I shall see Him face to face and tell the story saved by grace.”  But that scripture, “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord,” took the sweetness out of that long-remembered song.  Jake knew he was not holy.  His heart was defiled by sin.  His lips were unclean with blaspheming God’s name.  He remembered all the good resolutions he had made and broken the past quarter of a century.  And during these midnight musings he seemed to see two lily-white hands beckoning him to come somewhere; he knew not where.  These hands he readily recognized as the hands of his own baby Rose, who had gone from him one day near the close of her fifth summer.  Mentally he found himself again at the bedside of his darling Rose.  He saw again her ruddy cheeks glow with fever and heard the tremble of her voice as she said, “Daddy’s Rose is going to heaven.  Daddy come some day.”  Again he saw the death-glare in the sky-blue eyes when the little soul flitted away.  He saw himself again as he sat and looked into the sweet and lifeless face of his darling girl, and he remembered how he resolved on that day to live in such a way as to be reunited with his child.  But his resolves had all been unfilled, and he saw the path of his past strewn with broken vows.  In reality, God was speaking to the man’s soul.  Jake saw himself in his true condition, a lost sinner.  His sins seemed like horrid black mountains rearing themselves eternally between him and his child.  His profession of religion and his church-membership seemed to mock him rather than to comfort him.

But Jake was silent.  He said not a word with his lips; but how his bleeding heart did talk to God.  Hot tears flowed from his sleepless eyes and dampened the dry leaves that formed his pillow.  He supposed the two ministers asleep.  Their opinion of him was the same.  Finally Jake was astonished to see, in the glimmering light of the moon that stole through the cracks in the clapboard roof, the two preachers slip from their bed, and kneel on the floor.  His ear caught their whispering prayers that were heard in heaven.  As nearly as he could hear, the prayers ran something like this:  “O Lord, thou didst have a purpose in sending us through these wooded hills.  May we be instrumental in bringing light and salvation to this lonely cabin.  Lord, talk to the heart of this Mr. Benton, who sleeps on his bag of leaves.  Bring something before his mind that will break up his heart; disturb him even in his sleep, Lord.”

Jake’s emotions overwhelmed him and he could keep silent no longer.  He bounded from his bed, crying, “O my God, save me, save me, save me!  Oh, do pray for me now!  I am lost! lost! lost!”