“Mine Own Vineyard Have I Not Kept!”
CHRISTIAN sat wistfully watching the sun decline toward the western sea. Heavy clouds floated upward from the horizon, and through the clefts came a glare, lurid and awful. As he gazed, a hushed voice, close at his side, uttered these words: “O Christian! to thee it is made known that yonder sun now bids farewell to thousands!” Then said Christian, “Let me, I pray thee, make it known to them, that the blood of souls be not upon me.” And the voice replied, “Hast thou not surely known that every sunset is the last to myriads?” Then said Christian, meekly, “It is the truth; nevertheless, let now thy servant warn them that they be doomed, that they may flee for refuge, and blood be not upon me.” And he wept sore! Then he looked up, and behold the sun had set. Then he hastened to go unto those who should never see the morrow. But he found no sign whereby he might know them. In the lazar-house, the sick said, “Comest thou to hasten our end? Are not our woes enough?” Then passed he to the house of vanity, and they said, “Behold this dreamer cometh,” and they mocked him. So he came into the streets and lanes of the city, and cried with a loud voice, and warned men to flee from the wrath to come. And men pitied him, and passed by on the other side. Then the day dawned again, and the sun rose high in the heavens, and he went into his own home. As he drew nigh, one met him weeping, and saying, “Alas, master! we have sought thee in vain. Thy son, even thine own son, sleepeth.” And he hastened and ran into the house, and behold they said unto him, “Thy son sleepeth.” And Christian smote upon his breast, saying, “I have sinned in that I have forsaken them of mine own house to seek after others, and God hath visited me with sore affliction. They made me a keeper of vineyards, but mine own have I not kept.”—Sel. A teacher, now in the First Presbyterian church in Elmira, says the Sunday School Times, had, years ago, the following interesting experience:— A child came into her class for a Sabbath, whose father was a well-known infidel. He had carefully kept her from all religious reading and instruction, but had at length yielded to her request to go for once to the Sunday-school. The teacher resolved to make the most of the opportunity, and, laying aside the usual lesson, went over the life of Jesus. The child listened more eagerly than to a romance, and when, at the close, the teacher asked if people ought not to love such a Saviour as that, the little pupil answered, “Yes; they would if they knew it; and why don’t you tell everybody of it?” Full of the narrative, which, from the moment of hearing it, seemed to have won her to an implicit faith, she went home to tell her father and friends of what she had heard. No audience could resist such a preacher. The father no longer objected to her attendance at Sunday-school, but when necessary, carried her in his arms to religious services. Jesus was to her the nearest and dearest of friends, to whom she went with every interest and anxiety, as if he was a dweller in the house, as once he was at Bethany. She and her mother are now members of the church.