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and what a great work it did in people's hearts; but one day those
Christian workers went to Australia to hold some meetings, and one
night, when the great auditorium was crowded, a man who was leading the
meeting got up and told the story of this verse, how it had been chosen,
and how it had gone over the world in strange ways, even told about the
morning at the little railway station when the two men said good-by.
Just as he got to that place in his story a man in the audience stood up
and said: 'Brother, just let me say a word, please. I never knew
anything about all this before, but I was at that railway station, and I
heard those two men shout that strange good-by, and I went home and read
that verse, and it's made a great difference in my life.'
"There was a great deal more to the story, how some Chicago policemen
got to be good men through reading that verse, and how the story of the
Australia meetings was printed in an Australian paper and sent to a lady
in America who sent it to a friend in England to read about the
meetings. And this friend in England had a son in the army in India, to
whom she was sending a package, and she wrapped it around something in
that package, and the young man read all about it, and it helped to
change his life. Well, I thought of that story this morning when I was
trying to decide what to read for our opening chapter, and it occurred
to me that perhaps you would be interested to take that verse for our
school verse this term, and so if you would like it I will put it on the
blackboard. Would you like it, I wonder?"
She paused wistfully, as if she expected an answer, and there was a low,
almost inaudible growl of assent; a keen listener might almost have said
it had an impatient quality in it, as if they were in a hurry to find
out what the verse was that had made such a stir in the world.
"Very well," said Margaret, turning to the board; "then I'll put it
where we all can see it, and while I write it will you please say over
where it is, so that you will remember it and hunt it up for yourselves
in your Bibles at home?"
There was a sort of snicker at that, for there were probably not half a
dozen Bibles, if there were so many, represented in that school; but
they took her hint as she wrote, and chanted, "II Timothy ii:15, II
Timothy ii:15," and then spelled out after her rapid crayon, "Study to
show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be
ashamed."
They read it together at her bidding, with a wondering, half-serious
look in their faces, and then she said, "Now, shall we pray?"
The former teacher had not opened her school with prayer. It had never
been even suggested in that school. It might have been a dangerous
experiment if Margaret had attempted it sooner in her program. As it
was, there was a shuffling of feet in the back seats at her first word;
but the room, grew quiet again, perhaps out of curiosity to hear a
woman's voice in prayer:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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