No. 199

Tract 199

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The Story of a California Miner

By Mrs. J. K. Barney

Many years ago I wanted to go as a foreign missionary, but my way seemed hedged about, and as the years came and went, I went to live on the Pacific coast in California. Life was rough in the mining country where I lived with my husband and little boys.

I heard of a man who lived over the hills who was dying of consumption, and they said, "He is so vile no one can stand it to stay with him; so the men place some food near him and leave him for twenty-four hours. They'll find him dead sometime, and the quicker the better. Never had a soul, I guess.

The pity of it haunted me as I went about my work, and I tried for three days to get someone to go and see him and find out if he was in need of better care. As I turned from the last man, vexed with his indifference, the thought came to me, "Why don't you go yourself? Here's missionary work if you want it." It had not occurred to me that I could go. I'll not tell how I weighed the probable uselessness of my going, or how I shrank from one so vile as he. It wasn't the kind of work I wanted.

At last one day I went over the hills to the little cabin. The door stood open, and up in one corner on some straw and colored blankets I found the dying man. Sin had left awful marks on his face, and as my shadow fell over the floor he looked up and greeted me with a dreadful oath. "Don't speak so, my friend," I said.

"I ain't your friend. I ain't got any friends," he said.

"Well, I am yours, and;" but the oaths came thickly as he said, "You ain't my friend, I never had any friends, and I don't want any now."

I reached out, at arm's length, the fruit that I had brought, and stepping back to the doorway, I asked him if he remembered his mother, hoping to find a tender place in his heart; but he cursed her. I asked him if he ever had a wife, and he cursed her. I spoke of God and he cursed Him. I tried to speak of Jesus and His death for us, but he stopped me with his oaths and said, "That's all a lie. Nobody ever died for others."

I went away discouraged, and said to myself, "I knew it was no use." The next day I went back again, and I went every day for two weeks; but he did not show any change. At the end of that time I said, "I'm not going anymore." That night when I was putting my little boys to bed I did not pray for the miner as I had been accustomed to do. My little Charlie noticed it and said, "Mama, you did not pray for the bad man."

"No," I answered with a sigh.

"Have you given him up, Mama?"

"Yes. I guess so."

"Has God given him up, Mama? Ought you give him up till God does?"

That night I could not sleep. That man dying; and so vile, with no one to care. I got up and went away by myself to pray, but the moment I touched my knees, I was overpowered by the sense of how little meaning there had been to my prayers. I had had no faith, and I had not really cared beyond a kind of half-hearted sentiment. I had not claimed this soul for God. Oh, the shame, the sham of my missionary zeal. I fell on my face, literally, as I cried, "Oh, Christ, give me a little glimpse of the worth of a human soul." Did you, Christian, ever ask that, and mean it? Don't do it unless you are willing to give up ease and selfish pleasure, for life will be a different thing to you after that revelation.

I stayed on my knees until Calvary became a reality to me. I cannot describe those hours. They came and went unheeded, but I learned that night what I had never known before, what it was to travail for a human soul. I saw my Lord as I had never seen Him before. I stayed there until the answer came.

As I went back to my room, my husband said, "How about your miner?"

"He is going to be saved," I said.

"How are you going to do it?" he asked.

"The Lord is going to save him, and I don't know as I shall do anything about it," I replied.

The next morning brought a lesson in Christian work I had never learned before. I had waited on other days until the afternoon, when, my work being over, I could change my dress, put on my gloves and take a walk while the shadows were on the hillsides. That day, the moment my little boys went off to school, I left my work, and without waiting for gloves or shadows, hurried over the hills, not to see "that vile wretch," but to win a soul. I thought the man might die. There was a human soul in the balance, and I wanted to get there quickly.

As I passed on, a neighbor came out of her cabin and said, "I'll go over the hills with you, I guess."

I did not want her, but it was another lesson for me. God could plan better than I could. She had her little girl with her, and as we reached the cabin she said, "I'll wait out here and you hurry, won't you?"

I do not know what I expected, but the man greeted me with an awful oath; but it did not hurt as it did before; for I was behind Christ, and I stayed there. I could bear what struck Him first.

While I was changing the basin of water and towel for him, things which I had done every day and which he had used but never thanked me for, the clear laugh of the little girl rang out upon the air like a bird note. "What's that?" asked the man eagerly.

"It's a little girl outside who is waiting for me."

"Would you mind letting her come in?" asked he, in a different tone from any I had heard before.

Stepping to the door, I beckoned her and then taking her by the hand, said: "Come in and see the sick man, Mamie." She shrank back as she saw his face, and said, "I'm 'fraid," but I assured her with, "Poor sick man, he can't get up; he wants to see you."

She looked like an angel; her bright face framed in golden curls and her eyes tender and pitiful. In her hand she held the flowers she had picked off the purple sage, and bending toward him she said, "I sorry 'ou sick man, will 'ou have a posey?"

He laid his great, bony hand beyond the flowers on the plump hand of the little child, and great tears came to his eyes as he said, "I had a little girl once and she died. Her name was Mamie. She cared for me. Nobody else did. Guess I'd been different if she'd lived. I've hated everybody since she died."

I knew at once I had the key to the man's heart. The thought came quickly, born of that midnight prayer service, and I said, "When I spoke of your mother and wife, you cursed them. I know now that they were not good women or you could not have done it, for I never knew a man who could curse a good mother."

"Good women! Oh, you don't know nothin' 'bout that kind of women. You can't think what they was."

"Well, if your little girl had lived and grown up with them, wouldn't she have been like them? Would you have liked to have her lived like that?"

He evidently had never thought of it, and his great eyes looked off for a full minute. As they came back to mine, he cried, "Oh! God, no! I'd killed her first. I'm glad she died."

Reaching out and taking the poor hand, I said, "The dear Lord didn't want her to be like them. He loved her even better than you did, so He took her away where she could be cared for by the angels. He is keeping her for you. Today she is waiting for you. Don't you want to see her again?"

"Oh, I'd be willing to be burnt alive a thousand times over if I could just see my little gal once more, my little Mamie."

Oh, friends, you know what a blessed story I had to tell that hour, and I had been so close to Calvary that night that I could tell about it in earnest! The poor face grew ashy pale as I talked, and the man threw up his arms as though his agony was mastering him. Two or three times he gasped as though losing his breath. Then clutching me, he said, "What's that, woman, you said t'other day 'bout talking to somebody out o'sight?"

"It's praying, I tell Him what I want."

"Pray now, pray quick. Tell Him I want my little gal again. Tell Him anything you want to."

I took the hands of the child and placed them on the trembling hands of the man. Then dropping on my knees, with the child in front of me, I bade her pray for the man who had lost his little Mamie and wanted to see her again. As nearly as I can remember, this was Mamie's prayer:

"Dear Jesus, this man is sick. He has lost his 'ittle girl and he feels bad about it. I'se so sorry for him and he's so sorry too. Won't you help him and show him where to find his 'ittle girl? Do, please, Amen."

Heaven seemed to open before us. There stood One with the prints of the nails in His hands and the wound in His side.

By-and-by the poor man grasped The Strong Hands. It was the third day when the poor, tired soul turned from everything to Him, the Mighty to save, "The Man who died for me."

He lived on for weeks, as if God would show how real was the change. I had been telling him one day about a meeting. He said, "I'd like to go to a meeting once. I never went to one of them things."

So we planned a meeting and the men came from the mills and the mines and filled the room. "Now boys," said he, "Get down on your knees while she tells 'bout the Man that died for me."

I had been brought up to believe that a woman shouldn't speak in a meeting, but I found myself talking, and I tried to tell the simple story of the cross. After awhile he said, "Oh, boys, you don't half believe it, or you'd cry; you couldn't help it. Boys, raise me up, I'd like to tell it once." So they raised him up, and between his short breathing and coughing he told the story. He had to use the language he knew.

"Boys," he said, "you know how the water runs down the sluice boxes and carries off the dirt and leaves the gold behind. Well, the blood of that Man she tells about went right over me, just like that; it carried off 'bout everything, but it left enough for me to see Mamie and the Man that died for me. Oh, boys, can't you love Him?"

Some days after, there came a look into his face that told the end had come. I had to leave him, and I said, "What shall I say tonight, Jack?"

"Just good-night," he said.

"What will you say to me when we meet again?"

"I'll say 'good-morning' up there."

The next morning the door was closed, and I found two of the men sitting silently by a board stretched across two stools. They turned back the sheet from the dead, and I looked on the face which seemed to have come back nearer to the image of God.

"I wish you could have seen him when he went," they said.

"Tell me about it."

"Well, all at once he brightened up 'bout midnight, and smilin' said, 'I'm goin' boys. Tell her I'm goin' to see Mamie; tell her I'm goin' to see the Man that died for me,' an' he was gone."

Kneeling there, with my hands over those poor, cold ones that had been stained with human blood, I asked to come to understand more and more the worth of a human soul, and to be drawn into deeper sympathy with Christ's yearning compassion, "...Not willing that any should perish,..." (2nd Peter 3:9).