‘Lo I am with you always, even to the close of the age’ Matthew 28:20

Many with lacerated feet have come back to tell the story and testify that when the very foundations of earth seemed giving way, He remained Whom no accident could take away, no chance ever change. This is the power of the Great Companionship.

Stretched on a rack, where they were torturing him piteously, one of the martyrs saw with cleansed andd eyes, a Young Man by his side - not yet fifty years old - who kept wiping the sweat from his brow.

When the fire is hottest, He is there. ‘And the form of the fourth is like the Son of God’ Daniel 3:25. ‘He that is near Me is near the fire’ That is why the heart of the divine furnace is the place of the soul’s deepest peace. There is always One beside us when we go through the fire.

When John G Paton stood beside that lonely grave in the South Sea Islands; when he with his own hands made his wife’s coffin, and with his own hands dug her grave, the savages were looking on. They had never seen it in this fashion. That man must fill in the sepulchre, and soon leave it. He says, ‘If it had not been for Jesus and the Presence that He vouchsafed me there, I would have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave.’ But John G Paton found his Master with him through the dire darkness. 

Sir Ernest Shackleton and two of his companions spent thirty-six hours among the snow mountains of New Georgia, seeking for a station that meant life or death to them and their waiting crew on Elephant Island. Writing of that journey, he says, ‘It seemed to me, often, that we were four, not three.’ He refers to the ‘guiding Presence’ that went with them. Then in closing he writes, ‘A record of our journey would be incomplete without reference to a subject so near to our hearts.’

Paul was not peculiarly privileged when he saw the Living One while en-route to Damascus.

Kahlil Gibran, the Syrian, explaining his remarkable modern painting of Jesus, said: ‘Last night I saw His face again, clearer that I ever seen it.’

Handel, composer of the Hallelujah Chorus, declared: ‘ I did see God on Hid throne.’

During the terrible stress of war many affirmed positively that they saw ‘The White Comrade.’

Phillips Brooks testified, ‘He is here. I know Him. He knows me. It is not figure of speech. It is the realest thing in the world.’

No distant Lord have I,
Loving afar to be;
Made flesh for me, He cannot rest
Until He rests in me.

Brother in joy or pain,
Bone of my bone was He;
Now - intimacy closer still -
He dwells Himself in me.

I need not journey far,
This dearest Friend to see;
Companionship is always mine,
He makes His home with me.

by Maltbie Babcock

This is an extract from Springs in the Valley by Mrs Chas E. Cowman; Pg 180
Cowman publications, Inc 1950
ISBN X
Printed in Great Britain by Lowe & Brydone (Printers) Ltd, London