Beneath the Banner Part 21

In 1831, when Simeon was seventy-two years old, he preached his last sermon before the university. The place was crowded. The heads of houses, the doctors, the masters of art, the bachelors, the undergraduates, the townsmen, all crowded to hear the venerable preacher. They hung on his words and listened with the deepest reverence.

His closing days were singularly bright and happy. Three weeks before his death a friend, seeing him look more than usually calm and peaceful, asked him what he was thinking of.

"I don't think now," he answered brightly; "I enjoy."

At another time his friends, believing the end was at hand, gathered round him.

"You want to see," he remarked, "what is called a dying scene. That I abhor.... I wish to be alone with my G.o.d, the lowest of the low."

One evening those watching beside him thought he was unconscious, his eyes having been closed for some hours. But suddenly he remarked:--

"If you want to know what I am doing, go and look in the first chapter of Ephesians from the third to the fourteenth verse; there you will see what I am enjoying now."

On Sunday, 13th November, just as the bells of St. Mary's were calling together the worshippers to service he pa.s.sed away. He had accepted an invitation to preach a course of four sermons, and would have delivered the second of the course on that very afternoon. I am permitted, by the kindness of the Rev. H.C.G. Moule, from whose delightful biography the foregoing sketch has been compiled, to reproduce a page from this address.

"Who would ever have thought I should behold such a day as this?"

wrote Simeon. "My parish sweetly harmonious, my whole works stereotyping in twenty-one volumes, and my ministry not altogether inefficient at the age of seventy-three.... But I love the valley of humiliation."

In that last sentence, perhaps, lies the secret of the man's far-reaching and undying influence.

A SOLDIER MISSIONARY.

THE STORY OF HEDLEY VICARS.

It was the 22nd March, 1855, just outside Sebastopol. The night was dark and gusty. Close to the Russian entrenchments was an advanced post of the British forces, commanded by Captain Hedley Vicars.

Fifteen thousand Russians under cover of the gloom had come out from Sebastopol and driven our French allies out of their advanced trenches. Then a portion of this force stealthily advanced, seeking to take the British by surprise.

The first to discover the presence of the enemy was Hedley Vicars.

With great judgment he made his men lie down till the Russians were within twenty paces. Then, springing to his feet, he shouted:--

"Now, 97th, on your pins and charge!"

His force was about 200, that of the enemy nearly 2000! Wounded in the breast at the first onset, he still led the charge. "Men of the 97th, follow me!" rang out his voice above the din of battle, and leaping the parapet of the entrenchment he charged the enemy down the ravine.

"This way, 97th!" was his last command--still at the head of his men. His sword had already dealt with two of the foe, and was again uplifted, when a musket shot, fired at close quarters, severed an artery; and the work on earth of this gallant man was over.

Hedley Vicars was a true soldier and earnest Christian. The last words he wrote, penned the night before he died, were: "I spent the evening with Cay. I read Isaiah, xli.; and he prayed. We walked together during the day, and exchanged our thoughts about Jesus."

He spent a busy time in the Crimea, doing plenty of hard work in the trenches; and when off duty engaged in hospital visiting, tract and book distributing, attending prayer meetings and mission services, constant in his Bible reading, and always endeavouring to do good to others.

Here is an entry from his diary on the 4th March, 1855: "Sunday. Had Divine service in camp. We afterwards met together in a tent. All present. Then sat on a regimental board, after which I went to the Guards' camp for Cay; and we then went, laden with tracts, books and prayers, to the remaining hospitals of the Second Division, where we distributed all we had. Had service in our hospital tent on my return, and prayed with one of the sick, particularly, who asked me to do so... I spoke to him of and directed him to 'look to Jesus' the Saviour. Service in the tent again in the evening. ... Oh, what a happy day this has been!... I must now conclude, as I must get ready for the trenches."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEDLEY VICARS LEADING THE 97TH.]

On 12th January he wrote: "I have just returned from a night in the trenches, having come off the sick list yesterday morning. Last Sunday I was unable to leave my tent, but I had happy communion with Jesus in my solitude, and derived much pleasure from the fourteenth and fifteenth of St. John. How true is the peace of mind that cleaving to Christ brings to a man! There is nothing like it in this world."

Such was Hedley Vicars--a bright, loving, faithful Christian. He knew what it was to be without peace; for having got into debt when he was first in the army, and knowing the distress it caused his family at home, his mind was so troubled that he wrote to his mother: "Oh, what agony I have endured! What sleepless nights I have pa.s.sed since the perusal of that letter! The review of my past life, especially the retrospect of the last two years, has at last quite startled me, and at the same time disgusted me." And again: "Oh, that I had the last two years allotted to me to live over again!"

His mother's letters stirred him to sorrow for past faults and desires to live a new life. The sudden death of his fellow-officer, Lieut.

Bindon, made him realise the uncertainty of earthly things.

In November, 1851, whilst at Halifax, Nova Scotia, he was awaiting the return of a brother-officer to his room, and idly turning over the leaves of a Bible that was upon the table. He caught sight of the words, "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin".

The message went home. That night he hardly slept. With the morning came LIGHT AND LIFE. Like Christian in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ he looked to the cross, and his burden rolled away.

Feeling keenly his own weakness he bought a large Bible, and placed it open on the table in his sitting-room, determined that an open Bible in the future should be his colours. "It was to speak for me," he said, "before I was strong enough to speak for myself." The usual result followed. His friends did not like his "new colours". One accused him of "turning Methodist," and departed; another warned him not to become a hypocrite, and remarked, "Bad as you were, I never thought you would come to this, old fellow!" So for a time he was nearly deserted.

But he had got that which was better than any ordinary friendships.

Though he often came under the fire of jeers and taunts--more trying to most men than the rifle bullets of the enemy--he experienced a new joy which increased and deepened.

Later on he would spend four or five hours daily in Bible reading, meditation and prayer, so that whereas he had written a few months earlier: "Oh! dear mother, I wish I felt more what I write!" he was now daily becoming more earnest, patient and watchful, and was gradually putting on the whole armour of G.o.d.

And so, during those three short years that intervened between his call to grace and his death at the early age of thirty, he did the work of a lifetime; and of him it can be truly said (as of many another alluded to in this book) that "he being dead yet speaketh".

THE La.s.s THAT LOVED THE SAILORS.

THE STORY OF AGNES WESTON.

"I was obliged to go to church, but I was determined not to listen, and oftentimes when the preacher gave out the text I have stopped my ears and shut my eyes that I might neither see nor hear."

Thus writes Agnes Weston of the days of her girlhood. There was therefore a time in the life of this devoted woman when there seemed no prospect of her doing good to any one--to say nothing of the great work she has accomplished in giving a helping hand to our sailors in every part of the world.

However, she got out of this Slough of Despond, and having become convinced of G.o.d's love she told the good story to the sick in hospitals, to soldiers and sailors without number, and has done more for the good of Jack Tar afloat and ash.o.r.e than perhaps any other man or woman.

Her public work commenced at the Bath United Hospital, where in 1868 she visited the patients. These looked forward so eagerly to her helpful conversation that in course of time it was arranged she should give a short Gospel address in each of the men's wards once a week.

One day a man who had met with a terrible accident was brought into the hospital whilst she was there. His case was hopeless, and Miss Weston asked that she might be allowed to speak to him. She whispered to him the text, "G.o.d so loved the world"; and, though he gave no sign of taking it in, yet presently, when she repeated it, big tears rolled down his face. The word of comfort had reached him.

Another day she came across a poor fellow with both legs broken; and after a little earnest talk he said, "I've been a bad fellow, but I'll trust Him".

Others she found who had been already influenced by Miss Marsh; and so her task of teaching was made easier.

At the Sunday school she showed so great a genius for taming unruly boys that the curate handed over to her the very worst of the youths, that she might "lick them into shape".

Ere long the boys' cla.s.s developed into a cla.s.s for working men, which grew and grew till it reached an average attendance of a hundred.

After that followed temperance work. This is how Miss Weston came to sign the pledge.

She was working hard at meetings for the promotion of the temperance cause when a desperate drunkard, a chimney sweep by trade, came to her at one of the meetings and was going to sign the pledge.

Pausing suddenly he remarked, "If you please, Miss Weston, be you a teetotaler?"

"No," she replied; "I only take a gla.s.s of wine occasionally, of course in strict moderation." Laying down the pen he remarked he thought he'd do the same. So after this Miss Weston became an out-and-out teetotaler, duly pledged.