WAS IT PROVIDENCE OR ACCIDENT?

Otago Witness, Issue 1916, 6 November 1890, Page 29

WAS IT PROVIDENCE OR ACCIDENT?

Did the finding of that article save the man's life ? That is uho question. Is there a divinity that shapes our ends ? or are events but a mere series of accidents, which may happen to one person aa well as another. Are the experiences that compose our lives links in a chain, or loose grains of sand ? As you answer these questions, as yoti take the one side or the other, so is your faith ; you are a materialist or a believer in Providence. We now propose to relate a story in illustration of this problem which may have some effect in arousing those who have always thought themselves the subjects of blind chance. The following facts are fully vouched for, and resemble occurrences in the lives of multitudes.

Several years ago Griffith Jones was a policeman at Holyhead, Wales. He had a family consisting of a wife and five young children to take care of. Holyhead is on St. George's (or the Irish) Channel, and is open to the terrific gales that so often gather on those dangerous waters and beat with violence upon the coast. Jones' " post " or " beat " extended baok into the country, over bleak, wind-swept hills. He had to walk through this region in ail weathers, day or night. He was often out in winter nights.in cold and darkness, exposed to the storms that drive in from the sea. At such times the wife listened to the rattling windows, and prayed that the husband and father might take no harm in the wild tempest This was hard lines, but in the family (though they were poor enough) there was still health and comparative comfort. But in a bad storm the policeman caught a heavy cold. Home remedies failed to care it, and the officer sent to his old physician at Aberffraw for medicine. It did no good. Jones' right side grew queer and painful. The doctor said it was the liver, and he was right ; but correct opinions don't cure disease. His head troubled him, too, and he was often so giddy he could hardly walk. " I am so tired and weary," he would say, " I don't know what makes me. I try to rest and Bleep, bat get up just as dead tired as when I go to bed."

Then worse came. He sat down to bis lable, but revolted from his food ; appetite was gone. There was a carious feeling at the stomach ; ifc was cold, dull, and miserable, like a furnace r-hich contains nothing but ashes and cinders. A nasty and nauseous kind of gas or wind came up into his throat, like the effluvia from a tomb. His wife called bis attention to the ghastly yellow colour of his eyes and skin, and once in a while he would have a spell of palpitation of the heart that made him afraid of falling dead— — perhaps in some lonely place.

In spite of it all, however, Policrmau Jones kept on duty as much as ever he could. Of course. So would aay honest, plucky man. But he slept firfully, with bad dreams. He cried out sometimes with the terror of them, and the frightened children said, "Is pipa going to die?" He was, and in, one of tbe moat patient and loving of men, yet now ho was cross and surly to his family. Thru something new developed. There came a pain under his left shoulder Made ; his wrists and knees grew swollen and painful; this was rheumatism, caused, fhe doctors said, by the undigested and fermented food having poisoned the blood. Kidney find bladder complaiut followed — tor they aluo are merely symptoms of indigestion and dyspepsia. The policeman now felt that he must give up, and, if he did, tb*u what ? He oould foresee nothing but destitution.

Now we come to tbe event which suggested the question with which this short history begins : Was ifc an accident, or was it a link in a saving chain ? Entering the Holyhead station house one day, ill, expressed, wrsk, and miserable, be saw a little pamphlet upon the table. He picked it up and began to read ifc. In a few moments his mind was riveted upon its pages. In clear, plain language he found his own case fully described, i >st as thougn the book had been written for him, and for him alone. It named a cure for all his ailmputs, a medicine called Mother Seigd's Curative Syrnp. Tbe plain honesty of fhe st-atemeuts won his eonfirtrriCP He pronnred hn'f s\ <lrzpn hottU's through Mr Hpnry Wilson, of tbe Drug Hall, Holyhead. Taking it he began to improve, and all hii ?ches and paics vanished in a few weeks. This was in August 1879. Ten years h»ve passed, but not a sicn or symptom of ln's ailment has returned. Mr Jones entered upon a more lucrative business, and wherever he goc-s he spreads ths farao of Seigel'n Syrup, and insists that the glimpse of the book on 'he table settled the point as to whether he should go under the sod or be the stroDg new man he has been ever since. °