When holding services in a little chapel on the edge of Manila,
we had a young convert named Candido, about nineteen or twenty
years old, in charge. We had to meet out under the trees, and
there was an old man who lived close by where we were holding
the services--an old gambler, sixty years old, named Marcelina.
Of all the vile brutes I ever saw, that old Marcelina was the
worst. He would go at night, and while we were holding services
he would throw stones and brickbats. If there ever was a devil
incarnate, he was one. We had patience with him for a long time.
One day Candido came into my office and sat down in a chair and
was looking greatly discouraged. Finally he said: “What shall
we do with that old Marcelina? He came in last night and hit
one of the little girls on the head with a stone, and she is
seriously injured.” I replied, “I don’t know what you ought to
do. I believe if Jesus were on earth, He would pray for that
old man.” “That is a doctrine which you don’t find until you
take the gospel,” he answered. “With us, it is an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth, and stab the other fellow in the
back.” It cheered my heart to hear that little fellow say that.
He went out and gathered twelve or thirteen young men in a room
as a praying-band, and for two long months they met every single
night to pray for the conversion of that old man. Marcelina,
hearing of it, came up and asked, “What are you doing?” “We are
praying for you, that God will give you love in your heart.” He
rushed out, raving and swearing, and the next time they held a
service, he threw clubs and stones. Still the boys did not give
up. After that Marcelina could not sleep; and one night he got
up when everybody else was asleep and stole like a sentry to
where Candido lived and called him out. He said, “Candido, I
wish you would tell me what it is that you have which I haven’t
got; how can you treat me so kindly, when I am a brute to you?”
They walked up under the palm-trees and bananas at the other
side of the house, and that nineteen-year-old boy and the proud
old gambler knelt down side by side to pray. I do not explain
these things, but I know what happened that night. Marcelina
knelt down and God took away that stony heart which he had had
for fifty years and gave him as new and tender a heart as a
young child ever had. Later there stood up thirty-seven people
for baptism, and when I looked at Marcelina my heart seemed
to come into my throat. I knew the struggles that he had gone
through, and after I had baptized him, he said: “I beg your
pardon; I thought that I was doing good when I threw stones; I
did not know any better.” Before he sat down I put my hand on
his shoulder and said: “Wait, one word more; what must we do
to win a fellow man for Jesus?” He looked around and sat down,
crying like a little child, and we all wept with him; we could
not help it. In a moment he arose and gave this testimony, with
the tears streaming down his cheeks and his voice shaking:
“Pastor, we can not win men by throwing stones at them; we
can not win them by treating them as I have been treating
you; we must love them to Jesus.” That is what we must do in
Latin-America for those people who do not love Jesus; we must
step over the barrier and help them and “love them to Jesus.”
Do they need us?--J. MCLAUGHLIN, “Student Volunteer
Movement,” 1906.
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