I know well how my mother--were I dying--would urge me to
look to him, whom she in loyal faith worships daily, and thus I may
see her once more. The Bible teaches how many in their extremity
looked to Christ and he helped them. But then they had not known
about him, and coldly and almost contemptuously neglected him for
years as I have. Oh, what has my reason, of which I have been
so proud, done for me, save blast my earthly life with folly, and
permitted the neglect of all preparation for an eternal life. If
ever a self-confident man was taught how utterly incapable he was
of meeting events and questions that might occur within a few brief
days, I am he, and yet, vain fool that I was! I was practically
acting as if I could meet all that would happen to all eternity
in a cool, well-bred, masterful way. Poor untrained, untaught Ida
Mayhew said she had 'found a Friend pledged to take care of her,'
and he has taken care of her. He has made her life true, noble,
heroic, beneficent. I was content to take care of myself, and
this is the result. God might well turn away in disgust from any
prayer of mine now, but may I be accursed if I do not become a
Christian man, if by any means I now escape death!"
But in his intense longing to see again those he loved so well, and
tell them that he had not basely broken his pledges and fled like
a coward from duty, he did pray with all the agonized earnestness
of a soul clinging to the one hope that intervened between itself
and utter despair, but the moon moved on serenely and sank among
the trees on the western bank of the ravine.
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