Truth Not Lost

Luke Short, when about fifteen years of age, heard a sermon from the celebrated Flavel, and soon after went to America, where he spent the remainder of his life. He received no immediate impression from Flavel's sermon, and lived in carelessness and sin till he was a century in age. He was now a "sinner a hundred years old;" and to all appearance, ready to "die accursed."

But sitting one day in a field, he fell into a busy reflection on liis past life; and recurring to the events of his youth, he thought of having heard Mr. Flavel preach, and vividly recollected a large portion of his sermon, and the extraordinary earnestness with which it was delivered. Starting as if stung by an adder, he instantly labored under accusings of conscience, and ran from thought to thought till he arrived first at conviction of sin, and next to an apprehension of the divine method of saving the guilty. He soon after joined an evangelical church in his vicinity, and to the day of his death, in the one hundred and sixteenth year of his age, gave satisfactory evidence of being a truly converted and believing follower of the Saviour.

Mr. Flavel had long before passed to his heavenly rest, and could not, while on earth, have supposed that his living voice would so long continue to yield its echoes as an instrument of doing good to a wandering sinner. Let ministers and private Christians, who labor for the spiritual well-being of their fellow-men, cast their bread upon the waters in full faith that though they lose sight of it themselves, it shall be found after many days.