Whatever effect or lack of effect miracles have on modern minds, the
following account shows that they are of first value to simple-minded
natives. The writer is Sophie B. Titterington:
When the rumor flew around Aniwa that “Missi” (Dr. John G.
Paton), was trying to dig water out of the ground, the old
Christian chief tenderly labored with him. “Oh, Missi, your head
is going wrong. Don’t let our people hear you talking about
going down into the earth for rain, or they will never listen to
your word, or believe you again.”
But the island was greatly in need of good water, and Dr. Paton
dug away at the well, single-handed. It was hard, weary work.
He hired some of the natives with fish-hooks to get out three
pailfuls each, still doing most of the heavy work himself.
But when the well was twelve feet deep, one side of it caved
in. This gave the loving, troubled old chief another plea. He
represented that if Missi had been in the hole that night, he
would have been killed, and an English warship would have come
to find out what had happened to the white man. They would not
believe that Missi had gone into that hole of his own accord,
but would punish them for his supposed murder.
When he was thirty feet down the earth became damp. That evening
he said to the old chief with earnest solemnity, “I think that
Jehovah God will give us water to-morrow from that hole.”
“No, Missi,” the faithful old fellow sighed. “You will never get
rain coming up from the earth in Aniwa. We expect daily, if you
reach water, to see you drop into the sea where the sharks will
eat you!”
At daybreak. Dr. Paton went down and made a little hole in the
center of the bottom of his well. He says: “I trembled in every
limb when the water rushed up and began to fill the hole. Muddy
tho it was, I eagerly tasted it, and the little cup almost dropt
from my hand in sheer joy, and I fell upon my knees in that
muddy bottom to praise the Lord. It was water! It was living
water from Jehovah’s well!”
With superstitious fear the people gazed upon the jugful their
Missi carried up. The old chief shook it, touched it, tasted it.
“Rain! rain. Yes, it is rain!”
The back of heathenism was broken. A new order of things
began in Aniwa. Family prayers and reverence for the Sabbath
spontaneously grew up. The wonderful transformation which was
wrought in the Aniwans became household talk all over the
world. All this was hastened because the ambassador of Jehovah
God had done what none of the gods of the islanders could have
done--brought up rain from the ground! (Text.)
(2034)
=Mirror, The, as a Revealer=--See SELF-INSPECTION.