Scripture Verse

Introduction

Anecdote

Mr. Will­iam Rey­nolds, of Pe­or­ia, Il­li­nois, the well known Sun­day school work­er, tells the fol­low­ing, which he had from the lips of the mis­sion­ary him­self.

The mis­sion­ary, Rev. E. P. Scott, while la­bour­ing in In­dia, saw on the street one of the stran­gest look­ing hea­then his eyes had ev­er lit upon.

On in­qui­ry he found that he was a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of one of the in­land tribes that lived away in the mount­ain dis­tricts and that came down once a year to trade.

Upon fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion he found that the Gos­pel had ne­ver been preached to them and that it was dan­ger­ous to ven­ture among them be­cause of their mur­der­ous ten­den­cies.

He was stirred with much de­sire to break un­to them the Bread of Life. He went to his lodg­ing-place, fell up­on his knees and plead­ed for Di­vine di­rec­tion. Aris­ing, he packed his va­lise, took his vi­olin with which he was ac­cus­tomed to sing, and his pil­grim staff, and started in the di­rect­ion of the Ma­ce­don­ian cry.

As he bade his fel­low mis­sion­ari­es fare­well, they said, We shall ne­ver see you again. It is ma­dness for you to go. For two days he tra­veled, scarc­ely meet­ing a hu­man be­ing, un­til at last he found him­self in the mount­ains sur­round­ed by a crowd of sav­ag­es.

Every spear was point­ed at his heart. Not know­ing of any oth­er re­source he tried the pow­er of sing­ing the name of Je­sus to them. Draw­ing forth his vi­olin he be­gan with closed eyes:

All hail the pow­er of Je­sus name! etc.

Afraid to op­en his eyes he sang on till the third verse, and while sing­ing this verse—

Let ev­ery kin­dred, ev­ery tribe, etc.—

He op­ened his eyes to see what they were go­ing to do, when, lo! the spears had dropped from their hands and the big tears were fall­ing from their eyes.

They af­ter­wards in­vit­ed him to their homes, an in­vi­ta­tion glad­ly ac­cept­ed. He spent two years and a half amongst them.

His la­bours were great­ly blessed, and he had so won up­on their af­fec­tions that when he was com­pelled to leave on ac­count of im­paired health for this coun­try, they fol­lowed him for thir­ty miles.

O mis­sion­ary, they said, come back to us again. He has gone back and there is la­bour­ing still.

Morrison, pp. 157–58