Whence are
these, and why are they arrayed in white robes? And we know the
answer, though no angel-voice may speak to us; these are they on whose
bowed heads the starlight of Gethsemane has fallen, in whose hands are
the wounds of service, in whose breasts is the heart that breaks with
love for men.
One such man I met some months ago, fresh from the forests of
Wisconsin. Through a long spring day he told me his story, or rather
let me draw it from him episode by episode, for he was much too modest
to suppose anything that he had done remarkable. After wild and
careless years of wasted youth, Christ had found him, and from the day
of his regeneration he gave himself to the redemption of his fellow
men. He became a "lumber-jack," a preacher to the rough sons of the
Wisconsin forests. He told me how he first won their respect by
sharing their toil--he, a fragile slip of a man, and they giants in
thew and muscle: how by tact and kindness he got a hearing for his
Master; how he travelled scores of miles through the winter snows to
nurse dying men, wrecked by wild excesses; how he had sat for hours
together with the heads of drunken men, on whom the terror had fallen,
resting on his knees, performing for them offices of help which no
other would attempt; how he had heard the confessions of thieves and
murderers, who had fled from justice to the refuge of the forest; how
he had stood pale, and apprehensive of violence in an angry drunken
mob, and had quelled their rage by singing to them "Anywhere with
Jesus"; how, finally, he had fallen ill, and had hoped in his extreme
weariness for the great release, but had come back from the gates of
death with a new hope for the success of his work; and as he spoke,
that light which fell upon the face of the dying Stephen rested also on
his face; for he also saw, and made me see, the heavens opened, and
Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne of God.
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