of
cone of our Western cities delivered a series of| His Son a common thing. Other questions
carefully prepared discourses on the Evidences | may engage your attention now, but sooner

of Christianity. Among his hearers were two) or
One was a| be answered: ‘‘Do you love Jesus?”

persons unlike in every respect.
highly educated man, the president of an in-|
fidel club, who had been com-
missioned to attend the lectures,
and take notes that were after-
wards submitted for discussion
at the meetings of the skeptics ;
and the other was an old and
illiterate colored woman, who at-
tended, not because she under-
stood the arguments, but because
she delighted to be where the
name of her Saviour was honored.

On a certain evening, during
service, a sleet fell, covering the
stone steps of the church build-
ing, and as the old woman was
leaving at the close of the service,
she slipped, and might have been
severely injured if the infidel,
who was descending the steps at
the same time, had not caught her
and kindly assisted her to the side-
walk. She thanked him, saying in
a low, tremulous voice, ‘*Young
master, do you love Jesus?”

They parted, but that voice fol-
lowed him to his room; it started
a mighty tide of emotion in his
proud heart, and never left him
until he bowed in faith and with
tears of adoring gratitude be-
neath the cross he had despised.

The minister hearing that an
infidel who had attended his lec-
tures was converted, sought his
acquaintance, and desired to
know what argument had con-
vinced him of his error. ‘‘Oh,”’
he replied, ‘‘I listened to all of
your arguments with unmoved
indifference, save when they ex-
cited a feeling of intense oppo-
sition to the views you advanced ;
put it was the simple question of
an old colored woman, ‘Do you
love Jesus?’ that led me to see the
cruelty of my conduct towards
my best Friend.”

Dear reader, do you love Jesus? If not, why
do you not love Him? Has He ever harmed
you, or has He ever harmed the world? As
Pilate said to the rabble that called for His
crucifixion, ‘‘Why, what evil hath He done?’’
Would you crucify Him again? Would you
grieve His heart, so noble, so good, so loving,
by turning away with contemptuous unconcern
from His entreating voice? You may forget
Him for a time, but you cannot always despise
unpunished His claims upon your confidence
and affection. If you continue to neglect Him

later that simple, searching question must

J. H. B.

ANGEL GUARD.

Comfort in Death.

‘Though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou
art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they com-
fort me.”

These words of the 23. Psalm have comforted
and cheered many a dying believer. Says an
aged pastor, who has sat at many a deathbed,
‘<What a handkerchief that verse is to wipe the
death-sweat fromthe brow! Whata stimulant
to the spirit, when heart and flesh fail!”

Among the dead, on one of the battlefields
before Richmond, was a Southern soldier who
lay unburied for several days. Already the
worms had begun to eat the flesh from his fin-
gers, but underneath the skeleton hand was an
open Bible, with the fingers pressed against
those precious words: ‘‘Thy rod and Thy staff
they comfort me.”” That soldier found these
words to be true when death had
laid its icy fingers upon him.
When life was slowly ebbing
away, the Lord was his stay and
support, his cheer and comfort,
his defense and delight.

—s-—4>- eo

God is Everywhere.

There is a story of an atheist’s
child who had learned something
about God. The father wished to
expunge the thought from her
mind, and he wrote on a piece of
paper: ‘‘God is nowhere.” He
asked the child to read the words
and she spelled out: ‘‘God is now
here.’”’? The child’s unconscious
misreading of the atheist’s creed
startled him and brought him to
the feet of the God whose very
existence he had sought to deny.
Wherever we are, we are in the
presence of God.

In the Saviour’s Arms.

A dear little daughter of that
earnest and devout pastor, Va-
lerius Herberger, was taken very
ill. he pastor fell on his knees
and pleaded for the life of his
child, but the Saviour loved it
more than the parents and
wanted to take it to Himself.

‘As the father saw the end ap-
proaching, he said, “My pre-
cious child, are you not afraid
to die?”

‘No, dear father,’’? she an-
swered, ‘because I am going to
Jesus, and He loves me.”’

“How do you know that He
loves you, darling?”

‘And the little one opened her
eyes, looked wonderingly at her
father, then stretched out her little arms upon
her pillow, and said: ‘Thus He hung, for me,
upon the cross!”” ;

Then she closed her eyes. The little heart
ceased its throbbing —the little one had fallen
asleep—in the arms of Jesus!

Jesus died for you and for me, dear reader.
Let this be our comfort throughout life, and
our last comfort in death.

; —. +a or oe

Farra is God’s gift as well as His grace is,

and it is not a reward. — Augustine.