Come with me into a room, or to be more correct a “hovel,” and if you do not with me shudder, I shall immediately conclude that if you have a heart it is a heart of stone. We ought to have brought some strong smelling salts with us. The smell is almost enough to kill one. We cannot possibly stand it for more than five minutes at a time. Let us then hurriedly glance around. We can scarcely see; a tallow candle stuck in the neck of a broken gin bottle, and a few red cinders give a very poor light. What’s this in the corner? Eh! what? We dare not touch — the smell is bad enough — but it looks like rags, broken crockery, ashes, waste, etc., etc. — rubbish of almost every description. The white-washed wall is adorned by two colored almanacks and a broken clock. We eventually discover a window, and we at once endeavor to open it, but in vain. Did I call it a “window”? Please forgive me. I mean something which was once a window. True there is still one small pane still unbroken, and the window! (save the mark) is made up of pieces of paper, board and rags. We cannot sit down if we would, for there is no bottom to this chair, and its solary companion has only three legs. We have taken the opportunity to glance around as the occupant of this so-called “furnished apartment” is asleep. She is a wretched looking woman of about sixty years of age, and looks a complete picture of lost womanhood. She is dangerously ill, and has kept her bed for some time, and oh! think of it, Christian sisters, she has not been undressed for months, and her dress consists of a black, or rather green-black gown, and a man’s ragged waistcoat. The bed upon which she lies — the less said about the better. The bedclothes were simply a dirty, patched counterpane, an old overcoat, and a pair of trousers.
She keeps murmuring in her sleep. Hark! “I’m, damned! oh, I’m damned!” “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” This is her constant theme. At last she wakes and exclaims: “Oh, God! Where am I? Oh! to think I shall die in such a hovel as this. My God! My God!”
We endeavor to compose her, and ask if we may get anything for her. “Yes, gin; quick! gin, I want gin!” Oh! the horror of being bound to strong drink. This woman was a well-to-do farmers daughter, and married a farmer’s son.
For about five years they prospered, but they both fell into the slime of drink, squandered a small fortune, and were eventually reduced to the circumstances narrated above.
But listen, is not that a knock at the door? Perhaps it’s the doctor for whom we have sent, but no! it is the owner of the house who has come with a week’s notice to quit. “The house,” said he, “has been condemned as uninhabitable.”
Just as the landlord left, the husband — an old man whose appearance may be summed up in one word, wretched — came in, and with tears in his eyes begged for assistance, which was promised on the one condition that they would not touch a drop of intoxicating drink until I gave them permission, which I need scarcely add they never received.
To cut a long story short, two rooms were taken and comfortably furnished, and with some difficulty the poor woman was removed, only, however, to get rapidly worse. She could not possibly last much longer, and standing by her bedside I felt my awful responsibility. Oh! how I prayed for her, how I implored her to come to Christ, but in vain. In vain I told her the old, old story of Jesus and His love, of the dying thief, of God’s great and tender mercy even at the eleventh hour. She simply laughed at me and replied, Ah! ah! I know as well as you do. He that believeth not shall be damned. I’m damned, I’m damned! The soul that sinneth it shall die. It’s too late for eternal life. I’m damned, dead, going to hell, and I don’t care.” And so she died, with curses on her lips.
Dear reader, the above picture is absolutely true. It is rather under than overdrawn. This is fact, not fiction. It is written for a twofold purpose — as a sad and solemn warning to those who are trifling with their own soul’s welfare, and also as an incentive to you fellow Christians to do some — thing to alleviate the sufferings of those less fortunate than yourselves.
“Work for the night is coming,” but oh! unsaved friend, it is to you in particular I address these few words. I have taken you with me in imagination only; would to God I could take you with me in reality. Oh! if you could have heard those awful words as 1 hear them even now as I am writing, coming almost from her very grave: “I’m damned, dead, going to hell, and I don’t care!” How I tremble for her never-dying soul, but oh! my friend, I tremble also for yours. You, too, are under the same condemnation — damned, dead, going to hell — but, my friend, there is not the slightest reason for you to remain in this awful position, “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:66For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)).
Oh! I implore you, in God’s name, for His sake, and for your own soul’s sake, do not reject Him. With all the earnestness of one dying, I pray you to beware of drifting into such awful carelessness as the poor woman — “damned, dead, going to hell, and I don’t care.”
Come, my brother, come, my sister, come now to Him Who died for thee. Just think of all He is and all He has clone, and what He is able and willing to do now.