Jake Benton was a member of Mount Olivet Church and had been for
twenty-seven years. Jake was a man of ordinary natural intelligence, but
like most of his neighbors was utterly ignorant as far as literary
training is concerned. He naturally had deep religious sentiments. Under
proper teaching he doubtless would have pressed his way into a genuine
experience of salvation and would have lived a consistent Christian
life, but under the unwholesome teachings of Mount Olivet he had given
himself over to a mighty religious drift and had drifted far away from
God and was completely destitute of redeeming grace. Oh, to be sure, he
testified regularly at the church services and gave of his limited means
toward the church's support, but he was a man of uncontrollable temper
and was well versed in the art of old-fashioned fist-fighting. But his
profession had become a burden to him, and he had often wondered if
there were no possibility of extracting some joy out of the juiceless
lemon of his profession.
Now, it so happened one summer that Deacon Cramps had a large drove of
cattle ranging on the hills about thirty miles to the southeast of Mount
Olivet community. This drove of cattle consisted of a thousand head, and
it became necessary that the Deacon employ some trustworthy person to
herd the cattle and prevent them from scattering, or being stolen by
cattle-thieves who sometimes visited that section. Since Jake Benton was
known as an upright man and was a brother in the church, Deacon Cramps
offered him the position. Out of pure financial necessity Jake accepted.
This was some years before the rubber-tired automobile had invaded the
flint hills of this section and thirty miles meant hours of toilsome
travel. Thus it was necessary that Jake take along a camping outfit and
remain all summer. This he decided to do. Many and long were the hours
that Jake spent in this lonely mountain retreat. For miles around there
was little sign of human activity. No sound of woodman's ax was heard.
The stillness of the long summer afternoons was broken only by the
tinkling of the bells on the hillsides. A lone log cabin lifted its
mud-chinked walls from the brow of a hill from under which flowed a
babbling stream of clear water. In the attic of this lone cabin Jake
Benton was regularly lulled to sleep by the evening lullabies of the
katydids as they sang in the tops of the postoak trees with which the
cabin was surrounded.
One August afternoon when Jake returned from his regular roundup of the
cattle, he found, seated on a log near the spring, two men. At the sight
of the men Jake's heart leaped into his mouth. For two months he had not
laid his eyes on a human form. He had heard no human voice save his own.
Needless to say, he was as much pleased as surprised to find companions
in his lonely abode. Jake neared the log where the men sat. One of them
arose and advanced toward him. "I trust," he remarked, "that you will
not think we are trespassing on your premises. We have been traveling
all day; our horses were tired and we were thirsty, and the spring
invited us to be refreshed." For a moment Jake stood speechless, and
then in almost forgotten terms he made his unexpected visitors feel
welcome.
The three men conversed for some time, and in the course of the
conversation Jake explained to them the reason for his lonely life and
the circumstances that caused him to be thus engaged. The strangers
explained that they were driving across the State, and that, in order to
make their journey fifty miles shorter, they had been instructed to take
this untraveled road through this expanse of wooded hills.
"I should think," remarked one of the men, "that this would be a
splendid place to meditate on the goodness of God. Loneliness often
begets meditation, and God loves to be the companion of the
companionless. Then, too, there is all this nature with which you are
surrounded. These flowers and trees and birds all speak of the goodness
of God. I was remarking to my fellow traveler of how these beautiful
scenes remind us of God's goodness. Pardon a frank question, but may I
ask, Are you saved?"
This was all new language to Jake and he scarcely knew how to answer
this rather blunt question. "Wu-wu-well, ye-yes," he answered. "I try to
be a Christian. I belong to the church and have belonged for
twenty-seven years and accordin' to the preachin' we have I think I'll
get to heaven. I s'pose you fellers must be preachers."
"Yes, we are preachers," remarked the other. "We have consecrated our
lives to the blessed service of Christ and our greatest delight is in
preaching his gospel and telling others of the wonders of his grace.
There can be no higher calling than that of telling of the saving grace
of God. For fifteen years I was a cold professor of religion, but I
lacked vital salvation. I belonged to the church and paid the preacher,
and somehow I thought I would get through all right. I sinned more or
less every day and did not know that I could be saved from sin. In fact,
I never had been converted. I tried to live a Christian life, but I was
powerless. After fifteen years of this miserable existence I got a new
vision of things. God removed the scales from my eyes and I saw my lost
condition. I saw myself in an entirely new light. I wept before God
because of my sins. I was made very conscious that unless I was saved
from my sins they would damn me in hell forever. My churchianity and my
self-righteousness and my morality looked ridiculous when I saw myself a
sinner in the sight of God. I came to God and poured out my soul in
bitter repentance, and said, 'Save me, or I perish.' I promised him that
I would forsake my sins, make my wrongs right, and walk in the light. I
read in 1 John 1:9, 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' Well,
I confessed my sins and forsook them, and God for Christ's sake pardoned
all my sins. Praise His name. The joy and peace that filled my soul were
unspeakable. I was a new man. I loved everybody, even my bitter enemies.
Christ, in all his blessed reality, came into my heart as an abiding
companion. Some time after my conversion, through a holiness paper,
which fell into my hands, and through reading the Bible, which had
become a new book to me, I learned that it was possible for me to be
wholly sanctified and to have the Holy Spirit as an abiding comforter.
Oh, the joy of this blessed life. Its glories are untold."
Poor Jake stood amazed. He had never heard anything like this before.
He burst out, "If that's religion, I confess I hain't got none; and to
be plain, I ain't much inclined to believe such stuff as that. I have
been a member of Mount Olivet Church for twenty-seven years and I never
heard such preaching as that. That must be some new religion that's
goin' around. Talk about bein' saved from sin, why there's our dear old
Brother Simms, who was our last pastor at Mount Olivet. He died last
March and since then we ain't had no pastor--why I heard him say more'n
once from the pulpit that folks can't be saved from sin till they get to
heaven."
All this Jake said and a great deal more. He talked himself hoarse and
used up all his choicest terms in extolling the name of Mount Olivet
Church and all the pastors she had had since he had been a member. All
his arguments were quietly and lovingly answered by the ministers, who
read to him many passages of Scripture.
By this time the large elm cast a lengthy shadow eastward. The sun was
well-nigh set, and it was evident to the ministers that they should have
to prevail on their new acquaintance to lodge them overnight.
"Well, my dear brother," remarked one of the ministers, "we are far
apart in faith, but I trust we are all honest in our views and I pray
that God may lead us all in the way we should go. The day is gone, and
to get out of these hills tonight is unthinkable. I wonder if you could
arrange to keep us overnight, Mr. Benton--I believe that's the name? If
you will, we shall be a hundred times obliged and shall be glad to pay
you whatever you suggest."
Jake was big hearted, if he was a sinner. "Sure, I'll keep ye, think I'd
turn anybody out in these woods at night? Not me. I've kept preachers
all my life, but I confess I never kept sanctified ones before."
The three men went up the hill to Jake's cabin, and the two ministers
busied themselves writing letters while Jake prepared the evening meal
from his scant pantry. When they had gathered around the large goods-box
that served as a dining-table, one of the preachers thanked God for the
food and asked his blessings upon it. When the evening meal was
finished, the three men sat in front of Jake's cabin until a late hour.
The preachers expounded the Scriptures to poor, ignorant Jake and told
him of the wonders of God's grace. Finally, when the big silvery moon
stood in mid-heaven and the sound of cow-bells on the hill had died
away, Jake suggested that they retire for the night. By the light of the
moon one of the ministers read his Bible. It so happened that he opened
it at the 12th chapter of Hebrews. These words as they fell from this
man's pious lips affected Jake deeply. He surely had read that same
chapter himself many times, and doubtless during the twenty-seven years
he had been a member of Mount Olivet Church he had heard his pastor read
it. But there was one verse that sank right to the center of Jake's
heart. It was the 14th: "Follow peace with all men, and holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord." Jake had always had a hope in
his breast that he should some day see the Lord. He had had more than
his allotted share of troubles in life, and deep in his heart he had a
longing to go where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary be at
rest."
Soon all was silence in the cabin attic, where the three men lay. The
restless surgings of man's inner soul are invisible to all eyes, save
God's, and silence is not always a proof that everyone is asleep. Jake
lay on a bag of dried leaves, having given his own bunk to his guests.
But his eyes refused to sleep. The music of the katydids had lost its
power to soothe his troubled breast and bring him sweet repose. His mind
took a voyage over the past. Memory, according to her wonted ways
carried him again to his mother's knee. He recalled the sound of her
voice as she sang, "When I shall see Him face to face and tell the story
saved by grace." But that scripture, "Without holiness no man shall see
the Lord," took the sweetness out of that long-remembered song. Jake
knew he was not holy. His heart was defiled by sin. His lips were
unclean with blaspheming God's name. He remembered all the good
resolutions he had made and broken the past quarter of a century. And
during these midnight musings he seemed to see two lily-white hands
beckoning him to come somewhere; he knew not where. These hands he
readily recognized as the hands of his own baby Rose, who had gone from
him one day near the close of her fifth summer. Mentally he found
himself again at the bedside of his darling Rose. He saw again her ruddy
cheeks glow with fever and heard the tremble of her voice as she said,
"Daddy's Rose is going to heaven. Daddy come some day." Again he saw the
death-glare in the sky-blue eyes when the little soul flitted away. He
saw himself again as he sat and looked into the sweet and lifeless face
of his darling girl, and he remembered how he resolved on that day to
live in such a way as to be reunited with his child. But his resolves
had all been unfilled, and he saw the path of his past strewn with
broken vows. In reality, God was speaking to the man's soul. Jake saw
himself in his true condition, a lost sinner. His sins seemed like
horrid black mountains rearing themselves eternally between him and his
child. His profession of religion and his church-membership seemed to
mock him rather than to comfort him.
But Jake was silent. He said not a word with his lips; but how his
bleeding heart did talk to God. Hot tears flowed from his sleepless eyes
and dampened the dry leaves that formed his pillow. He supposed the two
ministers asleep. Their opinion of him was the same. Finally Jake was
astonished to see, in the glimmering light of the moon that stole
through the cracks in the clapboard roof, the two preachers slip from
their bed, and kneel on the floor. His ear caught their whispering
prayers that were heard in heaven. As nearly as he could hear, the
prayers ran something like this: "O Lord, thou didst have a purpose in
sending us through these wooded hills. May we be instrumental in
bringing light and salvation to this lonely cabin. Lord, talk to the
heart of this Mr. Benton, who sleeps on his bag of leaves. Bring
something before his mind that will break up his heart; disturb him even
in his sleep, Lord."
Jake's emotions overwhelmed him and he could keep silent no longer. He
bounded from his bed, crying, "O my God, save me, save me, save me! Oh,
do pray for me now! I am lost! lost! lost!"
Needless to say, the preachers were somewhat shocked, as people often
are when their prayers are answered sooner than they expect. The
convicted herdsman prostrated himself on the floor before the preachers
and poured out bitter tears of repentance. He wept and groaned, and
begged God to save him. But he seemed slow to grasp God's promises. He
prayed till the morning dawned. The preachers prayed with him. Finally,
just as the first grey streaks of the new day began to creep between the
logs, Jake's faith was anchored in God's promises, and the glory of
heaven flooded his soul. In the twinkling of an eye he was made a new
man. His joy knew no bounds. He leaped and shouted, sang and whistled,
and laughed and cried, all for the joy of his new-found treasure.
When breakfast was over and the two ministers had bidden their new
convert a happy farewell, Jake sat down to read his Bible, which the
preachers had given him. His eyes fell upon these words, "Weeping may
endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psa. 30:5).