DEVOUT QUAKER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 December 1940, Page 7

DEVOUT QUAKER

HE PREACHED TO NOBODY. “I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that 1 can do, or any kindness I can show, let me do it now. Let me not defer ;i er neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” This famous quotation has been attributed to dozens of well known people, but it is now generally believed to have been first said by Stephen Grellet, an American Quake? of French birth who lived from 1773 to 1855.

One story will show the kind of man Stephen was. He believed that God told him to go into the backwoods and preach to a camp of lumberpacks, and so, with simple obedience, he went. He rode far till he came to the spot which had been in his mind all along, a clearing in the forest, but the lumbermen had moved on, and their camp was desolate.

Had he misunderstood the voice? Stephen knelt down and prayed, and the voice still said. "Preach.” so this devout Quaker did what seemed mad. He went into the long and empty common room, stood on a box, and preached to empty and broken forms. He preached with all his soul, and then he rode home again, wondering gieatMonths and years went by. and Stephen, old and placid, found himself crossing London Bridge one day when a tall, bronzed man stopped him: An, said he, "so I find you at last. Stephen did not know him. but the man went on: “You are the man wno preached to nobody—out in the backwoods. You thought .no one was listening. but I heard you. and what, you said sank into my soul, and I went io