ASTONISHING PEOPLE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13138, 12 September 1940, Page 2

ASTONISHING PEOPLE

HE PREACHED TO NOBODY “I' expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness I can show, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I sh a ll not pass this way again.” This famous quotation has been attributed to dozens of well known people, but it is now generally believed to have been first said by Stephen Grellet, an American Quaker of French birth who lived from 1773 to 1855.

One story will show the kind of man Stephen was. He believed that God told him to go into the backwoods and preach to a camp of lumberjacks, and so, with simple obedience, he went. He rode far till he came to the spot which had been in his mind all along, a clearing in the forest, but the lumbermen had moved on, and their camp was desolate. Had he misunderstood the voice? Stephen knelt down alid prayed, and the voice still said, “Preach,” so this devout Quaker did what seemed mad. He went into the long and empty common room, stood on a box, and preached to empty and broken forms. He preached with- all his soul, and then he rode home again, wondering greatly. Months and years went by, and Stephen, old and placid, found himself crossing London Bridge one day when a tall, bronzed man stopped him; “Ah,” said he, “so I find you at last.” • * '■

Stephen did not know him, but the man went on: “You are the man who preached to nobody—out in the backwoods. You thought no one was listening, but I heard you, and what you said sank into my soul, and I went to the new camp and talked to them about what you had said, and at first they laughed, and afterwards they came to see life as you Had seen it, and one sundown we all px-ayed together—the first time for most of us. Sir, you never preached a more powerful sermon than that time you thought you were preaching to nobody.”