"Some years ago I was making a tour in Wales with my father, during which he one day found himself walking along a lane where he observed a man leaning over a gate, apparently engaged in watching the laborers at their work in the field before him. My father joined him, and, entering into a conversation, found that he was a farmer, and the field which was engaging his attention belonged to the farm he rented. This opened up further conversation, and before they parted, my father, putting his hand in his pocket, produced a bundle of tracts, from which he selected that at the top, and asked the farmer to accept it.
As the farmer complied, the clergyman of the parish turned into the lane, and witnessing the transfer of the tract to the farmer, went up to him and said, “I saw a gentlemen give you that tract. Will you let me look at it?”
As the farmer handed the tract to the clergyman, he said, - “It will do to light my pipe with.”
The clergyman, looking at it, replied – “it will do for nothing of the kind. Is it not remarkable providence that a perfect stranger should take a bundle of tracts out of his pocket, and hand you one, and that one should be exactly suited to your own case? You know that drunkenness has been your besetting sin, and that I have hitherto striven in vain to point out to you, that a continuance in such a course must end in present and everlasting sorrow. Do take this tract home with you; read it with prayer; and may God bless it to you!”

While this conversation was going on, my father had left the lane a long way behind, and being an old man, had grown weary with his walk; and seeing a cottage by the roadside he tapped at the door, and asked permission to enter and sit down. This was readily granted: and no sooner had he taken his seat, than he observed a little boy seated beside him.
“Why, my little man,” said my father, “you should not be here, you should have a little dog trained to take you to school, and there you should learn to read with the raised letters.”
The little fellow burst into tears. As soon as he was pacified, he said, - “Oh sir, I had a little dog, and I used to go to school and learn to read from the raised letters, when one day the tax-gatherer came and demanded the dog-tax, and because my father could not pay it, the tax-gatherer took away the clock instead of the money for the tax, and my father in a rage drowned the dog.”
No sooner was this sad tale told than my father shouldered his stick, and setting off for the country town hard by, wrote to the authorities, and detailing the case, declared that he would give them no rest until another dog was provided exempt from tax.
He was requested to meet the tax-gatherer in open court, and to bring his protégé with him on a day appointed. This he did. The statement of the little blind boy was verified, and it was decided that a blind boy’s dog did not come within the pale of the law, and that no tax should be charged if a successor could be found to take the place of the dog which had been destroyed. This my father soon accomplished, and we proceeded on our tour, and the little blind boy returned home with the strict injunction to lose no time in going to school and learning to read.

Some six weeks or so after, my father, finding himself once more in the same neighborhood, proceeded to the village school, so as to make quite sure that his young friend was there, and on opening the door, the first object that met his eye was the little blind boy, with his new dog lying by his side; but before my father had time to speak to him, the clergyman of the parish came up to him, and shaking him very warmly by the hand, expressed his great pleasure in seeing my father once more, for he wished to tell him that the tract given six weeks before had not only resulted in the drunkard becoming a sober man, but, so far as could be judged, in a mightier change than that – even from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God."

W.D.C.., in “The Christian.”

I have read this story three times now and with each reading I well up at the part where the old man immediately shouldered his stick and set off for the town to get justice for this little boy. I’m not sure why that moves me so deeply; it may be, having lost my father as a boy, to see someone take a child under his wing strikes a sensitive chord in me. But all I do know is, this man is what I consider to be a true Christian, displaying in the simplest fashion all the elements of - “Justice, mercy and faithfulness.”

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