"A coach to myself! How nice! Delightful and unexpected! The Lord Himself must have known how tired—how very tired I am.”
Helen Grant, who had been spending time and strength in seeking to win souls for the Lord she loved, settled herself contentedly in a corner of the empty coach. There would be two or three stops on the long run, but now in the depth of winter very few people would be traveling. Helen rested with closed eyes, glad to rest and pray for the work she had left behind and for the work which lay ahead.
The great station was busy as usual; people were crowding towards the train, but Helen was still hoping to be left alone. Most of the passengers were seated—the train was moving, and then—
"Well, good-bye, lass! Hope you'll find—”
The last words were lost in the noise as the handle of the door was seized and the door wrenched open by the practiced hand of a young railroad man in uniform. But it was no casual passenger to whom he said goodbye: it was his young wife. Her eyes were sad as she gave him a kiss—sad with the parting and, as it came out afterward, sorrowing for something more. She leaned out of the window to wave to her husband, and then sat down in the corner opposite to Helen Grant, and closed her eyes.
Soon Helen saw big tears creeping under the closed lids—tears that rolled slowly down the girl's cheeks. This would never do! There was a long non-stop run before them, and Helen felt pressed to offer what comfort she could. Gently she tried to draw the stranger into conservation, and by-and-by it all came out. Brokenly the young woman explained her situation.
"I've left home at an hour's notice. Word came, my father is dying! They've sent for me!”
How cold every word of sympathy seemed just then—though Helen Grant herself had lost her own mother a short time before. She said: "If that dear father of yours is ready to meet God and his sufferings are great—you cannot wish him to linger in his pain!”
"No; oh, no! I know he's all right! I have a good Christian father. I know for him it will mean heaven!" Then Helen laid her hand on that of the girl in the opposite corner, and said gently: "You can thank God for that. But what about you? If God's call came for you instead of your father, is it well with your soul?”
The girl's head bent still lower now, and the tears fell faster than ever. "No! I can't say I'm saved. I wish I could. I know there's something I do not have." "But it's something you may have, here and now, if you will," said Helen.
She pulled out her little pocket Bible and pointed out the verse. "See, here is God's own Word for it! 'All have sinned'—that includes you, and me, and everybody else. But read this: 'Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' He says, 'Come'— Will you 'Come'—here and now?”
The express roared on at 40 or 50 miles an hour while there on the floor of the railway coach the two knelt down—Helen Grant and the girl whose name she did not even know till afterward.
"Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come!”
Very softly came the words—the plea for pardon—the surrender of a soul to Him who had bidden her come.
Then Helen Grant pointed to her Bible again. "He has said, `Come'—and you have just told Him you do come! Now, what has happened? Look at this: 'Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.' Has He cast you out? No! Then what has He done?”
Very softly came the words, while God's own peace and joy suddenly transfigured the young face: "He's taken me in!”
With a heart at peace with God and in the strength of His love, the young woman was now enabled to face the way before her trustingly and calmly. Some days after they parted, Helen Grant received a letter from her new friend. She wrote: "I was just in time to see my dear father alive. He died in peace, knowing he was going to be with Jesus. And I?—well, if I never meet you again on earth, I know I shall see you up in glory.”
So wrote the girl who, on her way to her father's deathbed, found Christ as her own personal Savior in a railway train.