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THE POWERS OF A HYMN

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 18, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 31.

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THE POWERS OF A HYMN.

IN one of the hospitals of Edinburgh lay a wounded Scottish soldier. The surgeons had done all they could for him. He had been told that he must die. He had a contempt for death, and prided himself on his fearlessness in facing it.
A rough and wicked life, with none but evil associates, had blunted his sensibilities, and made profanity and scorn his second nature. To hear him speak, one would have thought he had no piously-nurtured childhood to remember, and that he had never looked upon religion but to despise it. But it was not so.
A noble and gentle-hearted man came to see the dying soldier. He addressed him with kind inquiries, talked to him tenderly of the life beyond death, and offered spiritual counsel. But the sick man paid him no attention or respect. He bluntly told him that he did not want any religious conversation.
"You will let me pray with you, will you not?" said the man at length.
"No; I know how to die without the help of religion." And he turned his face to the wall.
Further conversation could do no good, and the man did not attempt it. But he was not discouraged. After a moment's silence, he began to sing the old hymn, so familiar and so dear to every congregation in Scotland:— "O, mother dear, Jerusalem, When shall I come to thee?"
He had a pleasant voice, and the words and melody were sweet and touching as he sung them. Pretty soon the soldier turned his face again. But its hardened expression was all gone.
"Who taught you that?" he asked, when the hymn was done.
"My mother."
"So did mine. I learned it of her when I was a child, and I used to sing it with her." And there were tears in the man's eyes.
The ice was thawed away. It was easy to talk with him now. The words of Jesus entered in where the hymn had opened the door. Weeping, and with a hungry heart, he listened to the Christian's thoughts of death, and in his last moments, to his mother's God and the sinner's Friend.—Witness.