My Word Shall Not Return unto Me Void
WHERE did you get that page?” asked a missionary of a fakir, who came to him for instruction with a fragment of Saint John, containing that wonderful chapter 3. “I found it by the wayside under the snows of Badrinath.” “Where did you find that New Testament, which seems to have been badly used?” “One morning, as I went to the Ganges with my net, I found it lying water-soaked at the river’s edge.” We speak and pass on. Our hearers hear in fragments and do not understand. But the printed book remains. It may be read and reread until the mystery of God is unfolded by His Holy Spirit to the dull heart of man. It may be hidden for years, like corn in the encasements of the Egyptian dead, and then in some strange way come forth into other hands to be the seed of life. Apropos of the above, taken from the Bible Society Record for March, is the following little story contributed by Miss Alice Terrell, of Peking, North China. From beyond the Great Wall, across the plain in Yengchou, comes this tale of 1900. That year, with its terrible storm of blood and fire, nearly swept the little church in Yengchou from existence. Before the burning of the buildings the church property was looted of all considered valuable, but large bundles of Scripture and sacred books were thrown out in the street, where they were trodden under foot or blown hither and thither by the wind. Near the city lived a farmer who had a faithful Christian friend, a carpenter, who was killed at the time of the general massacre. Often during his lifetime he had presented the truth to the farmer, only to have it rejected. Nevertheless the seed had fallen, and one day when the storm was over and the silence of death rested where the church had been, the farmer, crossing the field, picked up a wind-carried leaf from the Gospel of Luke, the story of the prodigal son. As he read he said to himself, “And is this the God whose followers we have slain, and is this the religion we reject?” With bowed head he retraced his steps, and after the troubles were over and the church was rebuilt, he was one of the first to ask admission; another son had returned to his Father’s house, and the fluttering leaf of God’s word had not returned unto Him void, for through this one a whole patriarchal family had found Christ and the younger generation of boys and girls is growing up in Christian schools.— World-Wide Missions.