Bright and beautiful she looks, as she leans back, seemingly gazing over the blue waves with a sad but sweet smile on her face. No one would have guessed that those big brown eyes were sightless, and had been so since Monie was born.
She was growing up now into a big girl. It was difficult to know what to do with her — so her father thought, as he watched her, sitting amongst the sailors on the pier, and heard her caroling in her full, rich voice the songs they asked her to sing. Monie had a wonderful memory; perhaps a gift that in some degree made up to her for the loss of sight. Hymns and songs, or sayings, were caught up by her and stored away in the deep recesses of her busy brain for future use.
One day a stranger strolled up and down the wharf watching the boats being loaded and unloaded, and having a word here and there with an idle sailor who stood lazily by. His attention had been attracted by Monie, and he stood to listen to her singing.
Presently he led her by the hand to where a group of men stood, and asked her to sing him a hymn. The girl struck up at once a well-known one, apparently without intentionally choosing it:
“The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin,
The Light of the world is Jesus:
Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in,
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Come to the Light! ‘tis shining for thee:
Sweetly the Light has dawned upon me:
Once I was blind, but now I can see;
The Light of the world is Jesus!”
She sang the words with a plaintive pathos in the oft repeated chorus that no words can describe,
“Once I was blind, but now I can see; The Light of the world is Jesus!”
Tears stood in many eyes, and rolled down the cheeks of one or two.
The gentleman pulled his little well-worn Bible out of his pocket, and said as he opened it:
“My friends, we have had a sermon preached today by blind Monie, that you and I can never forget. She has sung about light and sunshine, and the glory of day; yet her eyes have beheld none of these things, they are only meaningless words to her. Are they realities to you? They are to me; I can say,
‘Sweetly the Light has dawned upon me:
Once I was blind, but now I can see:
The Light of the world is Jesus.’”
“My dear friends,” he continued more earnestly, “do not be content with listening to words about Jesus; with talking of heavenly things; but go right to Him and get your souls’ eyes opened.”
The men listened in silence; and though no immediate effect of the little scene followed, the blind girl’s thoughts began to center round the Saviour, Jesus of whom she had so long sung unthinkingly and carelessly, and soon she learned to say in the deepest truest sense,
“Once I was blind, but now I can see:
The Light of the world is Jesus.”
Dear reader, have you been content with pleasant services, nice hynms, and cheerful talks? Has your tongue run glibly over sacred words and solemn hymn lines, without any of it being a reality to you? Is yours a sadder blindness than Monie’s is now — even a soul blindness?
It drew tears from the eyes of strong men to hear a blind girl singing about sight: will you be careful never to sing a hymn that you cannot say is true of your own self? Question yourself as you sing, “Can I really say, ‘I do believe,’ or, ‘I am Thine, O Lord?’” and if you cannot, do not rest till, like Monie, you have made it all a living, bright reality.
ML 12/06/1953