“HAVE you got a verse for me today?” said a quiet voice, in one of the wards of a city hospital, as a friend came to the bedside. The speaker, a wife and mother, had long been a sufferer, all that skill could do had been done, but everything had failed to arrest the progress of the disease; the doctors had decided on removal of the affected arm as the only hope of cure left, and this was the day fixed for the operation.
It was a dreadful thing to look forward to, and heart and flesh might have failed at such a prospect; but the tried one knew God as “the strength of her heart,” and when her friend came to see her just before the operation, she quietly said, “Have you got a verse for me today?”
After a moment’s hesitation her friend replied by repeating part of the first verse of John 13 “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” “Loved unto the end,” said the sufferer, slowly, as the nurse came up to make her ready for the trying scene. “Yes, that will do! that will do! ‘Loved unto the end’;” and as the preparations were completed, she repeated, “Loved unto the end!” Ah, yes; that would do, and in the consciousness of His everlasting love, she laid herself calmly down on the table, as she did so, repeating again and again, “Loved unto the end! Loved unto the end!” She as “leaning on her Beloved”: this was enough.
As soon as the chloroform had taken effect, the operation was commenced, and the doctors proceeded in silence; nothing was heard, save that ever and anon the lips of the unconscious sufferer parted, and uttered these words, “Loved unto the end! Loved unto the end!” The tongue told the stay of the soul, where the tried one had found a sure refuge.
She was loved! By whom? By the Son of God! and she was loved, too, “unto the end”; there her soul rested.
In a short time all was over, and she was placed in bed, half-unconscious, still she kept on murmuring to herself those foul words so full of comfort. At length she roused up to find her once useful arm no longer by her side; but the same words that had strengthened her before the operation were still in her heart, and on her tongue, an she said, “Having loved His own, which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.”