JESSIE FINDING JESUS.
A
little girl in a wretched tenement in New York stood by her mother’s
death-bed, and heard her last words: “Jessie, find Jesus.”
When
her mother was buried, her father took to drink, and Jessie was left to
such care as a poor neighbor could give her.
One
day she wandered off unmissed, with a little basket in her hand, and
tugged through one street after another, not knowing where she went. She
had started out to find Jesus. At last she stopped, from utter weariness,
in front of a saloon. A young man staggered out of the door, and almost
stumbled over her. He uttered passionately the name of Him whom she was
seeking. “ Where is He?” she inquired eagerly.
He
looked at her in amazement. “What did you say?“ he asked.
“Will
you please tell me where Jesus Christ is? For I must find Him “ - this
time with great earnestness.
The
young man looked at her curiously for a minute without speaking, and then
his face sobered; and he said in a broken, husky voice, hopelessly: “I
don’t know, child; I don’t know where he is.” At length the little
girl’s wanderings brought her to the park. A woman, evidently a Jewess,
was leaning against the railing, looking disconsolately at the green grass
and the trees.
Jessie
went up to her timidly. “Perhaps she can tell me where he is,” was the
child’s thought. In a low, hesitating voice, she asked the woman: “Do
you know Jesus Christ?”
The
Jewess turned fiercely to face her questioner, and in a tone of suppressed
passion, exclaimed: “Jesus Christ is dead!” Poor Jessie trudged on,
but soon a rude boy jostled against her, and snatching her basket from her
hand, threw it into the street. Crying, she ran to pick it up. The horses
of a passing streetcar trampled her under their feet and she knew no more
till she found herself stretched on a hospital bed.
When
the doctors came that night, they knew she could not live until morning.
In the middle of the night, after she had been lying very still for a long
time, apparently asleep, she suddenly opened her eyes, and the nurse,
bending over her, heard her whisper, while her face lighted up with a
smile that had some of heaven’s own gladness in it: “O Jesus, I have
found you at last!“
Then
the tiny lips were hushed, but the questioning spirit had received an
answer. --Selected.
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