ALWAYS A LAMPLIGHTER

Evangeline Booth relates an experience that she had at the close of an exhaustive day of speaking in London. A messenger asked her to see a man. As she hesitated he insisted by saying that the man had come from a distance of two hundred miles. Miss Booth replied, “By all means; bring him to me.” “But he can’t come to you; he is ninety-four years old,” the messenger answered. Miss Booth hastened to the old gentleman and he took her hand in both of his and said: “I was the lamplighter for your father when he held his first meeting under cover. I put up the wires and lighted the lamps. Your father placed his hand upon my head and said to me ‘My lad, always be a lamplighter for Jesus Christ.’ I want you to know that I have always carried the light for my Lord and Saviour.” How many of us will be able to say at the close of our little day that, we, too, have had this singleness of purpose in bringing the light of Christ to the world in which we live? There are so many good causes that demand our time, attention, strength, and money that often we are bewildered, but always we are needed to carry the light of Christ to a dark and sin-sick world. - Secret Place