The mother of an officer who died in the Service called upon me one day with a dozen copies of the New Testament in which she had carefully marked the chief gospel verse! from Matthew to Revelation. She wished me to distribute these Testaments among the soldiers in memory of her dead son. One of these I gave to a Christian, an ex-soldier of the Highlanders, who handed it to a man who was ill with consumption. This man sat one afternoon in the Princess Street Gardens, Edinburgh, and read one by one all the verses the lady had marked. He was unhappy and anxious, and he read eagerly, for he began to realize that the words he was reading were the words of salvation and life, and he, a lost and dying sinner, needed both.
At last he came to John 5:24, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” He read no further that afternoon, for those precious words of the Lord Jesus yielded him that which his soul craved, and he went back to his quarters a happy man―happy because he had found life out of death through the Son of God, and was assured of it by His own sure Word.
A few weeks after that red-letter day in his history he was admitted to the Longmoor Hospital for incurables in the city, and this proved to be the commencement of a time of much blessing to the inmates. Through his happy life and testimony five other inmates were brought into the joy of God’s salvation, and this was long sustained. He lived for one year in the hospital, and was wonderfully happy in the prospect of going to be with Christ his Saviour. “Put my body in a white coffin and not a black one,” was his startling request, “for I am going to a marriage and not a funeral. My departure will not be defeat and death, but victory and life.” We acceded to his request, and his body was put in a white coffin. And those believers who gathered at his grave, and there were many, realized how truly his was the victory, as with a ring of triumph these words thrilled their souls: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The blessing to that dear man’s soul and all that followed resulted from the reading of the New Testament carefully and prayerfully marked by the band of a Christian lady, and it may be the relating of these facts will lead others to serve the Lord and souls in a similar way. John Davies