IT is now some years since my brother gave up the post he held, in which he was doing exceedingly well, and went out and enlisted as a soldier.
From the time he took this step, he left off writing home.
You may well imagine the terrible agony of suspense and grief this caused to my mother and to us all, and how constantly he was the subject of earnest prayer and supplication.
Latterly my mother felt increasingly anxious about him. He was continually on her heart in a very special manner, and she entreated the Lord to let her know if he still lived; and more, she besought Him, if A—, were yet alive, not to take him away until she had some assurance as to his soul’s salvation.
The Lord, in His tender love and pity, answered her cry. A short time only elapsed when a letter came from A. ‘s most intimate friend in the regiment, written at his request, in order to tell us where he was, and also of his bad state of health. He had then been lying for nearly two months in the Barrack Hospital, suffering from rapid consumption.
My mother was confined to her bed at the time we received the letter, so I went at once to him, and she followed me as soon as she was able to leave her room.
How heart-breaking it was thus to meet the long lost son and brother, I need not tell you. He was so changed I should scarcely have recognized him. The terrible disease had made such ravages on the face and form of the one we loved that it was evident to us, from the very first, that his days on earth were reckoned, and that the number of them could be but few indeed. Our hearts went up in prayer to the living God, to give eternal life to the one whom death was fast claiming as its prey; and truly His own Light, the Light of Life, lighted up the darkness.
Not long after my arrival, when we were alone together, my brother told me that he knew he was dying, and that he was not ready to die.
I asked him if he had long thought about his soul.
“Not very long,” he answered, adding that he was ashamed to say it.
I spoke to him of our blessed Saviour; of His love for the sinner; of how He had done everything that was needed for his salvation, when He hung on Calvary’s Cross. I told him how the three words, “It is finished,” from the lips of the dying Saviour, were the full proof that the work was accomplished that secured the eternal salvation of every one who trusts in Jesus, that he had only to believe in Him, and he would be saved.
He seemed astonished, and said, “Oh! I think there must be something to do.”
Once more I told him how Jesus had done it all; borne all the heavy penalty due to us; drunk to its last dregs the bitter cup of wrath that was ours, and left us nothing but the cup of salvation. I told him that it was not needed that we should do anything for our soul’s salvation, and that if it were needed, we could not do it; and I took the Bible that was by his side, and read to him several passages from the third chapter of John’s Gospel, and from the first Epistle of John.
When he would fain have been quiet, to think of the eternity before him, and of the concerns of his soul, he was greatly disturbed by the men around him swearing and telling worldly stories; so the day after my arrival we removed him to comfortable lodgings quite near to the hospital.
All the love and care we could give him did not prevent his becoming rapidly weaker. So weak was he that just one verse from the Bible at a time was sometimes almost more than he could bear to hear, and this was often interrupted by a terrible fit of coughing. Thus I could only trust to the Lord, and cry to Him to speak to him Himself; for I felt how helpless we were, and that He alone could reach his case, and must do it in His own way.
After I had been some days with him, I said to him, “A—dear, are you trusting in Jesus?”
“Oh! yes,” he replied.
“Then are you saved?” I asked.
“That is what I cannot say,” he answered.
Still all seemed dark in his soul.
Just after this I called on a Christian lady who had shown great kindness to A—, to thank her for her kind attention to him, and while there I noticed in her sitting-room several texts hanging up against the wall, one of which particularly struck me. It was this: “And 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” (1 John 5:11, 1211And 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. (1 John 5:11‑12)).
I asked Miss S—, if she thought I could buy one similar in the town, as I felt I should so much like to hang it up in my brother’s room.
She very kindly said she would gladly give me this one, for the Lord might use it to the salvation of his soul; and together we knelt and asked the Lord to bless His own word, and to accomplish by it that for which we so earnestly longed, dear A—’s conversion.
On my return to my lodgings with my treasure I told A—I had got such a beautiful text, and that I was going to hang it up on the wall, where he could easily read it from his bed.
When I had done so, to my surprise he was quite angry, and said he did not like texts on the walls; it always put him in mind of the racecourse.
In my heart I felt that God intended to bless that word of His, and I turned round, and said to my mother, “The Lord says His word shall not return to Him void; someone will receive blessing from that text” (Isa. 4:11).
The next day was the Lord’s Day, and as I was by A—’s bed, attending to him, he suddenly said,
“M― I am saved.”
“When did you know it? “ I asked, joyfully and wonderingly.
“Through the night,” rejoined he.
“And what was it showed you that you are saved?” “The text on the wall,” he answered.
What a moment of thankfulness and rejoicing that was! Now our hearts could sing praises to our God for His great salvation!
From that Lord’s Day morning until the following one, when he went to be forever with the One who had saved him, dear A. never had a doubt or fear, and he told of his conversion to his great friend and fellow soldier, beseeching him to accept Christ too.
The last time he ever saw his friend on earth, he pleaded with him to come to Jesus. He told him it was so easy to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and so happy a thing to rest in Him.
He said it was good for him that he had been afflicted, or he might not have thought about his soul. He owned the Lord’s goodness to him in laying him on a bed of pain and sickness there, to show him his need of a Saviour, and the Saviour who had met the need. Sweetly and pleasantly he seemed to rest in Him for those eight short days that remained.
The day before he died, we sang together for the last time on earth, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds!” At that time he appeared unconscious of everything. passing round him save the mention of that precious name.
We knew now the end of the journey must be near. And so it was. A few more hours passed away; then at a quarter past three on the Lord’s Day morning, it seemed to us as though our beloved A—. literally fell asleep in the very arms of Jesus, for there was neither sigh nor struggle.
It was like an infant falling asleep on its mother’s breast.
In all our sorrow we still could thank and praise Him who had dealt so tenderly with my brother and with us; who had answered the mother’s yearning cry for her lost and wandering one, and had enabled her to say from the depths of a full heart, “This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”; knowing too that she was but faintly re-echoing on earth the shout of rejoicing that had rung through the Father’s house above, as the wanderer was welcomed home.
M. A.
Sin can no more be admitted into heaven, nor the sinner in his sins, than the least bit of sin can possibly be found in connection with the character of God. Then how absolutely necessary that you should be pardoned and saved, even now! Remember that thy works, thy tears, thy prayers, can in no wise save thee. It is faith, simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that gets all the present and eternal results of the cross applied to the soul, which is instant and everlasting salvation, and association with Jesus in the glory of God FOR EVER.