The Old Man over the Hills

For many years I had wanted to go as a foreign missionary, but the Lord never opened up the way. At last I went to live in California. Life was rough in the mining town where I lived, with my husband and little boys.

While I was living there I heard of a man who lived over the hills and was dying of consumption. The men in the village said, “He is so evil that no one can stay with him; so we place some food near him, and leave him for twenty-four hours. We will find him dead sometime, and the sooner the better. He has no living relatives that we know of.”

This pitiful story troubled me as 1 went about my work. For three days I tried to get some one to go to see him and find out if he was in need of better care. As I turned from the last man, troubled with his indifference, the Lord put the thought into my mind: “Why not go yourself? This is your missionary work, if you want it.”

I didn’t like the idea at first. I thought that I would not be able to help him as well as others could. I was also a little fearful from all the stories I had heard about him. This was not the kind of missionary work I had wanted.
But at last one day I could not resist the voice of the Holy Spirit any longer. I went over the hills to the little cottage where he was staying. It was a mud cabin, containing only one room. The door stood open. It one corner, on some straw and coloured blankets, I found the dying man. Sin had left awful marks on his face, and if I had not heard that he could not move, 1 would have been too afraid to go in. As I was about to enter, he greeted me with a curse. I stepped inside and again he swore.

“Don’t speak like this, my friend,” I said.
“I am not your friend. I don’t have any friends,” he said.
“Well, I am your friend, and…”

But the cursing and swearing came quickly now and he said, “You are not my friend. J never had any friends, and I don’t want any now.” I I reached out, and gave him the fruit 1 had brought for him. Then, stepping backwards, I asked if he remembered his mother. J was hoping to find a tender place in his heart; but he cursed her. I spoke of God and he cursed Him, I tried to speak of Jesus and His death for us, but he stopped me with his curses, and said, “That’s all a lie. Nobody ever died for others.”

I went away discouraged, saying to myself that I knew it was no use. But the next day I felt I must go again and I went. I continued going every day for two weeks. He did not show any gratitude, and at the end of that time I said that 1 was not going any more. That night as I was putting my little boy to bed, I did not pray for the old man over the hills. My little boy noticed it and said,
“Mama, you did not pray for the bad man.”
“No,” I answered, with a sigh.
“Have you given up on him, mama?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Has God given up on him also, mama? Should you give up before God does?”

I could not sleep that night. I thought of the dying man so evil and alone, with no one to care for him! I rose and went away by myself to pray; but the moment that I knelt, 1 was overpowered by the sense of how little meaning there had been to my prayers in the past. 1 had no faith, and I had not really cared, beyond a kind of halfhearted sentiment. I had not claimed his soul for God. O, the shame of such poor missionary zeal! 1 fell on my face literally, as I cried, “O Christ, give me a little glimpse of the worth of a human soul!” Did you, Christian, ever ask that and mean it? Do not do it unless you are willing to give up case and selfish pleasure; for life will be different for you after the Lord answers this prayer.

I remained on my knees until Calvary became a reality to me. I cannot describe those hours. They came and went unheeded; but I learned mat night what I had never known before, what it was to travail for a human soul.
I saw my Lord as I had never seen him before. I knelt there until the answer came.
As I went back to my room, my husband said, “How about your old man over the hills?”
“He is going to hear about Jesus tomorrow.”

“How are you going to tell him amidst his cursing and swearing?” he asked.
“The Lord is going to give me wisdom. I do not know how, or what I will say right now,” 1 replied.
The next morning the Lord brought me another lesson in Christian work. On all my previous visits, I had waited until afternoon, when my work was finished before going over the hills to see the man. That day, the moment my little boys went to school, I left my work, and hurried over the hills, not to see that “wretched old man,” but to win a soul for Christ. I thought the man might die soon.
As I passed a neighbour’s house, she came out and said, “I will go over the hills with you.”
I did not want her to go, but here was the other lesson for me. God could plan better than I could. She had her little girl with her, and as we reached the cabin, she said, “I will wait out here.”
I do not know what I expected, but the man greeted me with a terrible curse again. This time it did not hurt my feelings as it had done in the past; for I was now behind Christ, and I stayed there; and I could bear what struck Him first.
While I was changing the basin of water and towel for him, things, which I had done every day, but which he had never thanked me for, the clear laugh of the little girl rang out upon the air.
“What’s that?” said the man eagerly.
“It’s a little girl outside waiting for me.”
“Would you mind letting her come in?” he said, in a different tone of voice than 1 have ever heard before.
Stepping to the door, I called to her; then, taking her hand, said, “Come in and see the sick man, Mamie.” She shrank back as she saw his face, but I assured her with, “Poor sick man! He can’t get up; he wants to see you.”

She looked like an angel, her bright face framed in golden curls and her eyes tender and kind. In her hands she held the flowers that she had picked on the way up, and, bending toward him, she said, “I’m sorry for you, poor sick man. Will you have some flowers?”
He laid his great, bony hand beyond the flowers, on the plump hand of the child, and tears came to his eyes, as he said, “I had a little girl once. Her name was also Mamie. She cared for me. Nobody else did. I guess I’d been different if she’d lived. I’ve hated everybody since she died.”

1 knew at once that I had the key to the man’s heart. The thought came quickly, born of that midnight prayer service, and I said, “When I spoke of your mother and your wife, you cursed them; I know now that they were not good women, or you could not have done it.”
“Good women! 0, you don’t know anything about that kind of women! You can’t think how terrible it was for me.”
“Well, if your little girl had lived and grown up with them, wouldn’t she have been like them? Would you have liked to have her live for that?”

Fie had never thought of that before, and he was very thoughtful for a few minutes. Then he cried, “O God, no! I’d have killed her first. I’m glad she died.”
Reaching out and taking the poor hand, I said, “The Dear Lord didn’t want her to be like them. He loved her even better than you did, so He laid her to rest in the grave. He is keeping her there until the resurrection morning. Don’t you want to see her again?”
“O, I’d be willing to be burned alive a thousand times over if I could just see my little girl once more, my little Mamie!”
O friends, you know what a blessed story I had to tell (his man at that hour, and 1 had been so close to Calvary the night before that T could tell it in earnest! The poor face grew brighter as I talked. Two or three times he gasped, as if losing his breath. Then, clutching me, he said, “What’s that you said about talking to some one you can’t see?”
“It’s called praying. I tell Him what I want and need.”

“Pray now, quick. Tell Him I want to see my little girl again. Tell Him anything you want to.”
I took the hands of the child, and placed them on the trembling hands of the man. Then, dropping on my knees, with the child in front of me, I asked her to pray for the man who had lost his little Mamie, and wanted to see her again. This was her prayer,
“Dear Jesus, this man is sick. He has lost his little girl, and he feels bad about it. I’m so sorry for him, and he’s sorry too. Won’t you help him, and show him how he will be able to see his little girl again someday when you come from heaven to take us all home? Do please. Amen.”

Heaven seemed to open before us, and there stood One with the prints of nails in His hands and the wound in His side.
Mamie slipped away soon, and the man kept saying, “Tell Jesus about it. Tell Him everything.” Then he began speaking and he poured out his heart in confession to the Lord. It was such a great confession that I could not have borne to hear it had the Lord not been close to us at that hour.

By and by the poor man grasped the strong hand of Jesus. It was the third day when the poor, tired soul turned his heart completely to the Lord. He lived on for weeks; for God still had a mission for him. 1 had been telling him one day about a meeting when he said, “I’d like to go to a meeting once.”

So we planned a meeting, and the men from the village who worked in the mines came and filled the room.
“Now, boys,” said the old man, “Get down on your knees, while she tells about the Man that died for me.”
I had been a very shy person, rarely talking in meetings, but I found myself talking at length here, and I tried to tell the simple story of the cross.

After a while the old man said, “Boys, you don’t half believe it, or you’d cry; you couldn’t help it. Raise me up. I’d like to tell you something.”
So they raised him up, and, between his short breathing and coughing, he added to the story. He had to use the language he knew.

“Boys,” he said, “you know how the water runs down the sluice-boxes and carries off the dirt and leaves the gold behind. Well, the blood of that Man she tells about went right over me just like that. Jt carried off everything; but it left enough for me lo see Mamie, and to see the Man that died for me. 0 boys, can’t you love him?” Many hearts were touched that night. One of the greatest witnesses to these men was the great change in character that had come over this sick man.

Some days later, there came a look into his face which told me that the end was here. I had to leave him that night and I knew I would not see him in the morning. “What shall I say tonight, Jack?” I asked.
“Just good nigh I,” he said.
“What will you say to me when we meet again on the resurrection morning?”
“I’ll say, ‘Good morning,'”
The next morning the door was closed, and I found two men sitting silently by a board stretched across two stools. They turned back the sheet from the dead man and I looked on the face, which seemed to have come nearer to the image of God than when 1 first met him.
“I wish you could have seen him when he went,” the men said.
“Tell me about it.”

“Well, all at once he brightened up, about midnight, and smiling said, ‘I’m going, boys.’ Tell her I’m going to meet her on the resurrection morning, and introduce her to Mamie. We will go to meet ‘the Man who died for me’ together.’ And then he was gone.”

Kneeling there with my hands over those poor, cold ones, which had been stained with human blood, 1 asked that I might understand more and more the worth of a human soul, and be drawn into a deeper sympathy with Christ’s yearning compassion, “not willing that any should perish.”