The Man with the Ink Horn

“Go through the streets of the City, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof” — Ezekiel ix. 4.

THIS Striking Scripture is a part of Ezekiel’s vision and presents to us the picture of a city made desolate by sin, and at the same time gives us a vision of God’s servant passing through the streets of a city and indicating all who would be saved from destruction. The mark was to be placed upon the forehead of the people who were sighing and crying because the homes were to be made desolate, the buildings laid in ruins, the Temple to be defaced, and everything already was dark and despairing.

If this servant of God should continue his journey to the present day and reach the city and town where you live, do you think He would set a mark upon you? He should do so because you are His followers, you have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ,, and one day you must meet Him to give an account of your stewardship.

This text is an illustration of concern, and the mark to-day should be upon the face, which would show that we were not indifferent to the condition of those about us; in the voice, which would have the ring of real alarm; and in the attitude, which should, pfesent one in the fonn of seeking after the lost The whole church should be but a picture of a sighing and a crying because of the condition of the people and the cities where we live.

THE VISION NOT STRANGE

This same picture which we find in the text is revealed in other parts of the Word of God, as for example in the cry of Jeremiah when he exclaims, “Oh that my head were waters and that mine eyes were a fountain of tears that I might weep for the slain of the daughters of my people.” Or again in Moses’ plea for Israel when he asked God to permit them to return again to fellowship, and if they were not to return he asked, with a sob, that he himself might be blotted out of the Book which God had written. And again when David hears that Absalom is dead, and cries, “Oh, Absalom, my son, my son, would to God I had died for thee,” but it is not alone revealed in the Old Testament; it is the spirit of the New Testament, as for example when Jesus on the Motmt of Olives looks down upon Jerusalem and exclaims, “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings and ye would not,” and still again when the Apostle Paul expresses his concern for Israel in the statement that he is willing himself to be accursed from Christ for his kinsmen in the flesh. Then let it be remembered that we are not confined to the Old Testament or the New for our illustrations. This was the spirit of the Reformers, and of men and women whose name and f the Qiurch has ever delighted to honour. There is no place for indifference in the Church, but there is every place for the deepest of concern on behalf of the Church for the unsaved people on every side, and for those who, less fortunate than ourselves, are in deepest need of sjrmpathy and help.

Every minister worthy of his high calling has had this spirit, and without it he has become professional, and his message resembles a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

Dr. Jowett of Birmingham says: “A preacher is a herald; that is, he is a man with an imperial proclamation sent of Grod to declare certain truths, and he should never allow himself to be made afraid of those about him. He is an evangelist; that is, he is a man with a story to tell, and there never has been pressed into human language a story so matchless in its fulness and so marvellous in its power as the story of Jesus.” He is a logician, a man engaged in reasoning concerning righteousness, temperance, and judgment, and again he is a conversationalist, with homely stories to tell, but he is supposed to be “all things to all men if by all means he might save some.” I have many times wondered, if as ministers, we realised the horrible pit from which many men have to be delivered before they can know Christ and His fulness. This is a day when sin should be called sifij and the tone of the minister should in no way be uncertain. A trimmer is always to be disliked, but the worst place in the world for him is in the pulpit.

Not a great while ago in New York there was found one night the bruised body of Nellie Quinn. She had belonged to a good family in a New England City, but she married and came to New Yorlc. Shortly afterwards she separated from her husband and then once again they were united in matrimony, then drink gripped her and she went down in hopeless despair. S. H. Hadley kept her at the McAuley Mission for two years seeking to shield her; but the drink habit was too strong, and the other night they found her, maimed and bruised and torn, as if with the hands and teeth of some infuriated monster. This is sin, and against it we must preach with terrific force.

I have oftentimes wondered if we have a real sense of sympathy for those who are in sorrow.

I know of a man whose wife died, and he was the object of almost world-wide sympathy. Ministers journeyed miles to talk with him and to preach in his presence. They told him the death of his wife was the touch of God’s hand of discipline, that he would arise from the ashes of his despair to a new power in the world, and he heard all their stories only to grow more despairing. But one day a minister had a special train stopped that he might alight at the little town where the broken-hearted preacher lived, and rushing over to his house, he ran up to the room where he was sitting in despair and throwing his arms around him he said with a sob,” I have come to tell you how sorry I am, oh, how sorry I am,*’ and in five minutes he was gone, but the whole atmosphere of the room was changed and the sorrowing minister had a new glimpse of God and His love in the person of His representative.

I have many times wondered if we have to a suffi* cient degree a wooing note in our preaching.

Someone asked an old Scotch woman what she thought of Murray McCheyne’s preaching, she hesitated a moment and then replied, “He preaches as if he was a-dying to have you saved.” This is the spirit of the Scripture above quoted, and this is the secret of power.

Every disciple of Jesus should have the same spirit, if not then in our supposed indifference we will injure others. It is not necessary that we should be grosslyy inconsistent to hinder the work of the Church, but just to lack the spirit of concern.

There are 957 derelicts on the sea just drifting. Sometimes they drift from one side of the sea to the other, but a derelict is a vessel commanded by no captain, controlled by no crew, sailing from no harbour, and setting forth to no port. They are a menace to all navigation on the highways of the sea. Congress of the United States has authorised the construction of a vessel, the crew of which will be charged only with the commission to destroy those derelicts which are so dangerous. And there are many derelict Christians.

Mr. Spurgeon used to say, “I have no confidence at all in polished speech or brilliant literary effort to bring about a revival, but I have all the confidence in the world in the poor saint who could weep her eyes out because the people are living in sin and therefore dishonouring God.”

GOD’S GLORY

We ought to live for the glory of God. That should be our supreme ambition and chief desire, and yet as a matter of fact many men have put God out of their thoughts and divorced Him from their plan of living.

They take His name in vain, and treat Him as if He were on a par with themselves.

In December, 1906, in a certain part of Russia, the action of the people recalled the French Revolution. There is a little village on the Baltic where they have issued a manifesto abolishing the rule not only of the Emperor, but of the Deity. The manifesto has been read in the Churches and in the popular Assembly Halls.

You would be afraid to write out such a manifesto as this, but there are many people in the world who act it out, if they have not written it in so many words.

There are those to-day who have put God out of their business, and yet no man has a right to a business in which he cannot take God as a silent partner, whose transactions will not bear the searching gaze of the Infinite Judge upon His throne. Because this is true, there ought to be the deepest of concern on the part of the Church.

Some have ruled God out of their pleasures, and there is no such thing as life if it is divorced from Him. Without Him all music has lost its sweetness, all flowers their fragrance, all art its power, and all living its joy. Because people have thus acted there should be concern.

Many have ruled God out of their souls, and because they have they are restless and striving for what the world cannot give. The little needle in the compass trembles until it points due north, and the soul will be overwhelmed with restlessness until it rests in God.

Other men have put God out of their homes, Thex have not said so in so many words, but they have no family altar, there is no blessing at the table, there is no religious instruction given to the children, there is no Christian influence for the servants. Every home should be a type of heaven, but, alas, many are not, and because they are not there ought to be a sighing and a crying on the part of God’s people.

There is great hope in a home.

A certain boy matriculated in one of the universities of the South. He was poorly clad. When this boy paid his board, tuition, and the price of second-hand books, he had just five dollars left. At the end of the fourth year he took the “A. B.” degree. His poor, old widowed mother sold one of the plough horses to pay him through the fifth year. But at the end of that year he sat among the graduates, dressed in his plain brown linen coat and pants, and no vest. But he was the honour graduate, and at the head of the class. When a beautiful gold medal was handed to him, he stepped from the rostrum and walked straight to the back of the room, where, right by the door, sat a homely old woman in black, and tied the blue ribbon with the great glittering medal around her neck. She buried her wrinkled face in her old, drawn hands, and wept like a child. It seemed the applause would never die away. And now he has a high position at $6,000 a year, his mother sits happily in the gloamings of a beyond, and the picture of her noble son hangs on the wall of his Alma Mater.

With such a home as this and such a mother, there is always power. There is great pathos in 21 hpme. It 19 unlike anything else in the worldt

This little paragraph appeared the other day in a daily newspaper.

“To my boy who left home Monday night, September 1 6th. — My darling boy: If you see this, which I pray our Heavenly Father you may, please let your distressed mother know where you are. — Mother.”

That was all. No name. Nothing to let the world know. Only the cry of a mother sent blindly out into the crowded streets. No syllable about whose fault it was. No blame. No reproach. Only the reaching out of a mother who cannot help loving her boy.

Perhaps there never was a boy really worthy of all his mother’s love. But the mothers never care for that. They just keep on loving.

To every boy that pathetic little advertisement presents a question. How far are You from your mother? Not in miles — the other way? Couldn’t you be just a little kinder, a little more thoughtful, a little closer friends? You don’t know how far you’ve gone from her in the last few years. She does, though. Get back close to her. Some day you won’t be able to, you know.

There is no love like the love of a mother, and where the father is right and the mother true the hc«ne is like heaven, but what we need to-day more than anything else is an old-fashioned home, with the father old-fashioned enough to be a priest in his household and the mother old-fashioned enough to be true to God and to her little ones.

“Thank God, some of us have, and others have had, an old-fashioned mother, a dear old-fashioned, sweet-voiced mother, with eyes in which the love-light shone and brown hair threaded with silver, lying smooth upon her faded cheek. Those dear hands, worn with toil, gently guided our tottering steps in childhood, and smoothed our pillow in sickness; ever reaching out to us in yearning tenderness.

“When in the fitful pauses of busy life, our feet wander back to the old homestead, and crossing the well-worn threshold, standing once more in the low, quaint room, as hallowed as her presence, how the feeling of childish innocence and dependence comes over us, and we kneel in the molten sunshine streaming through the western window — just where long years ago, we knelt by our mother’s knee, lisping, *Our Father, How many times when the Tempter has lured us on, has the memory of those sacred hours with mother’s words, her faith and prayers, saved us from sin I Years have filled great drifts over between her and us, but they have not hidden from our sight the glory of her pure, unselfish love.”

FOR THE CITY

We cannot be indifferent to the condition and needs of the city or town where we live, and we are in a sense responsible for this condition; if we did not cause it we may have to cure it, and we must face this fact, for one day God will call us to a strict account.

Of all the evils which to-day need our attention that of intemperance is the greatest, and yet if we are to work in the cause of temperance we ought to remember that we are Christians.

I know of a minister who felt called upon to oppose the whisky influence in the town near where he lived* io8 ANOTHER MILE

He meant that this campaign should be most aggressive, but he wrote to all the saloon keepers in the city and told them he was a Christian, that he was against their business and not against them personally, that he would use all the influence he had to close up their business and to drive whisky from the city. The result was that every man in the community, especially the men in the saloon business, respected him and have since, in one or two instances, sought his counsel. It is a terrific menace to the good of any community. Every saloon must live at the expense of some mother or some broken-hearted father, and somebody’s boy must be provided as the victim for the saloon.

I have a dear friend, Hon. John G. Wooley, who in speaking of the awful curse of intemperance says:

“I shall never drink again; but one night in a New England train, and very ill, I met a stranger, who pitied me, and gave me a quick, powerful drug out of a small vial, and my pain was gone in a minute or two — but alcohol was licking up my very blood with tongues of flame I

“I should have got drunk that night if I could. I thought of everything — of my two years of clean life; of the meeting I was going to, vouched for by my friend and brother, D. L. Moody; of the bright, little home in New York; of Mary and the boys. I tried to pray and my lips framed oaths. I reached up for God, and he was gone; and the fiercest fiend of hell had me by the throat, and shouted, ‘Drink, drink, drink 1’

*’ It was not yet daylight, Sunday morning, when I

itQQd on the platform at Pawtwketf Rhode Island, alone. I flew from saloon to saloon; they were shut up; so were the drug stores, and all that day, locked in my room at the hotel, I fought my fight, and won it in the evening by the grace of God. But the people of Pawtucket never knew that the man who spoke to them that night had been in hell all day.”

And then in another place he says:

“Several years ago, at another time, after a long lecture tour in the West, I telegraphed to my wife in Boston, * I will arrive home to-night at eleven.’ The train was late, and long after midnight I came under her window. The light was burning, and I knew that she was waiting for me. I let myself in; there were two flights of stairs, but twenty would have been nothing to me.

“She stood in the middle of our room as pale and cold and motionless as a woman of snow, and I knew at a glance that the sweet, brave life was in torture. * What is it? ‘I cried, * what is the matter? ‘And in my arms she sobbed out the everlasting tragedy of her wedded life. * Nothing — at any rate, nothing ought to be the matter. I do believe in you; I knew you would come home; but I have listened for you so many years that I seem to be just one great ear when youi are away beyond your time; I seem to have lost all sense but that of hearing, when you are absent unexplained, and every sound on the street startles me, and every step on the stairs is a threat and a pain, and the stillness chokes me, and the darkness smothers me« And all the unhappy home-comings troop through my mind, without omitting one detail; and to-night I heard the children sighing in their sleep; and I thought I iia ANOTHER MILE

should die when I thought of you having to walk in your weariness and in this midnight through Kneeland Street alone.’ And I say God forbid that we should fail to be concerned — when such an influence is working in the city.”

There are many ways to make cities better. Some people speak of reformation, but the reform wave soon spends its force. There is no better way than to promote a great revival, and this may start with one man or two or a dozen. The great revival of 1857 started with one man on his knees in the City of New York, and the whole world still feels the power of that mighty movement.

THE INDIVIDUAL

There must be concern for the individual as well as for the city and the nation, and it is true as a rule that the unsaved people are just as much interested in their own condction as the Church people are interested in their behalf. The most hopeless have responded to such a concent.

It was in the Rescue Home in the City of New Yorlc where a young girl was the inmate. She had been robbed of her innocency almost in her babyhood, and as a girl she never had learned even the A, B, C of morality. Her brutal parents, her fiendish friends, and her filthy surroundings had landed her in the deepest of depravity. The matron of the Home, after extinguishing the light in the building, looked into the room where she was supposed to be sleeping and the bed was empty. After much searching she found her under the bed trying to sleep, and piteousJy the girl exclaimed,

. THE MAN iWITH THE INK HORN in

“Oh, ma’am, such as I could never get into that; I have never seen anything so white before.” The matron took her in her arms, held her as a mother would hold her child and she gave herself to Christ

The other day an ex-Congressman came to the Salvation Army Headquarters profoundly moved in behalf of his child. “My daughter,” he sobbed, “my beautiful, accomplished Mina, she is gone. Gone from her home of comfort, her life of protection and her father’s God, and gone into the darkness of despair.” Months after she was discovered in a house of horror too despairing to listen to persuasion or pleading. And her father learned that she had been found and had gone to see her, but he cried, “She is so changed; her beautiful hair is all matted, her beautiful skin is all bloated, her wonderful eyes are clouded, her sweet face has turned coarse. I could scarcely believe that it was my Mina. You muse get her back.” And they did, and the other day, clothed and in her right mind, she was seen accomplishing her daily tasks, surrounded by all the comforts of a home.

Rich and poor alike have responded to concern on their behalf, and there can scarcely be a sin greater than for the Church to realise the possibilities of a saved soul and the danger of one out of Christ, and yet appear to be indifferent. Why should we not be interested in others? Just a kindness counts.

**Do a kindness, do it well;
Angels will the story tell.

*’Do a kindness, tell it not;
Angel hands will mark the spot
a 12 ANOTHER MILE

“‘Do a kindness, though ’tis small;
Angel voices sing it alL

‘’Do a kindness, never mind!
iWhat you lose the angels findl

*Do a kindness, do it now;
Angels know it all somehow*

‘’Do a kindness any time;
Angels weave it into rhyme.

‘’Do a kindness, it will pay;
Angels will rejoice that day.

“Kindly deeds and thoughts and words
Bless the world like songs of birds.”

But this is more than kindness. This is the work the angels would like to do, and this is the work that Jesus Himself set about doing when He was here in this world.

There are two reasons why we should be concerned in behalf of those who are away from Christ, the first of which is, we owe it to Him. He is entitled to the very best of our hearts’ affection.

There was once an old artist who painted pictures of rarest beauty. Their distinguishing characteristic was their red glow. He seemed to imderstand colours as none of his artist friends had learned them. Other artists asked him for the secret, but he shook his head and said, “I cannot tell.” One bought costly pigments, thinking he had learned the secret, and another read books of other artists and felt that he had solved the mystery, but their pictures faded almost as soon as they were painted. And the old artist painted on and on, his pictures grew redder and redder while he became paler and paler. One day they found him dead, and when they dressed him for his burial on his left breast and just above his heart was a wound which had only been drawn together by his death, and then they learned the secret; he had painted his pictures with his heart’s blood, and this Saviour of ours is worthy of every impulse of our wills and every power of body and mind and the last drop of our heart’s blood that we can give to Him.

Then we owe it to the world. He is a wonderful Saviour, and He can set all men free if they but know about Him. There has been many a heroic service rendered here in this world by faithful men and noble women, like the story which appeared in the Minneapolis Journal of October, 1907.

The paper states that “Dorothy Marlow, a nurse in the City Hospital, died of scarlet fever on Tuesday. She came to the institution last March, and in due time it fell her turn to enter the quarantine ward. The nurses in the quarantine ward attend the cases of contagious disease, and are completely isolated from the rest of the hospital and the world generally. They live with their patients night and day.

“But it happened that the very day Dorothy Marlow entered the quarantine ward, which was a week ago last Monday, there was brought in a little boy desperately sick with scarlet fever. It was an extremely malignant case, and the doctors were of the opinion that the little fellow couldn’t possibly pull through.

“But Dorothy Marlow did not falter. When she heard the doctors say that the boy was practically doomed she only saw her opportunity.

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It’s my first case of scarlet fever, she said, ‘I’d rather die myself than lose it/

“But she wasn’t without her misgivings. That night late she spoke to a wakeful patient in the ward, saying that she felt a premonition which told her she would take the disease. * If I do, I shall die,’ she said. *A number of my family have died of scarlet feven They all have a predisposition to it/

“Still she stood by her little boy, hanging over him to minister promptly to his every want, depriving herself of her needful rest in order to be at hand to take advantage of any favourable moment.

“On Thursday last she had to take to her bed, at last, and from the first there was almost no hope, for the same malignant type which the boy had exhibited speedily developed with her. She lingered until Tuesday evening, when she died. But the little boy is getting well, and she knew before she died that her first case of scarlet fever was to be her last, but she had not lost it. But that doesn’t tell the whole story by any means.

“Dorothy Marlow was only twenty years old and a strikingly handsome young woman, the very picture of health, admirably fitted in every way for the work she had chosen.”

This made an impression upon the city, but it is as nothing compared with the impression that would be made if men could only be true to Jesus Christ. We owe it to the world to make Him known, and when He is known, the most hardened of sinners will yield to His power. Mrs. J. K. Barney has given us the story of “the man who died for me.” She says it was out in the mountains on the Pacific Coast that there dwelt a man who was dying of consumption; so vile was he that no one would stay with him.” Sin had left its awful mark upon his face, and he was so weak and helpless that he could not move and seemed to be literally starving. As my friend’s shadow crossed the door and she spoke to him, hi cursed her. She mentioned his mother and his wife and he cursed them. For two weeks she visited him, and he did not show the gratitude that a dog would show to one who had helped him. Then she ceased visiting, but one day she said, * I started up again.’ On my way over the mountains a woman and a little child, much against my will, went with me. They waited outside the cabin while I went within. The child was talking to her mother when suddenly the man said, * What is that? ‘My friend said, * It is a little girl.’ * Would you mind letting her come in,’ he said, and as she came in she looked like an angel, her bright face framed with curls that were beautifully golden. He laid his hand upon her head and said, ‘I had a little girl once and she died. She loved me when nobody else did. If she had lived it would have been different, but I have hated everybody since her death.’ Then my friend knew that she had the key, and she told him that Jesus had taken his child to protect her, that He had simply taken her home, that he might see her, for said she, ‘Jesus died for you that you might live,’ and the dying man said to her, * Pray for me now and pray quick, and tell Him that I want my little girl again.’ Suddenly the man was completely changed The miners from the moun liB ANOTHER MILE

tains came in to see him and held a meeting with him. When they were with him one night, he suddenly lifted himself up and said, * Boys, you know how the water runs down the sluice boxes and carries off the dirt and leaves the gold, well that is what the Man did Who died for me/

“Two weeks later he died. Two miners sat by his side as he passed away. They said that just before he departed he brightened up about midnight and smilingly said, * I’m going, boys, good-bye. I am going to see Mamie and the Man that died for me.*”

Is not a Saviour like that worth having, and it is such a Saviour as this that we may present to the world. Without Him the case is hopeless.