p. 11 | GOD'S CHURCH by Ernest Gilmore

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 24, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 25.

GOD'S CHURCH.

By Ernest Gilmore

How Two Humble Strangers Were Made to Feel at Home.

Dot Hunt was as sweet a child as you ever saw. She was beautiful, too, and everybody loved her because she was lovely. She was an only child of a wealthy widow, and her home was one of elegance and culture. There never was a kinder or more generous child, or one more compassionate. If, while driving in the grand carriage beside her mamma, she saw a child grieved or injured, she was not happy until something was done to comfort or help it. If a beggar child came to the door, she turned beggar, too, begging Ann, the cook, to feed the hungry.

But Dot was only five years old. I tell you this so that you will not wonder at what I am about to relate.

Dot went to church for the first time one bright summer day. She was a perfect blossom in her snowy white dress, with a bunch of rosebuds fastened in the broad sash.

At the church door stood a plainly-dressed woman with a very sad face, and beside her a little girl of perhaps ten years of age, the latter wearing a calico dress and a very common-looking brown straw hat. People were going into the church very fast, but no one seemed to notice the sad-looking woman and her daughter. Presently a sunshiny voice broke the icy coldness of the churchgoers; it was Dot's.

"Isn't you doin' to church?" asked Dot of the little girl.

"It isn't our church; we're strangers; we don't know where to go," answered the girl.

"It's God's church," Dot said, reverently. "Come with mamma an' me; there's lot's of room in God's church."

The weary mother looked into Mrs. Hunt's face questioningly, and, although the latter's face flushed, she seconded her daughter's hearty invitation.

"Yes, do come with us, please," she said; "we will be glad to have you." And presently, seated side by side in "God's church," were the children of wealth and poverty. There had been a number of witnesses to the pretty scene, and more than one face flushed with shame as the minister, during his reading, gave this passage, "I was a stranger and ye took Me in."

Was it Jesus looking through that sad woman's eyes? Jesus looking through her little daughter's eyes?

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."

And after the service more than one richly-dressed lady shook hands kindly with the "strangers," and made them welcome.

Dot never knew how forlorn, how homesick, how desolate those two strangers had been before her gentle welcome reached their souls, but her first Sunday at church had taught some "children of older growth" a lesson sadly needed.

And, lo! how great a tree grows from a little acorn. The "strangers" who had come to the city from a bereaved home, from which death had taken beloved ones, and money had taken wings, found friends and pleasant and profitable employment. How far a little candle throws its beams!—Ernest Gilmore, in Morning Star.