" Yes," said the clerk, " I see that you have lost, but what ? "
" I have lost a precious jewel," replied the unfortunate man, " the like of which is not to be found among prince's treasures. While I possessed it the contemplation of it was my sole and sufficient happiness. No price should have purchased it of me, but it has fallen from my bosom, where I wore it in my careless wanderings about the city."
After causing the stranger to describe the marks of his lost jewel, the intelligencer opened a drawer where were deposited whatever articles had been picked up in the streets, until the rightful owners should claim them. It was a strange collection : there were wedding rings, and white roses, and blush roses, and locks of hair, and many of these things were fragrant with perfume. Perhaps a sweet scent had departed from the lives of their former possessors ever since they had so wilfully or negligently lost them. And in the corner of the drawer was found a great pearl, looking like the soul of celestial purity, congealed and polished.
" There is my jewel — my very pearl ! " cried the stranger, almost beside himself with rapture. " It is mine ! G-ive it me this moment or I shall perish ! "
" I perceive," said the man of intelligence, examining it more closely, " that this is the Pearl of Great Price."
" The very same," answered the stranger. " Judge then of my misery at losing it out of my bosom ! Eestore it to me ! I must not live without it an instant longer ! "
" Pardon me," rejoined the intelligencer calmly. " You ask what is beyond my duty. This pearl, as you well know, is held upon a peculiar tenure, and, having once let it escape from your keeping, you have no greater claim to it than any other person, nay, not so great. I cannot give it back."
Nor could the entreaties of the miserable man, who saw before his eyes the jewel of his life without the power to reclaim it, soften the heart of this stern being, impassive to human sympathy, though exercising such an apparent influence over human forces. Finally the loser of the Pearl of Great Price clutched his hands in his hair and rushed madly forth with despair in his face.
Hawthorne is true to life in that picture. The lost pearl of goodness cannot be restored again by any earthly power. But, thank God, Jesus Christ is the great restorer of the soul. He is
HEBREWS VII. 25 357
able, in vir Aie of the Cross He bore, to give back to us the lost pearl of goodness. He has power on earth to forgive sins.^
(1) It is said of Christ in the text, " He is able to save to the uttermost." Our High Priest is able to save to the uttermost degree that man can need. The greatest sinners in their own eye are welcome to partake of His great salvation. The character which He gave of Himself on earth was, that He " came to call sinners to repentance." No sinner whatever who hears His call, and turns to Him to seek in earnest for the blessings of His great salvation, shall be sent empty away.
^ With bound hands and bleeding back, and heart filled with hate, a young African was huddled in the hold of a Portuguese slave ship. He was dragged to the coast by the Foulahs, after seeing the murder of his father and brothers, and the enslaving and degradation of his mother. Having failed in his efforts to strangle himself, he had been cruelly beaten with long whips of many thongs, then thrown below the hatches and left to live or die, as nature should decree. His owner set such little value on him that he offered to barter him for a horse, a cask of rum, or a bundle of tobacco, No one wanted him even at that price. Such was man's valuation. There were nearly two hundred other slaves on board the ship. Many were sick, some dying, but all in the horrors of despair. Densely ignorant, woefully degraded, mind and soul in even worse plight than his body, he was an object at once so helpless and so hopeless that for time and for eternity he seemed beyond the power of man or God, a wrecked and wasted hfe. That was early in the year 1821.
One day in 1864, Canterbury Cathedral was crowded to its utmost capacity. The Archbishop and other dignitaries of the historic church were there to consecrate a bishop for the Niger. Who was he ? Some learned divine, of course, who had sat at the feet of the Oxford or Cambridge doctors, the heir of a thousand years of Christian training, with the blood of the old sea kings in his veins ? Not so. But none other than the erstwhile slave boy, would-be suicide, whom we last saw in the Portuguese ship. Freed from his captors by a British man-of-war and taken to Sierra Leone, he met Christ, and was by Him transformed.
In 1821, a negro slave in darkness and misery ; in 1864, with mind and soul illumined with the love of Christ, Bishop of the Church of England on the Niger. This is what the gospel did for Samuel Adjai Crowther, the despised slave.^