A LABOURER IN THE VINEYARD.

THE STORY OF ROBERT MOFFAT.

“Oh, mother! ask what you will, and I shall do it.”

So said Robert Moffat as he stood with his mother on the Firth of Forth waiting for the boat to ferry him across.

He was sixteen years old, and having got a good situation as gardener in Cheshire was bidding farewell that day to home and parents, and about to face the world alone.

His mother had begged him to promise to do whatsoever she asked, and he had hesitated, wishing to know first what it was that she wanted.  At last, however, remembering how good and loving she had always been, he had consented.  Her request was a very simple one, but it was very far reaching.

“I only ask whether you will read a chapter in the Bible every morning and another every evening.”

“Mother,” he replied, “you know I read my Bible.”

“I know you do,” was her answer; “but you do not read it regularly, or as a duty you owe to God, its Author.”

“Now I shall return home,” she observed when his word had been pledged, “with a happy heart, inasmuch as you have promised to read the Scriptures daily.  O Robert, my son, read much in the New Testament!  Read much in the Gospels—­the blessed Gospels!  Then you cannot well go astray.  If you pray, the Lord Himself will teach you.”

Thus they parted—­he starting on his life’s journey with her earnest pleadings ringing in his ears.

Travelling in those days (1813) was so slow that it took him a full month to get to High Leigh in Cheshire; and on the way he narrowly escaped being captured by the pressgang and made to serve on a British man-of-war, which was short of hands.  The vessel in which he was going south was indeed boarded, and one man seized; but Robert says, “I happened to be in bed, and keep it there as long as they were on deck”.

He kept manfully the promise he had made his mother.  Notwithstanding the difficulty he experienced in his busy life of setting aside the necessary time for reading two chapters a day from his Bible, he nevertheless faithfully did it.

At first this practice seemed to bring him trouble.  It made him feel that he was a sinner, but how to get grace he knew not.

Ere long, however, his fears rolled away.  He perceived that being justified by faith he had peace with Christ, and rejoiced in the grace and power of the Lord.

Some good Wesleyans took an interest in the young gardener, and he attended their meetings, which he found very helpful.

When a little later on he was offered a much better situation on the condition that he gave up Methodism he refused it, preferring, as he says, “his God to white and yellow ore”.

One day he went to Warrington, and whilst there saw a placard announcing a missionary meeting, at which the Rev. William Roby was to speak.  The sight of this reminded him of the descriptions his mother used to read of mission work in Greenland, and the subject became fixed in his mind.