THERE is abundant evidence in the Bible and in the history of God’s people that He is a God who hears and answers prayer. Sometimes these answers are so signal as to arrest the attention and encourage the pleaders at a throne of grace that they feel they should be placed on record. We are constrained to write thus in view of an extraordinary change that took place recently in the spiritual outlook of a young man ere he passed from time to eternity. We purposely refrain from giving names but the extraordinary circumstances we are about to relate are well known to a fairly wide circle of our people in the Far North of Scotland. The young man whose solemn awakening to the reality of sin is to be set before our readers was trained from his boyhood years in a Christian home, both his parents and grandparents walked in the paths of righteousness and truth. A godly example was set before him and in his boyhood years he regularly attended the means of grace. As a boy he had a gentle and likeable disposition. When the war cry to the youth of the nation sounded he joined the ranks and though a mere boy he showed such skill in managing men that he was soon appointed an instructor. Whether the experience in the army had, as it had with others, a deteriorating effect in blunting the senses to spiritual things we cannot say but one thing was evident he drifted away from the example he had seen at home and his place in Free Presbyterian places of worship was conspicuous by his absence. When the War was over he returned to business and soon received promotion until he had a very bright future before him as far as this world was concerned. As far as we know he lived what the world would call a decent moral life and was highly respected by his employers but according to his own confession he was a notorious Sabbath breaker notwithstanding the solemn warning he got against this sin by his dying mother. But while the world saw nothing amiss we are not without evidence that a hatred to the truth he had been accustomed to hear in his youth took possession of his mind and he shunned contact with those whose mission it was to proclaim it. While everything, as far as this world was concerned, was going well he was laid aside by illness. When examined by the doctor the verdict was that his lungs were affected. It was a terrible shock to him and to his parents. Out of sympathy with him and remembering his pleasant disposition as a boy we asked one of our ministers to visit him at the home to which he had been sent. The first visit passed without incident but on paying the second visit the minister was frankly told that his visits were not wanted as the patient was not a Free Presbyterian and further that owing to his last visit his temperature had risen considerably. The writer also received a letter from him which was couched in terms that wounded him in which he was charged with interfering with the patient’s concerns in which he was told he had no business. We refrain from entering further on this painful part of the story out of respect for the feelings of those still living who loved him. The impression made on our mind at the time was that Satan was making a bid for this young man and that the presence of one of our ministers troubled his conscience as reminding him of truths he had heard in his youth and which he had not received and now hated. For a time there was a slight improvement in his health but the insidious disease, though for a time arrested, pursued its fatal course and he went north to end his days in the town where he had spent his boyhood. Earnest prayer was being made for him by a circle of friends and it was noticed by his father that he was more inclined to refer to spiritual matters than he had hitherto been. One evening when his father entered his room with a friend he said: “Father I want to see you. Oh, I have been made to see myself a sinner, a great sinner. I never saw or felt like this before. I have been a sinner all my life. Do you think the Lord will have mercy on me yet. If you think there is any hope for me, pray for me.” His father, o’erjoyed at the unexpected change, spoke to him about the thief on the cross, and quoted the publican’s prayer and other suitable portions of Scripture. He then took hold of his father’s hand saying: “I am a poor sinner. I was trying to pray that the Lord would be merciful to me and forgive my sins but I would like to get more light.” His father knelt by his bedside to pray and he says that his dying son was taking the very words out of his mouth and repeating them before him so that he did not know whether it was himself or his son that was praying. He then said: “Yes, I am seeing but I would like more light.” Soon after this he said: “I don’t care what becomes of my body if I would only get Christ.” Some days before this a friend had written the father reminding him of a case known to them both where they had witnessed an extraordinary change near the end of an another young man’s life in the same town. “I remembered the case,” the father writes, “and I thought to myself what a happy man that was! And what great comfort it was to his mother. Then I went back to mourning over my own trouble and no hope—not knowing I was soon to hear the cry of a prodigal that was to comfort myself and be, as I hope it was, the snatching of a brand from the burning at the eleventh hour.” Almost his last words were: “I am confessing my faults to you and every one I have spoken a wrong word to and if you could bring them here I would ask them to forgive me. Will you see and ask them to forgive me.” Again he said: “Father, I have been a great Sabbath breaker. Do you think the Lord will forgive me?” This is one of the sins his departed mother warned him against, as has already been mentioned, shortly before she went home to glory. Such is a brief outline of a remarkable case of what the Lord can do with those who long set at nought His counsel, and it is recorded here for the encouragement of praying fathers and praying mothers who may be almost despairing of seeing any change in their offspring. Let them remember what is impossible with man is possible with God.