The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men"Carpenter, Minnie Lindsay Rowell
Religion
The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men"
Carpenter, Minnie Lindsay Rowell
Lee, Kate; Salvation Army
A son of Christian parents, Wellman was a decent youth, but in his early
married life he began to go down-hill and long before Adjutant Lee took
charge of the corps at Reading, had reached the dead level of misery,
degradation, and hopelessness. He had turned his back upon God; he feared
Him, dreaded Him, longed to escape from His presence, but the Heavenly
Father did not forsake him. His mother had died, he was filled with
sorrow and remorse, when one Sunday evening The Army band halted before
the lodging-house. Wellman was in the yard lounging against the wall when
the drum tapped. He walked through the passage and gazed at The Army.
Kate Lee was leading the meeting. She looked at him and smiled. There was
a world of power in that look; interest, kindness, gentleness, sorrow for
sin. Wellman listened with apparent indifference to the meeting, and the
march moved off.
He had heard the Army drum hundreds of times before in Reading, but while
it called to every one to remember God, its message had never reached
him; but the look on that woman's face did. For the first time he
followed the march, and, arriving at the hall, was invited inside. The
place was already full, but a wise-hearted orderly piloted Wellman to a
front seat.
He has no remembrance of the message of the meeting; but he saw himself;
his loathsome condition; his sin to God and man; his failure in life. At
the invitation he went forward to the penitent-form and asked God to take
away his sin; he rose from his knees believing that he was saved.
How wonderful is the work of God! Wellman came into the hall dirty,
unkempt in body and soul. For years he had given no thought to his
appearance, cared nothing for the contempt of respectable people. Now he
fled to the lodging-house, ashamed to be seen.
The next morning the Adjutant called to see him. He had broken up eight
homes, and for years had felt no wish for so troublesome a possession,
but now he longed to get out of that hovel and to have a decent place to
which he could invite this 'angel woman.' The Adjutant smiled upon him,
told him he had only to follow God and things would soon improve. She
fostered the desire to make home again with his family and his own bits
of furniture about him, and helped him to get rooms. During Wellman's
years of sinning, whenever he had seen the word God in print, he had
dropped the paper or book as though it were hot; now he opened his
mother's Bible and found it to be a library of delight; and his spare
time, between work and the meetings, was spent in reading it for sheer
pleasure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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