A RACE AGAINST TIME

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 15 June 1932, Page 3

A RACE AGAINST TIME

REMINISCENCES OE A PREACHER

''Once, in inv callow days in Australia,” writes Dr. Norwood in his now hook “Indiscretions of a Preacher, ■‘thirty years ago 1 missed a train at it junction station when going to preach in a hush township. I had travelled two hundred miles, and had one hundred and twenty still to go. 1 got there eventually by taking another train for sixty miles, cycling through tile night forty miles, and finally being driven for t wen! v.

“1 reached the little church five minutes after eleven o'clock in the morning, at which, time my first, service commenced.

“Everybody in the district, seemed to be present, largely, T think, to see if the pre,'teller would arrive. The betting was six to four against. 1 have rarely been more popular than 1 was that day. “Three years afterwards 1 met the secretary of that little church in the hush on a tram car in Melbourne. I was on mv wav to see if I could borrow some

money to purchase a block of land for the church 1 then served. I mentioned the matter in conversation. This good man immediately laid his cheque-book on his knee and wrote one for £3OO, which he handed to me. Me said it was because 1 had ridden all night to keep that/ appointment. I asked him if he remem-bered-the sermons I had preached, but he confessed his mind was a blank. Ho [.coined rather ashamed to make the confession.

“Twenty-seven years afterwards, a little group of us were spinning stories, mostly about, trains and their arbitrary ways. 1 told that one. THE .SEQUEL AT LORD S “'Two lays later 1 went with my wife ;.i sec a Test Match at Lord's between Australia, ami England. Wo watched Bradman and Kippax hitting up mammoth scores till the luncheon interval, wlicn we went into town to lunch. Wo returned after play had begun to find that both batsmen were out.- Up til! then 1 hat! taken no 'notice of my neighbour on my rigid, and I suppose lie had taken none of me. 1 asked him how tlm tialsmen had been dismissed. 'Why!’ lie said, 'you of all people!’ ami introduced himself. It was this same secretary of lhe little church in the Aupstralian bush. ‘Do you know,’ I said, 'I was talking of voti only two days ago.’ ‘And 1 have been thinking of you for three weeks,’ he answered, 'and feeling I'd give anything to he able to talk to you.’ “Then he told me that ho and his wife had fulfilled the dream of their lives hy paying a visit to England. Soon after they landed she suddenly sickened and died. He had rung me up at the City Temple, to find that T was away in the country. ‘Twice,' he said. 'I have listened to you preaching, hut had not tho courage to speak after ail these years. (For Unit is the way with some of these mi'n from the bush —bold as lions, timid as deer.) ‘But, oh. my God.’ how lonely 1 have been, and yon were the only man in lliis country who had ever known mv wife! And to think that, among those forty thousand people, you slmuhl come and sit next to me ! Is it telepathy? Or answer to prayer?” “I am too discreet to say. All man* 'tor of odd things continually happen. If we should have to explain them wo should never record them.”