Rob's "Holt."

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 15, 1883

"It's my best holt," said Rob Strayhorn to himself, as he sat scratching his foot on the edge of the bed in the barn-loft. "They ain't anything else to hold a candle to it. Talk about keepin' one's temper. Sakes alive! it's gone afore' you know it, and a feller don't know a thing till it's all over with, and he begins to feel kinder foolish. But this takin' a little time every day to read an' pray, it's—well, it's my best holt."

"This havin' a Saviour"—here Rob choked and lapsed into silence a moment. "Strange how he should care for a feller like me."

"I dunno's Mr. Jones misses the time I take fer Him, when I'm at the fodderin'; reckon I don't laze around as much's I used to anyhow. 'Pears like they's something takes holt o' me and keeps me when things git out o' kilter. Yes, it holds me and keeps me."

It was a long soliloquy for a boy who had followed the plow all day, and here he tumbled into bed and was asleep in five minutes.

Rob Strayhorn was an overgrown, awkward lad of sixteen, with tow-colored hair, sun-burned face, light blue eyes, big feet, and freckled hands, and, withal, an awkward consciousness of his personal defects that made him more uncouth than he was by nature. His best suit was of shoddy, slopwork cotton, a marvel of misfit; while his every-day overalls were redolent of their constant association with the swill-pail and cow-stable.

He was alone in the world, and thought himself fortunate to have a place at Mr. Jones', where he worked in the summer from five in the morning until eight at night, for eight dollars a month, and did chores for his board in the winter while he attended the district school.

Perhaps Miss Clara, of the dainty apparel and delicate hands, whose pet pride is in her refined tastes, wonders what such a being can have to make life desirable. Well, he doesn't have what you do. But I think that sometimes God puts the precious seed in hearts where the body is kept in a mean and toilsome life, as he plants the other seed in the unsightly ground. Both will grow and bloom.

Rob had found the Saviour the winter before, and to the friendless boy it had been a revelation of forgiveness and love that had transformed him. He never stopped to think, as Miss Clara might have done, of how much he was going to bestow on the Lord. He simply took and loved.

"Say, poys," said Pete Hoebler to Gus and Mike one morning as Rob came in for a half bushel of oats, "vat you dinks I see yesterday? I vent into der hay-loft an' dere vas Pob, pig as life, on his knees sayin' his prayers."

"Haw, haw, ho, ho," roared the two men.

"Sure an' we've got a saint among us," said Mike.

"An' never knowed it," said Gus.

"Say, Bob, cuddent yeze put oop a few fur the like of us poor sinners outside? That's a noice b'y," said Mike.

Rob would have been more than human, not to have felt his temper rising, with the scarlet blood that suffused his face. But as he stood before his tormentor, the Spirit came to him, with an echo from his morning reading, "Whom, having not seen, ye love," and a sudden sense of manhood stilled his soul. Unconsciously he straightened himself as he said:

"I dunno's I'm ashamed of it. I love the Lord I pray to, an' I a'n't a goin' to quit it nuther," and walked out with his half bushel on his shoulder.

"Sure, the lad's got spunk," muttered Mike. "I'll say that for him."

The boy did not know he had passed through one of those supreme moments of soul growth, which shape the whole life sometimes; but so it was. He had taken a long step in Christian manhood, and he felt that his "holt" was never so strong before.

One hot afternoon, Pete and Mike, after dozing on the grass and sauntering over the farm, till they were ready for any new amusement, mounted to the hay-mow, where they found Rob with his Bible and lesson-leaf.

"Three cheers for the parson," shouted Pete.

"Whist now, yez'll be brakin' the thrid av his discourse," said Mike, as he tumbled down on the hay. "Coom, praycher, we're afther wantin' a bit av yer sarmon. Rade right along an' don't be bashful."

What magnetic current of love guided Rob's slow fingers to the story of all stories.

"I'll read if you like," he said, and began about the prodigal son. He had prayed for his companions that afternoon, and now, through all the magical lines, his voice trembled with feeling. It was read in a stumbling fashion, but an unseen influence pointed each slow sentence with fire. Gus gave an angry grunt, as he slid to the floor, and went out to lean over the hog-pen; but Mike lay with his arm over his head, and his face turned away for a few moments. Then he went down, and when he was alone, he rubbed his face on his red cotton handkerchief and said to himself, "Faix, an' it's the far country I'm in now, sure."

That week, Rob and Mike were hoeing the half-grown corn, in the hot July sun, and their rows kept them together.

"Rob," said Mike, "now I want yez to tell me what's got onto ye. Why, ye're not the same b'y ye wer' last year, at all. Ye war' the gritti-est little feller that iver I sawn thin; but I'll be blissed, if ye didn't take all Pate's maneness as make as a lamb. The dirty spalpeen, to till Mr. Jones that the wa'ads he lift war where ye hoed. I'd have knocked the head off him."

The boy's slow speech did not admit of many words in his confession of faith, and his feeling choked him, but he said, slowly,

"I've got a holt on Jesus, Mike, an' he's got a holt on me."

He was almost surprised to find himself going on, hoeing nervously meanwhile.

"It's good thing to hev Mike, an' I wish you'd ketch a holt too."

"Faix, it's myself that wishes that same, too. Ye say, I wasn't always the wild b'y ye've sa'an me here; me folks was Prasbyterians in the ould counthry, an' they raised me corrict, but I got sthrayed aff, like. Ye'll belave me, whin I tell ye, that all yer prayers and Bible-radin', an' yer straightforrad Christianity, has made me fale quare. Rob, tell me, b'y, d'ye think there's ony hope for the loike o' me?" and Mike gave a great sob.

Rob could not talk, but he took from his venerable pocket his Testament, and read the chapter which had once thrilled his own soul with the promise of forgiveness, the third of John, that wondrous epitome of the gospel. When he had read the words, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life," he knelt down in the furrow and made his first prayer in the presence of another. When he was done, Mike broke out in a vehement appeal for mercy, and there under the rustling leaves of the corn, a soul was born into the kingdom of God.

Twenty-five years later, two pastors in Kansas were comparing their work.

"I have one man that I lean upon," said one. "In any emergency there is always the feeling, that I have one on whom I can rely. He is a tower of strength in the church, if I may use the expression."

"In what?" asked the other.

"In his character and daily life. His children are growing to love his God, and I believe it is largely owing to the godly example he sets before them. No hurry of harvest, nor rush of visitors, keeps him from his family prayers. If the President were his guest, he would get down his Bibles, hand one to him, and ask him to take his turn in reading a verse, and to join in prayer. He came here and took up land twenty years ago; and I'll venture to say that two-thirds of all who have been converted in the community since, owe something of their religious life to him. If he has not taught them in Sunday-school, or talked to them of Jesus by the way, they may be sure that he has plead with God in private for their salvation. Quiet, you say? Yes, quiet and slow of speech. He never had brilliant talents, and was without early advantages, but I am surprised sometimes, at the simple elegance of his few words. I think it is because the Bible has been the daily food, both of intellect and soul. I wish there were more men like Robert Strayhorn."

"Amen," said the other pastor.

This is what Rob's "holt" did for him.—Christian Weekly.