it was for some dreadful sin she had thus been afflicted. The course of her mind after this may be best told in her own simple words:
“After that, I began to feel awful wicked—O, so wicked, you’ve no idea! I felt so wicked that my sins seemed like a load on me, and I went so heavy all the day! I felt so wicked that I didn’t feel worthy to pray in the house, and I used to go way off in the lot and pray. At last, one day, when I was praying, the Lord he came and spoke to me.”
“The Lord spoke to you?” said the writer; “what do you mean, Louisa?”
With a face of the utmost earnestness, she answered, “Why, ma’am, the Lord Jesus he came and spoke to me, you know; and I never, till the last day of my life, shall forget what he said to me.”
“What was it?” said the writer.
“He said, ‘Fear not, my little one; thy sins are forgiven thee;’ ” and she added to this some verses, which the writer recognized as those of a Methodist hymn.
Being curious to examine more closely this phenomenon, the author said,
“You mean that you dreamed this, Louisa.”
With an air of wounded feeling, and much earnestness, she answered,
“O no, Mrs. Stowe; that never was a dream; you’ll never make me believe that.”
The thought at once arose in the writer’s mind, If the Lord Jesus is indeed everywhere present, and if he is as tender-hearted and compassionate as he was on earth—and we know he is—must he not sometimes long to speak to the poor, desolate slave, when he knows that no voice but His can carry comfort and healing to his soul?
This instance of Louisa is so exactly parallel to another case, which the author received from an authentic source, that she is tempted to place the two side by side.
Among the slaves who were brought into the New England States, at the time when slavery was prevalent, was one woman, who, immediately on being told the history of the love of Jesus Christ, exclaimed, “He is the one; this is what I wanted.”
This language causing surprise, her history was inquired into. It was briefly this: While living in her simple hut in Africa, the kidnappers one day rushed upon her family, and carried her husband and children off to the slave-ship, she escaping into the woods. On returning to her desolate home, she mourned with the bitterness of “Rachel weeping for her children.” For many days her heart was oppressed with a heavy weight of sorrow; and, refusing all sustenance, she wandered up and down the desolate forest.
At last, she says, a strong impulse came over her to kneel down and pour out her sorrows into the ear of some unknown Being whom she fancied to be above her, in the sky.
She did so; and, to her surprise, found an inexpressible sensation of relief. After this, it was her custom daily to go out to this same spot, and supplicate this unknown Friend. Subsequently, she was herself taken, and brought over to America; and, when the story of Jesus and his love was related to her, she immediately felt in her soul that this Jesus was the very friend who had spoken comfort to her yearning spirit in the distant forest of Africa.
Compare now these experiences with the earnest and beautiful language of Paul: “He hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation, that THEY SHOULD seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though he be not far from every one of us.”
Is not this truly “feeling after God and finding Him”? And may we not hope that the yearning, troubled, helpless heart of man, pressed by the insufferable anguish of this short life, or wearied by its utter vanity, never extends its ignorant, pleading hand to God in vain? Is not the veil which divides us from an almighty and most merciful Father much thinner than we, in the pride of our philosophy, are apt to imagine? and is it not the most worthy conception of Him to suppose that the more utterly helpless and ignorant the human being is that seeks His aid, the more tender and the more condescending will be His communication with that soul?
If a mother has among her children one whom sickness has made blind, or deaf, or dumb, incapable of acquiring knowledge through the usual channels of communication, does she not seek to reach its darkened mind by modes of communication tenderer and more intimate than those which she uses with the stronger and more favored ones? But can the love of any mother be compared with the infinite love of Jesus? Has He not described himself as that good Shepherd who leaves the whole flock of secure and well-instructed ones, to follow over the mountains of sin and ignorance the one lost sheep; and, when He hath found it, rejoicing more over that one than over the ninety and nine that went not astray? Has He not told us that each of these little ones has a guardian angel that doth always behold the face of his Father which is in heaven? And is it not comforting to us to think that His love and care will be in proportion to the ignorance and the wants of His chosen ones?
Since the above was prepared for the press the author has received the following extract from a letter written by a gentleman in Missouri to the editor of the Oberlin (Ohio) Evangelist:
I really thought, while reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that the authoress, when describing the character of Tom, had in her mind’s eye a slave whose acquaintance I made some years since, in the State of Mississippi, called “Uncle Jacob.” I was staying a day or two with a planter, and in the evening, when out in the yard, I heard a well-known hymn and tune sung in one of the “quarters,” and then the voice of prayer; and O, such a prayer! what fervor, what unction—nay, the man “prayed right up;” and when I read of Uncle Tom, how “nothing could exceed the touching simplicity, the childlike earnestness, of his prayer, enriched with the language of Scripture, which seemed so entirely to have wrought itself into his being as to have become a part of himself,” the recollections of that evening prayer were strangely vivid. On entering the house and referring to what I had heard, his master replied, “Ah, sir, if I covet anything in this world, it is Uncle Jacob’s religion. If there is a good man on earth, he certainly is one.” He said Uncle Jacob was a regulator on the plantation; that a word or a look from him, addressed to younger slaves, had more efficacy than a blow from the overseer.
The next morning Uncle Jacob informed me he was from Kentucky, opposite Cincinnati; that his opportunities for attending religious worship had been frequent; that at about the age of forty he was sold south, was set to picking cotton; could not, when doing his best, pick the task assigned him; was whipped and whipped, he could not possibly tell how often; was of the opinion that the overseer came to the conclusion that whipping could not bring one more pound out of him, for he set him to driving a team. At this and other work he could “make a hand;” had changed owners three or four times. He expressed himself as well pleased with his present situation as he expected to be in the South, but was yearning to return to his former associations in Kentucky.
CHAPTER VII.
MISS OPHELIA.
Miss Ophelia stands as the representative of a numerous class of the very best of Northern people; to whom, perhaps, if our Lord should again address his churches a letter, as he did those of old time, he would use the same words as then: “I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil; and thou hast tried them which are apostles and are not, and hast found them liars; and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast labored and hast not fainted. Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.”
There are in this class of people activity, zeal, unflinching conscientiousness, clear intellectual discriminations between truth and error, and great logical and doctrinal correctness; but there is a want of that spirit of love, without which, in the eye of Christ, the most perfect character is as deficient as a wax flower—wanting in life and perfume.
Yet