Chapter 24: “Out of the Fire.”

WHILE on a visit to Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, one dark, wet night in May, I was called from my room to see one of the saddest sights it has been my lot to witness.
A young American had been brought to the house by his Consul to see if we could do anything for him. He appeared little over twenty, but had already squandered a fortune of fifty thousand dollars in dissolute living.
He had arrived in Brazil on his honeymoon but a few weeks before. His evil habits still clung to him, however. Though very devoted to his young wife, he had nearly dragged her down to his own level; and, terrible to relate, but two nights before, while both were intoxicated, she, in a moment of hallucination or remorse, had swallowed a strong dose of the arsenical solution he used for his natural history collection, and had died within twenty-four hours.
The man seemed half crazed with grief, fear, and desperation, and was in a very critical condition. A God-given instinct urged us at once to lay hold of the poor lad in the only possible way; so drawing him out into the garden I walked up and down in the darkness with him, and pled for his soul, without seeking to minimize his guilt.
Apparently it was a hopeless case, and the night itself seemed not so dark as that man’s soul. The fumes of drink were still heavy upon him, and his despairing self-conviction seemed to make him deal to the Gospel of hope; but I could not let him go.
Up and down that path we walked in the misty rain, and there was an intense feeling of crisis; when suddenly, just as we turned on one of our tracks, he glanced up at me, with even something like a ray of hope on his haggard face, and exclaimed aloud: “What’s that you say? Really forgiveness for me! You said just now I was as good as a murderer! It sounds too good to be true! See here, do you mean it? I can’t believe it; it’s too good to be true!”
Then we went indoors together, and I induced him to kneel with me and definitely to seek the Lord while He may be found, and as definitely to thank God for pardon received. The change was electrical; his face shone with joy, and he kissed me! A bleary kiss, rank with liquor it was, and yet —
Then I called in a friend of mine, and we had a real time of rejoicing together.
He remained in the house; and later on that night, just before I turned in, away across the building I heard a weak, tremulous voice singing: “Happy day! happy day! when Jesus washed my sins away.”
Humbled but happy, he started reading the Bible will avidity; and the change in the lad was so noticeable that even the Consul was impressed.
A week later he sailed away north to his own people in the State of K —, and I saw him no more.
The memory of such a tragedy would be an almost unbearable burden. The Lord is tenderly pitiful. So it happened that not many months later I received a long and beautiful letter from a sister of the gentleman of this story. She related how, on his arrival home, their horror at his news had been greatly mitigated by the sight of the wonderful change in his life and by his evident conversion. She went on to say, however, that soon after his return he had entered into a strange decline from which he never recovered. To the very end he gave good evidence of a bright hope and trust, and begged his sister to write and tell me so, and to thank me for all my interest. Oh, the depth of the riches of the grace of our God!

LORD, Tho’ the darkness shuts me in,
I needs must stand, I dare not fly.
Tho’ yet high thron’d be self and sin,
For liberty and light I sigh.

As oft the tempter bids me fear
That hope deferred spells endless fate,
I will not doubt that Thou art near;
Thy touch can loose the bonds I hate.

I know not how, I cannot trace
The plan divine that sets me free;
But never can I doubt Thy grace,
Nor fail to wait expectantly.

Oh! not as men may demonstrate,
Nor as my weak desire may lead;
Lord, trembling, trusting, I await
Thine own blest way to meet my need’s.