The Odd Man

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 16, 1911

He was brought into the ward by the orderlies, and not a man in the barracks was sorry he had “gone sick.” In a few hours there was not a patient in the ward who did not wish he had been taken somewhere else.

He was an “odd man,” without any friends outside the barracks; and he never tried to make any inside. No one ever knew him to do a comrade a good turn, but there were a number to whom he had done many bad ones.

In the ward, the hospital nurse was prepared to treat him more kindly than she did the other patients; knowing his character, she thought to alter it by kindness, but she soon found out her mistake.

In oaths and curses he took delight; believed in neither God nor devil; knew he was dying, and that no one would be sorry when his end came; and yet he lay there in his cot doing his utmost to make all within his reach as miserable as he could.

He would watch the chaplains come and go, listen to their talks with a leer on his face, fling aside the books and papers left on his cot with a contemptuous laugh, and make himself so disagreeable that one and all dreaded coming near him.

But one day a new chaplain came to the ward where the odd man lay,—a chaplain with a bright, cheery smile and face; one who knew nothing about this patient; who spoke to him just a word as he passed between his cot and the next, the cot of a man who had gone sick the day before. The chaplain sat down, and began to talk to the man he had come to see; and the patient whom he had not come to see listened to the conversation, trying, out of sheer curiosity, to hear what he had to say about religion. Certain words fixed themselves on his memory: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Those words haunted him; they kept him awake that night, and the next day he was so quiet that the others thought he was dying. They asked him, “What’s up?”

The odd man looked at them, and demanded the name of the new chaplain.

“O, he’s the one at the Soldiers’ Home down in the town! They always look up their men when they’re sick. It doesn’t matter what’s your religion, it’s all the same; if a man goes to the home, he’s looked after.”

“Belongs to the home, does he?” the odd man said; then he relapsed into silence again, and they could get nothing more out of him, except that he wanted to be quiet and think.

Suddenly, in the night, the orderly found him so much worse that he sent for the surgeon, who, on seeing him, thought he could not live until morning.

They listened while his words came slowly and painfully, and found he wished to see the chaplain who belonged to the Soldiers’ Home. In great astonishment they heard the request and granted it.

In the dead of night the chaplain was aroused from his sleep by a loud knocking at his front door, and descending he found two orderlies waiting on the doorstep.

“There’s a man in the hospital wants to see you, sir. The surgeon is afraid he won’t last till morning, and he wants to see you,” emphasizing the “you.”

As soon as he was satisfied that he really was the man wanted, the chaplain started with them for the station hospital. He arrived about two in the morning, and was straightway taken to the odd man’s cot.

Then the man who the day before had been thinking, began to express his thoughts in words:—

“You said God loved—God sent his Son to die—for the world. Does that mean me?”

When assured that the words certainly meant him, he went on talking, slowly and painfully, but very distinctly: “I never knew any one—who loved me. My mother I don’t remember—my father died in penal servitude. I have no relatives or friends. I want you to tell me—what love means—and why God loves me. I have been longing—for some one—to show me—what love means. I have had a hard life—and I have hated, and been hated in return—but I have never loved or been loved before.”

So there, in the hospital ward, in the stillness of the night, with the screen drawn around the cot, the chaplain told the man the old, old story of Jesus and his love; and he told it with such power that the sick man burst into tears.

“God loves me,” he repeated, over and over; “and all my life I have fought against him. Now I am dying; I can do nothing for him—nothing for him who loves me. God loves me. God loves me.”

And then he lapsed into unconsciousness. The chaplain stood waiting with the others to see the end. But the end did not come. After a little time the man roused himself, and, looking straight at the chaplain, he asked, “Are you quite sure God loves me?” with an emphasis on the “me,” which all the listeners noticed.

“Quite,” was the reply.

Suddenly the odd man seemed to receive a new lease of life. He rallied; the crisis had passed for a time.

“I’m going to live,” he said. “I’m going to show I love him. I’m going to do something here, in this hospital, for him who loves me. God loves me. God loves me.”

And when the chaplain left, the odd man was still repeating, “God loves me.”

“You have given him the spur for a time,” the surgeon remarked, as he and the chaplain left the ward together; “but he is a doomed man; he can’t live very long.”

“I’m glad you gave me the opportunity of giving him the spur,” said the other.

The surgeon added: “Just a gleam of happiness in an otherwise unhappy life, and seemingly the only gleam which has come his way at all. What a life! How terrible to go through life unloving and unloved!”

The two shook hands, and parted to go their separate ways. “No wonder,” thought the chaplain, as he unlocked his door, “no wonder that verse took hold of him,—‘God so loved the world.’”

Next day, the men in the ward noticed a great change in the odd man. Each oath and murmur was broken off short,—for however ill this patient was, he could always swear and grumble,—and as the days passed, and he seemed to grow stronger, he was on the watch to do little deeds of love and kindness for the others.

He offered to read aloud to the man in the next cot, whose eyes were too painful to allow him to read. The odd man read well too; he had the rare gift of reading as if he really felt an interest in the article read. He had learned to read in an institution for the sons of men and women in prison, and his reading delighted his comrades. That was one thing he could do for Him who loved him, and he did it well.

The patients asked one another, “What’s up with him?” but each could only shake his head and wonder.

The days came and went, and so did the men in the hospital. The chaplain from the home came and went, too; and the odd man, the unloved one, was the helper of all, the brightest and happiest man in the ward.

As he grew weaker, the men’s eyes grew dim with sorrow; for the odd man had become the odd man from quite another standpoint. He was the man every one loved, and who seemed to love every one.

He told the secret of his changed life and the story of God’s love; and some, who had once tried to be Christians, and had given up in despair, because they had tried in their own strength, thought that if God could help and keep him true, he would help and keep them; and so they turned about, and they were kept, because they trusted in him who is able to keep from falling. One or two others saw in the odd man a genuine Christian, and, thinking there must be something in religion to change a man as he was changed, began to look at God’s love for themselves.

After a time the end came; and suddenly, as he had done once before, the surgeon sent for the chaplain from the home. But although the chaplain came in haste, he was too late.

“He had just a smile on his face, and he stretched out his arm, and raised his hand,” the orderly who was attending him said, while the tears glistened in his eyes. “I thought he wanted something, so I went up, and I caught the words, ‘God loves me. God loves me.’”

“Yes,” said the chaplain, “those were his favorite words. I am not surprised they were his last.” And then he waited; for the orderly, although he had ceased speaking before the chaplain began to talk, seemed from his manner to have more to say. However, the orderly said not a word. The odd man had been in his care; he loved him; he had been led to Jesus through the dead man’s influence, and he could not trust himself to speak.

After a moment or so of silence, the surgeon quietly said: “I think I never saw a more peaceful ending to months of fearful pain. He must have suffered agonies at times, and yet, since that first time when I sent for you, he has never grumbled nor complained. I can almost think that in him was the spirit of some bygone martyr forefather.”

“No,” said the chaplain; “in him was the Spirit of God, sent by our Father who loved him, and whom he loved.”—Bombay Guardian.