“Well,” I said, “you come home with me, you are young enough to be my
son. If you were, I would want some good woman to mother you.” The next
day I took him to Lancaster, Pa., where at that time I had a number of
acquaintances among business men. I took him to quite a number before I
came to a man who would take him at all, and to a number who would take
him but not agree to help save a soul. At last I came to a Christian man
in the leather business, who agreed to take him into his family,
instruct him in the very rudiments of religion, take him to church and
Sunday school with him; in fact, to nourish this new-born soul in
Christ. We prayed together, then I left him. For a very short time I
received a postal-card each week, which I failed to answer; then, amid
the cares of a very busy life, I forgot him. About three years after
that I was walking along a street in Lancaster when a fine-looking chap
came rushing from behind me, and, placing his arm over my shoulder,
said, “Oh, God bless you! God bless you!”
I turned and found a fine-looking man with tear-dimmed eyes blessing me.
“Son,” I said, “what is your name?”
“Oh! do you not know me? I have prayed for you every day for three
years, and you have forgotten me.”
“Well,” I said, “I fancy you are so much better looking to-day than you
were then so that your own mother might not know you now.”
I walked back to the leather store with him and found my friend behind
the counter. “Mr. S.” I said, “is John Schmidt a good man?”
He did not wait to go around the counter, but, coming right over it, he
placed a hand on each of John's shoulders as he said, “I am glad to bear
witness that John is a true, good man. At first he was sorely tried to
associate only with our kind of people, but he has worked all day, gone
to school at night, gone to church and Sunday school every Sunday, and
he is about to marry one of the best young women of our church.” God had
done a perfect work of grace, and the hereditary drunkard became a good
man and a useful citizen. It must be so, for the word says the blood of
Christ Jesus cleanses from _all_ sin.
MR. KLINE'S TESTIMONY
On the evening of September 16, 1913, Mr. Kline, our Superintendent of
the Gospel Mission, gave, in substance, the following:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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