As the girl became calmer and her mind emerged from the chaos of her tempestuous and despairing sorrow, Mrs. Arnot led her, as it were, to the very feet of Jesus of Nazareth, and left her there with these words: "He came to seek and save just such as you are--the lost. He is reaching down his rescuing hand of love to you, and when you grasp it in simple confiding trust you are saved."
Before the week closed, the poor creature forever turned her face away from the world in which she had so deeply sinned and suffered: but before she departed on the long journey, he who alone can grant to the human soul full absolution, had said to her, "Thy sins are forgiven; go in peace."
As Mrs. Arnot held her dying head she whispered, "Tell him that it was his tears of honest sympathy that first gave me hope."
That message had a vital influence over Haldane's subsequent life. Indeed these words of the poor dying waif were potent enough to shape all his future career. He was taught by them the magnetic power of sympathy, and that he who in the depths of his heart feels for his fellow-creatures, can help them. He had once hoped that he would dazzle men's eyes by the brilliancy of his career, but he had long since concluded that he must plod along the lowly paths of life. Until his visit to the prison and its results the thought had scarcely occurred to him that he could help others. He had felt that he had been too sorely wounded himself ever to be more than an invalid in the world's hospital; but he now began to learn that his very sin and suffering enabled him to approach nearer to those who were, as he was once, on the brink of despair or in the apathy of utter discouragement, and to aid them more effectively because of his kindred experience.
The truth that he, in the humblest possible way, could engage in the noble work for which he revered Mrs. Arnot, came like a burst of sunlight into his shadowed life, and his visits to the prison were looked forward to with increasing zest.
From reading the chapter merely he came to venture on a few comments. Then questions were asked, and he tried to answer some, and frankly said he could not answer others. But these questions stimulated his mind and led to thought and wider reading. To his own agreeable surprise, as well as that of his prison class, he occasionally was able to bring, on the following Sabbath, a very satisfactory answer to some of the questions; and this suggested the truth that all questions could be answered if only time and wisdom enough could be brought to bear upon them.