The Ostler.
AMONG the various classes of men engaged in the industrious pursuits of life, perhaps there are few who are less thought of, as to their soul’s eternal welfare, than ostlers and attendants in the stables of inns in towns or country villages. They are usually so occupied in attending to the convenience of others, that the Lord’s-day to them varies but little from other days.
Should this meet the eye of any who are thus employed, let me entreat them to “seek the Lord while he may be found;” and in order to afford them encouragement, perhaps a case which I can place before them, may excite some degree of interest, and stir them up to try and do likewise. And may the God of all grace make them partakers of a similar blessing!
I became acquainted with a youth of about twenty-two, occupying the post of an ostler, whose civility soon attracted my notice, and his general conduct gave me grounds to hope that he had not lived, as too many are too apt to do in such situations, altogether unconcerned about his soul, whilst pursuing his occupation. In this I was not disappointed, when I occasionally came in contact with him. But having missed him from his usual post, on inquiring, I found he was away from his place, in a very painful state resulting from an accident. Taking the earliest opportunity for going to see him, I found him in a state of great suffering, from a blow which he had received on his face from a horse, which had inflicted a very serious injury, and presented every appearance of being very difficult to cure, from the nature of his constitution. This fear was too fully realized. A sore, of a very distressing character, so affected the whole of one side of his face, both within and without, that it was with the greatest difficulty he could swallow any nourishment. He lingered in this painful state for more than a year. I was in the habit of witnessing the dreadful suffering under which he labored, and the distressing condition of his poor frame, until at length it became painful to look upon him. But though the poor body was thus brought into a state which might have given occasion for complaint, yet it was not so with him. There was much thankfulness that his life was not taken at the moment, and a composure which bore testimony to peace within; and never do I recollect, through his long and painful sufferings, to have heard a murmur escape his lips. He bore his affliction with meek submission to the will of Him who had permitted it, and waited with patience as to what might be the end of it, in his appointed time.
And whence came this calmness and patience? Simply from this. He knew where to look for comfort. He had been led to feel his need of and to seek for pardoning mercy through the Saviour’s atoning blood; and he could now look to him for support, and fully believed that if he took him out of the world, he would give him everlasting rest, where pain and suffering would be known no more.
Many were the refreshing visits which I paid to this interesting young man. We conversed together on the love of God in providing salvation for helpless sinners, and in calling them forth from the ways of ungodliness; and we prayed together for the continuance of grace to sustain him to the end of his trials.
And how came this once thoughtless person to be brought out of a state of darkness into light? I was anxious to know this, and he told me. One day, when he was about his ordinary business in the stable, he saw a piece of paper lying on the ground. He took it up, and finding it printed, he began to read it, and his attention was arrested. It was a tract, which probably some Christian had dropped, as “bread cast upon the waters to be found after many days.” As he read it, it pleased God to bless it. He saw his sinfulness, he believed in the blood, and he became a new man in Christ Jesus; “old things passed away and all things became new.” Who the person was that dropped the little messenger of mercy he never knew, nor is it matter of any consequence. The dropper and the finder, and the writer of the tract too, will, we trust, yet meet, and rejoice together before the throne of God and the Lamb.
But now another difficulty arose. He felt that he wanted instruction, and his employments appeared to exclude him from it altogether. So difficult was it for him to leave his post, that he could but rarely get within the walls of any preaching place. Yet I found his mind well stored with Scripture, and his views clear as to the only way of obtaining salvation; and his meekness of spirit clearly manifested that he had been taught in the right school, and drawn living water from the fountain head. He procured for himself a Bible, made a little closet for it in his stable, and availed himself of every opportunity, without neglecting his proper duties, for reading it, but more especially of every interval of the Lord’s-day. Thus, by a diligent and careful study of the Word, he “grew in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” and he found strength and support while pursuing the difficult duties of his calling. And when he came to occupy his bed of affliction in his humble cottage, then did he especially find the truths of that blessed book to be his support during the dreary months of his protracted sufferings. On these he rested, in the sure and certain hope of realizing the Divine promises in a happy eternity. He waited patiently “all the days of his appointed time,” until he obtained a release from a diseased and truly pitiable earthly tabernacle, and with simple confidence in redeeming love, he entered into the presence of his Lord.
Such is the short but interesting history of one who filled a post in which, it is to be feared, very many live without a thought beyond their daily business, and too often in a course of ungodliness and profaneness. But this tract reached even him. It is very deeply to be deplored that there should be any in this so-called Christian land, entirely prevented by their employments from hearing the preached word.
Should it please the Author of all good to bless this little narrative to any of the numerous class who are placed in similar situations to him who is the subject of it, to himself shall be all the praise.
But it is more especially as an encouragement to tract distributors that this little narrative is given. It is not often that we hear of the precious results of this kind of service. The tract is given or dropped, and read in secret; conviction (it may be) follows; days, weeks, months, nay the writer has known cases where even years have passed away, and the “good seed” has seemed, as it were, to lie dormant in the soul; affliction has come upon the reader, and then, if not before, the life-giving power of the word is witnessed. But he who wrote and he who gave the little messenger of grace perhaps never heard in this world of the precious fruit of their labors. Nevertheless, let us go on in faith, nothing doubting but that he whose Spirit works in secret will bless his own word.
There was no sound of ax or hammer heard when Solomon’s temple was building. A better temple is building now, and day by day living stones are added in. From the little hamlet where no man goes to preach the word; from roadside inns and gate-houses whose inmates are too commonly engaged at home from Lord’s-day morning until Saturday night; from solitary huts in secluded lanes far distant from every preaching-place, where toiling dwellers rise with the sun and lie down with the birds, spending their days from early childhood to gray old age in the fields, and too commonly so weary with the hard week’s work as to feel little able and less inclined to take a walk of miles to hear the gospel; from villages whose church spire points to a heaven of whose grace its attendants never hear, and where squirearchy and High-Church influence forbid the people to listen to the true preacher’s voice, —the living temple is growing. And what are the instruments? TRACTS. No human opposition can hinder these little winged messengers of mercy; no vigilance can shut them out. The writer has come up at the hour of twelve to a village school-door just as all the children were coming out. Calling them round him, he has distributed to a crowd of eager little hands, tracts enough, if the Lord so pleased, to convert the whole village, and bidding the children take them to their mothers, has had the joy of seeing the pure gospel of the grace of God literally flying all over the village to its remotest homes, as with eager feet the children have run to “take the book to mother.”
The Day will show the fruits.