For several minutes the little company sat in silence, each one buried in thoughts too deep and sacred to find expression in words.

Presently Rosa lifted her head from the doctor’s shoulder, her lustrous eyes becoming more luminous than ever, as she said: 

“Oh, how glad I am that I have found the way to the beautiful land!  Mother’s there, and don’t cough no more.  Grandpa’s there, and we’re all going some day, ’cause Jesus paid the fare a long time ago!”

AFTERWORD.

One bitterly cold December day, while riding in a streetcar in a large city, a frail-looking little girl, bending beneath the weight of a huge package, entered the car, sitting directly in front of me.  She was thinly, though neatly, clad.  Her pale face was overshadowed by an expression of care far too old for her baby shoulders, while her eyes were large, dark, and pathetically wistful.

There was something irresistible about her whole appearance, impelling me to cross the aisle and sit down by her side.

She told me that her name was Rosa, and the conversation which followed, suggested the story, “Rosa’s quest.”

I asked her if she knew anything about Jesus.  To this she replied: 

“Not much, ma’am, but it seems like I’ve heard just a little.”

Of heaven and the way of salvation she was as ignorant as a child in the wilds of Africa.  The sad expression of her face did not alter till I quoted John 3:16, then looking up with a smile she said: 

“Ain’t that pretty?”

For some time we talked, her hungry soul eagerly drinking in the old, old story, but to her so new.

Suddenly she left the car, and with a sense of deep depression, I saw her disappear amid a great, seething mass of humanity.

If she has not succumbed to the hardships of poverty, she probably is still toiling on in that proud “Christian” city, and has any one taught her more of Jesus than she knew that day?

Who will be responsible for these lost souls, constantly coming into contact with those who profess to know the Lord?

Why is it that so many Christians view life from an inverted standpoint, attaching apparently vastly more importance to the few brief years spent upon this earth, than to the countless cycles of eternity?  Why not view it normally, making our one business that of serving that blessed Christ?

Surely the saddest word in a Christian’s vocabulary is indifference.  By-and-by many a one would doubtless gladly forfeit ten thousand years of heavenly bliss just to recall the wasted opportunities of this day.

It is an incomparable privilege to be a child of the King, and the only way in which one may prove his appreciation and loyalty is by the degree of consecration and quality of service rendered.

At the day of Christ’s appearing there will be many an unrewarded Christian, saved eternally by the precious blood of God’s sacrificial Lamb, but with no glittering starry crown to cast at those once-pierced and bleeding feet!