Silas Hocking - Her Benny - A Story of Street Life

Nelly listened with open mouth and wondering eyes, oblivious to everything but the strains of music that were floating all around her. And Benny sat as if transfixed.

"By golly!" he whispered to Nelly, when the piece was ended, "if I ever heerd sich music as that afore. It's made me cold all over; seems to me as if some one were pouring cold water adown my back."

But Nelly answered nothing; her attention was attracted to a gentleman that stood alone on a platform with a book in his hand. Nelly thought his voice was strangely musical as he read the words, —

Then all the people stood up to sing, and the children thought they had never heard anything half so sweet before. Great tears welled up in Nelly's brimming eyes and rolled down her cheeks; though if any one had asked her why she wept, she would not have been able to tell.

Then followed a prayer full of devout thanksgiving and of earnest pleading. Then came another hymn —

And once more the congregation stood up to sing. Nelly was even more affected than during the singing of the previous hymn, and while they sang the last verse —

she fairly broke down, and, hiding her face in her hands, she sobbed aloud.

She soon recovered herself, however, when the preacher began to speak. Clear and distinct his words rang out: —

"Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."

And Nelly eagerly drank in his words as he went on to tell how we were all wanderers from our Father's house; and how the Father's heart yearned towards us, and how He had invited all to return home, giving the same invitation to every one of His children, and promising an abundant pardon to all that would come. And then he told, by way of illustration, the beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son, and concluded with an earnest exhortation to all the unsaved to come to the Saviour that very night, and to come just as they were.

Nelly felt that she would very much like to "come to the Saviour," but, alas! she did not know how. And when she saw several persons leave their pews and kneel around the communion, she wondered if they were "prodigals going home to the Father."

But what of Benny? Alas! if Joe Wrag had seen him that evening, he would have been more than ever convinced that he was none of the elect, and that he had not one particle of spiritual discernment. The words of the preacher seemed to have a very soothing influence upon our hero, for scarcely had he uttered twenty words of the sermon ere Benny was fast asleep. Nor did he wake again till near the end of the service, when he was startled by a strange voice speaking.

It was one of the men that Nelly had noticed kneeling at the communion. The man stood up, and with a face radiant with his new-found joy, he said, in broken accents,

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