The following account of the rich, poor man, though somewhat abridged, is given mainly in the words of the one who discovered him in the “Five Points Mission” more than fifty years ago.
In the fall of 1851, my attention was called to an old man who had taken a seat in the Mission room. His whole appearance bore the marks of respectability. He was evidently in declining health, but his face seemed the index of patient resignation. For several weeks he continued to come. One day I resolved to follow the old man home, unnoticed by him. He walked slowly up the street and went down a crooked stair to the basement of an old house. It was not a large room, yet four bedsteads were placed against its sides. This was a boarding house.
I found it was near dinner time; the boarders were expected home. One had arrived, taken his seat upon a bench, and was opening a Bible. It was our old friend from the Mission room.
“You read the Bible, I see,” I said, addressing the old man. “Is it a favorite book with you, sir?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” he replied, while his eyes filled with tears. “It is all I have in this world, it is my treasure. Nothing is left me in this world but this.”
“Do you board here?” I asked.
“I lodge here when I can pay twenty-five cents a night, and that dear woman,” pointing to the hostess, “gives me nearly all I need to eat. But the Lord opens my way all the time,” said this aged saint. “I have been down the street a ways to hear the missionary preach, and I like him much; and he is so good to me. And a lady has given me some money, see here,” showing twenty-five cents, “this is all I need, and this she has done three times. The Lord reward her.”
I was glad to gather a little of the old man’s history. He said, “I have served God from my youth. I can scarcely recollect when I did not love Him, and He has never left me nor forsaken me. Poor health and a broken fortune in Ireland induced me, at the request of friends, to come to this country in search of a son who had left Ireland a number of years before, and though I failed continually in health, and though I have not succeeded in finding my son, yet God has not left me one moment. My feet were led to this neighborhood; and subsequently my ear caught the sound of singing at the Mission room, and surely God’s hand was in this direction. I am rich. I do not heed these poor wants of the body for I am always supplied. I have need of nothing.”
“Oh, the thankful creature!” interrupted the Irish woman who kept the boarding house.
“Yes, ma’am, I have need of nothing, for the Lord is with me. He is my companion by day and night. The streams of mercy and salvation are always full.”
My heart swelled with emotion; tears flowed from my eyes as I looked upon this humble, patient, expectant heir of salvation. I said as I left, “Oh, the riches of God’s grace; this is the strongest proof of living, abiding faith that I have ever witnessed.”
We visited him often, and in the missionary he found a good friend who assisted in supplying his temporal wants. He began to fail more rapidly, and it was thought advisable to remove him to a room in the “Old Brewery” where he would have more quiet, and where a person could be in attendance upon him. When the aged saint was put in his quiet room, such a strain of thanksgiving as ascended thence, was never heard before in the Old Brewery. There where a few months before, nothing met the ear but the most awful curses and blasphemies, where thieves and assassins frequented; there lay an heir of God, a joint-heir with Christ, from whom the high praises of his God were continually ascending. His gratitude was most touching.
“It is more than I deserve. I do not wish anything more. It is more than my Master had; less will answer me,” were the replies given to our desires to help him. The strong faith and confidence that had supported him through many years of privation and suffering, were eminently triumphant now. He would say, “God is good. He is sweetly near. Soon I shall dwell with Him forever.”
The Bible seemed all his own. He had been so constantly a reader of its truths, that he seemed to know every promise it contained, and rested on them most unwaveringly, and as he had been taught by the Holy Spirit to appropriate them to himself.
“I am nothing,” said he to me during the last conversation I had with him, “but Christ is my Rock—He is my all and in all.”
On Thursday preceding his death, he seemed so far spent that his friends thought he was dying, and we surrounded his bedside.
“Father Best, you are about to leave us.”
“No, I shall be here a few days longer. If I have a wish, it is that I may enter the house of my rest on Lord’s day morning, the morning of my Redeemer’s resurrection.”
That wish was gratified, a few days passed on, and in the midnight stillness which preceded the dawn, were heard from that rudely constructed room the exclamations, “Almost gone!” “Glory be to God! The promises are yea and amen in Christ Jesus.” “My Redeemer, my Everlasting Portion.”
Gradually he sank, but the lamp of life continued to flicker until six o’clock proclaimed it to be the day on which the Saviour burst the bands of death; then exclaiming, while the light of heaven rested on his countenance, “I knew I should enter into rest on the Lord’s day,” his triumphant spirit passed into the presence of his Lord.
When it became evident that he was sinking and would no more meet on earth that part of his family left in Ireland, he expressed a desire that someone would write to them and tell them that the promises of God had been all verified in his experience, and that now when every earthly support was failing, the Rock on which he had built his hopes for eternity, stood firm beneath his feet.
His earthly remains were laid to rest in Greenwood Cemetery till summoned by the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, to meet the Lord in the air. (1 These. 4:16.)
“Trust in Him at all times.” Ps. 62:8.
ML 12/21/1902