Lives of Poor Boys Who Became FamousBolton, Sarah Knowles
History
Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous
Bolton, Sarah Knowles
Biography
"Full well I remember the night before he went away (for the doctors
said he must hurry to the South); how we held a true love-feast. It was
the very gate of heaven, that meeting. He prayed, and they prayed; he
didn't ask them, he didn't think they could pray; and then we sung,
'Blest be the tie that binds.' It was a beautiful night in June that he
left on the Michigan Southern, and I was down to the train to help him
off. And those girls every one gathered there again, all unknown to each
other; and the depot seemed a second gate to heaven, in the joyful, yet
tearful, communion and farewells between these newly-redeemed souls and
him whose crown of rejoicing it will be that he led them to Jesus. At
last the gong sounded, and, supported on the platform, the dying man
shook hands with each one, and whispered, 'I will meet you yonder.'
"From this," says Mr. Moody, "I got the first impulse to work solely for
the conversion of men."
When he told his employer that he was going to give up business, he was
asked, "Where will you get your support?"
"God will provide for me if he wishes me to keep on, and I shall keep on
till I am obliged to stop," was the reply.
To keep his expenses as low as possible, he slept at night on a hard
bench in the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association, and ate the
plainest food. Thus was the devoted work of this Christian hero begun.
He was soon made city missionary for a time. Then the civil war began,
and a camp was established near Chicago. He saw his wonderful
opportunity now to reach men who were soon to be face to face with
death. The first tent erected was used as a place of prayer. Ministers
and friends came to his aid. He labored day and night, sometimes eight
or ten prayer-meetings being held at the same time in the various tents.
He did not desert these men on the field of battle. He was with the army
at Pittsburgh Landing, Shiloh, Murfreesboro', and Chattanooga. Nine
times, in the interests of the Christian Commission, he visited our men
at the front, on his errands of mercy. He tells this incident in a
hospital at Murfreesboro'.
"One night after midnight, I was woke up and told that there was a man
in one of the wards who wanted to see me. I went to him, and he called
me 'chaplain,'--I wasn't a chaplain,--and he said he wanted me to help
him die. And I said, 'I'd take you right up in my arms and carry you
into the kingdom of God, if I could; but I can't do it; I can't help you
to die.'
"And he said, 'Who can?'
"I said, 'The Lord Jesus Christ can. He came for that purpose.' He shook
his head and said, 'He can't save me; I have sinned all my life.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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