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J 26 A Great Missionary Program for Russia
yet in their deep need they tried to have comfort and joy just as in
this land. That altar which was to them built up was the altar
of the Greek Church. But they made catacombs where they would
worship God and sing, and their singing was something like the
hymns of the colored friends in the South, as I heard about eight
years ago when they sang down at a big congress in Philadelphia.
They told us, those colored folks, as they were being enslaved by
white people in the name, perhaps, of some kind of Christianity—
which, praise God, we don’t understand any more in this twentieth
century—how those slave owners used to put cruel men as over-
seers over the negroes. But missionaries came and they told the
colored folks of Jesus, and the only comfort those negroes found was
in Jesus’ name, and then they sang on those plantations and all
their joy was in that singing. Then the overseers heard them sing
about Jesus. They understood that Jesus meant liberation, Jesus
meant salvation, Jesus meant abolition of slavery; and then they
forbade their singing in His name any more! And when they were
forbidden to sing out loud, they sang in a hushed voice, so that only
it seemed like the wind blowing, so softly they sang, when they would
be working in the corn fields singing, "Steal Away, Steal Away to
Jesus." And so the Russian people in those centuries of slavery found
out something of God, unknown perhaps in fullness, and yet nothing
touched the Russian people so much as the word of the Cross.
Origin of a Great Hymn
Those millions of Russian people need Calvary’s Cross. Now this
great musician, who has already gone to his reward, sat down at his
instrument and composed this beautiful hymn. He had a deep
understanding of Calvary’s sacrifice, and the words of that hymn
are expressed in a beautiful Russian legend. This legend tells about
Jesus when He was a little boy in Nazareth; how that Jesus at that
early age had a beautiful small garden, somewhere near the home of
his foster father. Every day the little Jesus boy would come and
take a cruse and pour water on the rose bushes, until from those
water drops and the smiling rays of the sunshine, those roses began
to fill the air with beautiful aroma. One day, however, a crowd of
Hebrew children began to gather at the gates of that little garden.
They came in. They saw those roses, and they went down and
plucked off every one of the roses. Then somebody came up to the
little Jesus boy and said: "Don’t you see what has happened?
Every one of the roses has been plucked off. What will be left for
you?" And little Jesus boy looked at those rose bushes and, as we
can understand from the Scriptures, for He grew up in obedience to
his parents and in love and good will with every man, He looked
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