Her Benny: A Story of Street Life. Hocking Silas Kitto
devout thanksgiving and of earnest pleading. Then came another hymn —
"Would Jesus have a sinner die?
Why hangs He then on yonder tree?
What means that strange expiring cry?
Sinners, He prays for you and me:
Forgive them, Father, oh! forgive;
They know not that by Me they live."
And once more the congregation stood up to sing. Nelly was even more affected than during the singing of the previous hymn, and while they sang the last verse —
"Oh, let me kiss His bleeding feet,
And bathe and wash them with my tears,
The story of His love repeat
In every drooping sinner's ears,
That all may hear the quick'ning sound,
Since I, even I, have mercy found," —
she fairly broke down, and, hiding her face in her hands, she sobbed aloud.
She soon recovered herself, however, when the preacher began to speak. Clear and distinct his words rang out: —
"Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."
And Nelly eagerly drank in his words as he went on to tell how we were all wanderers from our Father's house; and how the Father's heart yearned towards us, and how He had invited all to return home, giving the same invitation to every one of His children, and promising an abundant pardon to all that would come. And then he told, by way of illustration, the beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son, and concluded with an earnest exhortation to all the unsaved to come to the Saviour that very night, and to come just as they were.
Nelly felt that she would very much like to "come to the Saviour," but, alas! she did not know how. And when she saw several persons leave their pews and kneel around the communion, she wondered if they were "prodigals going home to the Father."
But what of Benny? Alas! if Joe Wrag had seen him that evening, he would have been more than ever convinced that he was none of the elect, and that he had not one particle of spiritual discernment. The words of the preacher seemed to have a very soothing influence upon our hero, for scarcely had he uttered twenty words of the sermon ere Benny was fast asleep. Nor did he wake again till near the end of the service, when he was startled by a strange voice speaking.
It was one of the men that Nelly had noticed kneeling at the communion. The man stood up, and with a face radiant with his new-found joy, he said, in broken accents,
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