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THAT CHILD'S SINGING

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 30, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 30.

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THAT CHILD'S SINGING.

By Edward A. Rand

BY EDWARD A. RAND.
“WHAT is the good of that child's singing?”
This question came in a complaining tone from a gloomy sick-chamber, its curtains dropped, its close, heavy air pervaded by a strong camphor smell.
By good luck there was one door open.
Up through the open door stole notes sweet and clear, young and hopeful.
“Mirandy,” the woman who waited on the patient, Madame Blair, made no reply. To answer would have been to discuss.
“Save me from discussin’!” was Mirandy’s thought.
“Who is it singin’?” moaned the old woman, determined to get some kind of an answer.
“O, it’s only Jimmy!” said Mirandy cheerfully.
“Jimmy? When I was a gal, we kept still. O, dear! What do children want nowadays to be a nuisance for?”
The wise Mirandy made no reply to this also. She was determined to avoid “discussin’,” to which end an answer would have led.
She went out into the broad upper hall, stepped to an open window, inhaled the sweet, pure air, and held out her hands to the warm sunshine.
“Hullo, Mirandy!” called out a boy down in the yard.
It was “the nuisance” that had been singing, and the sweetest offender imaginable.
“Hullo, Jimmy!” said Mirandy, beaming down upon the boy.
They were firm friends, and Jimmy felt that he must tell Mirandy the latest news, and he held up a book proudly.
“What is it, Jimmy?”
“Bible! Got it for bein’ in Sunday school every Sunday for a year!”
“Good!”
Mirandy now went back to the sick-room, saying to herself: “I wish marm would feel that she needs suthin’ like Jimmy’s Bible. ’Twould do her good, and—and I mean to ax her.”
It was a bold proposition. It was falteringly put in execution.
“Marm—don’t you think—Jimmy has—got a Bible—for a—prize! Just think!”
“Wal!” said the old woman tantalizingly, adding nothing.
Mirandy began again.
“Now—marm—don’t—don’t—you want me to read a—leetle out—of Jimmy’s Bible—jest a speck?”
“Mirandy, I used to read it once, but the promises in it are good-for-nothin’ paper. No, no, you needn’t read it.”
The intention was to benefit the old woman, but it seemed to Mirandy as if her patient were anything but helped and benefited by that proposition. She was quite uneasy, and in a more complaining mood than ever. She had much to say about “perfessin’ Christians” that forgot what they had “perfessed about.”
Mirandy endured it as long as she could. Then she broke out:—
“Marm, you won’t have to answer for any of them perfessers.”
“What, Mirandy?”
“Are you comfortable?” said the wise woman, dodging her companion’s question.
“Comfortable? What did you ax fur? I say perfessers don’t keep their perfections.”
Again Mirandy was wise, and made no reply, but quietly went on with her duties; and the close atmosphere went on, the nervous coughing, too, and the camphor smell.
“Marm is very uneasy,” thought Mirandy, watching the nervous movements in the bed. “It’s a bad sign.”
Sometimes uneasiness is a good sign. When nobody wants to get in at a door, no noise is there; but noise, on the other hand, shows a presence, that somebody has come; and shall the door be opened?
At the door of the old woman’s heart there was an uneasiness, a noise, and it showed that somebody wanted to get in.
Mirandy’s talk about the Bible had set her patient to thinking about a much-neglected Bible, about her duty, about her Saviour. There was a knock at the door of the soul. What would she do?
At last she broke out again:—
“Mirandy, where is that child—the one that was singin’?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he stop singin’ for?”
“I thought you wanted him to stop.”
“I didn’t say that. I see children kept quiet when I was a gal.”
Mirandy now took her turn in keeping quiet.
“I thought—I should think if he was perlite—he’d keep on till he was told to stop—O dear!”
There was a knock still at the door of her soul, and she did not want to hear it. She would rather hear singing.
Mirandy now resolved on a bold movement. She ran downstairs, and then outdoors.
“Jimmy, I’ve heard you sing, ‘I love to tell the story of Jesus and his love.’ Stand in the front door. I will keep all the doors open up to marm’s chamber, and you sing.”
“I love to tell the story,” began a sweet, bird-like voice down at the front door.
“Why, I can’t hear that,” moaned the old woman. “Sounds like a real good old-fashioned song, jest the thing I wanted, but I can’t hear it plain.”
“Shall I bring him up?”
“Why, of course. How am I goin’ to hear unless you do bring him up?” replied the patient querulously.
The boy’s fresh, young, hopeful face appeared in that dusky room like a bright star shining suddenly there, and he began to warble:—
“I love to tell the story Of unseen things above, Of Jesus and his glory, Of Jesus and his love.”
What a change in the thinking of a disturbed but soon penitent soul! Just before the door she saw one like unto the Son of Man. Blood-marks were on his brow, blood-marks on his hands, and blood-stained his patient, loving feet. The room was shadowy, but she could see him. Not for long, weary years had he come so close to the door of her heart; rather, let me put it, not for years had she permitted him to come so near.
The singer went on:—
“I love to tell the story; For those who know it best Seem hungering and thirsting To hear it, like the rest.”
O, it was a miserable door an old pilgrim must open, and the hard vines had overgrown it, and it had seemed as if she never could open it; but it did fall back, and the King of Love came in to be her guest!
She was still, very still that night, and Mirandy could hardly explain it.
The next morning her patient said:—
“Mirandy, jest draw these ere curtains one side. Seems to me I can’t git enough daylight into my soul.”
The curtains were pulled away, and the happy sunshine came in.
“Now you may open the winders, Mirandy. I want to hear the birds sing. I can’t get enough singin’ into my soul.”
Mirandy opened the windows, and the singing of God’s birds came in so richly, gloriously!
A happy face rested on the pillow, and in her soul she was saying, “Seems to me the birds are singin’ jest what Jimmy was singin’, I love to tell the story.”—The Examiner.