IKE MILLER by Margaret Merideth

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 3, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 56.

IKE MILLER.

By Margaret Merideth

BY MARGARET MERIDETH.

HENRY MOORHOUSE was holding a series of meetings in a mining district in the North of England, when one evening a notorious tough, Ike Miller, came in and took a seat near the front. Preacher and helpers trembled; this was the man who had threatened to break up the services.

The sermon was on the love of Christ, and the “Boy Preacher” longed to reach the heart of the wild, grimed miner who sat so strangely quiet gazing into his face. He could but think there was an eager look in those hard eyes. But when the meeting was over, some of the good old men gathered around regretfully.

“Ah, Henry, you didn’t preach right! You ought to have preached at Ike Miller. You had a great opportunity, and you lost it. That softly sort of preaching won’t do him any good. What does he care about the love of Christ? You ought to have warned him. You ought to have frightened him, and tried to make him see his dreadful danger, and the dreadful punishment he is going to get.”

“I told them,” said Mr. Moorhouse, in his childlike tone, so sweet to recall—“I told them that I was real sorry I had not preached right to him. I wanted so to help him.”

Meantime the big miner was tramping home. His wife—poor gaunt woman!—heard his step and started—“Home so early?” and she ran in front of the children, crowding themselves into a corner. But as he entered she started in bewilderment; he was not drunk; he was not scowling.

He put his arms around her and kissed her, and said, “Lass, God has brought your husband back to you;” then, gathering up the shrinking children: “My little boy and girl, God has brought your father back to you. Now let us all pray,” and he knelt down. There was a long pause, a silence but for the many sobs; he could not think of any words; his heart was praying, but Ike Miller had uttered no prayer and heard no prayer since his boyhood.

At last words from those distant days came to him—something that his mother had taught him—and from that hovel floor, in the midst of that remnant of an abused family, sounded out in rugged gutturals:—

“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child; Pity my simplicity; Suffer me to come to thee.”

We know well that he was suffered to come, helped to come.—The Outlook.