CRYING OUT AFTER GOD

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 1, 1894

CRYING OUT AFTER GOD.

ONE of the most pathetic instances of the yearning of the human being for the divine is that related by Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota.

"Some years ago," he said, "an Indian stood at my door, and as I opened it, he knelt at my feet. Of course I bade him not to kneel. He said:—

"My father, I knelt only because my heart is warm to a man who pitied the red man. I am a wild man. My home is five hundred miles from here. I knew that all the Indians east of the Mississippi had perished, and I never looked into the faces of my children that my heart was not sad. My father had told me of the Great Spirit, and I have often gone out into the woods and tried to talk with him."

"Then he said so sadly, as he looked into my face:—

"You don't know what I mean. You never stood in the dark and reached out your hand and could not take hold of anything. And I heard one day that you had brought to the red man a wonderful story of the Son of the Great Spirit."

"That man sat as a child, and he heard anew of the love of Jesus. And when we met again, he said, as he laid his hand on his heart:—

"It is not dark; it laughs all the while."

—Gospel in All Lands.