“WHAT a strange old gentleman your Highland chief is! Kind, indeed, he seems, but he holds very peculiar notions. Would you believe it, he actually asked me if I knew my sins were forgiven, and that I have eternal life promised to me”!
“I should like so much to know, if I may, what was your answer.”
“What was my answer? The only one possible! That, bad as I was, I hoped I should never be guilty of such wicked presumption as that. I am sure you would call it presumption, would you not?”
“Presumption would be no word for it; the guilt of it would be so great and awful—if GOD had not said that ‘He that believeth on the Son HATH everlasting life’; and that ‘through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins’; and that ‘by him all that believe are justified from all things.’”
“Indeed!” he said, eagerly, “where do you find that?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he added, in a tone of melancholy bordering on despair, “If you could give me a good hope for another life, how I should bless you! For, as far as this life goes, I shall never know another hour of happiness; and the knowledge that this misery is the result of my own fault only gives another stab to my wound.”
He then briefly gave me the sad history of his past—the slavery to a despot who only exerted his power at rather long intervals, but at those times goaded him on almost to madness; the power of that temptation which “at the last biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” This it was which separated him from all he held dearest, and had thus blasted the happiness of his life.
Without a hope of the removal of that barrier, he had said within himself, “If I never see her face again, I will make myself worthy of her. Never more shall any stimulant pass my lips. From that hour,” he added, “I have kept my resolution. But soon afterward I lost my health, and I was sent home on sick-leave.”
“Had your illness any connection with your teetotalism?”
“I doubt it myself; unless it may have arisen from the extreme suddenness of the change, and under such depressing circumstances as mine. However, be that as it may, when on my return I consulted a doctor in London, he said to me, ‘You require a stimulant.’ But I positively declined taking any. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘if you don’t, you will die.’ ‘Very good,’ I replied, ‘I would rather trust my life to God than my soul to the devil, who would get it for certain if I ever tasted strong drink again.’”
“Then you are not afraid to die?”
“Indeed, I am afraid of death; that is, of what must follow it— ‘after death, the judgment.’”
“Still, though threatened with death, you have kept your resolution?”
“Yes, helped by this strengthening air, and cheerful place, I have battled successfully through this dreary year. But life is almost intolerable to me; and nothing but getting a good hope of another and a better life could make this one less gloomy and miserable. Can you prove to me that I might have such a good hope?”
“Do you believe the record that God hath given of His Son?”
“I believe what the Bible says.”
“Do you? Thank God for that! Then all your fears are at a happy end. Not only can I tell you, upon its authority, of a good hope of a life worth living at the close of this, but of its certainty secured by the word of Him who is not a man that He should lie, neither the Son of man that He should repent. ‘For this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. And these things are written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life’” (1 John 5:11-1311And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. 13These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. (1 John 5:11‑13)).
A ray of hope lighted up the dark, despairing face; and as I left him he said, “I shall go to my own room, and read my Bible, and pray that God would show me if I may dare to believe that such great gifts as pardon and eternal life are point-blank offered to me.”
That evening:... he said nothing with reference to himself until he stood alone with the pastor at the door to say “Good-bye.” Then, in a low, earnest voice, he said, “Will you tell your aunt I believe it? I see it is all true. By believing in the Lord Jesus Christ I have the forgiveness of sins and life eternal.”
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