Some time ago, while staying at the seaside, I was asked to go and visit a poor girl who had been confined to her bed for more than a year, and with little apparent hope of ever being able to leave it. Shortly after, I found my way to her lodging, and was shown upstairs to a tiny room, in which was little more space than sufficient for her bed and the chair beside it, on which she asked me to sit down. She seemed glad to see me, but quiet and rather silent; however, after looking at me for a moment she appeared satisfied of my sympathy and interest, and a few questions soon drew out her sad story. She told me how she had fallen down flight of stairs three years before, and had received such an injury that the doctors said she could never hope to walk again. Here her eyes filled with tears, as she spoke of her mother, now dead, and her grief. “But,” she said, “I am accustomed to it now, and I don’t mind it nearly so much; at first I could not bear to be in bed and to see the bright sunshine, and hear the birds sing outside; now, thank God, I am content.”
“Do you love the Lord, then?” I asked. “Yes, Miss, indeed I do.”
“I am so glad of that, for it must make a wonderful difference to you when you are alone all the time. And are you happy, then, and ready to go when He sees right to take you.”
She looked at me for a moment, and then replied, “Oh no, Miss, I can’t say that.”
“Why is that? If you love Him can you not trust Him? Has He not saved you? or, can you not say that you are saved?”
She stopped for a moment, and then said, “Oh, Miss, it would be too great presumption for me to say that.”
Silently I asked the Lord to give me the right word, so I asked her, “Do you think He is willing to save you?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Is He able?”
“Oh yes!” she was quite sure of that.
“Then why was He nailed to the cross, why did He hang there for those dreadful hours, and why did God hide His face from Him? Only because He was bearing our sins; He was being made the curse; He was tasting death that we might never taste it, and now He is able and willing, and reads to save all that come to God by Him. Nay, more, The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquities of us all, and His own word to us is, ‘He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.’―(John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36).)
“Now,” I added, “I should think that the presumption is, not in believing His word, but in doubting it. You believe that He died on the cross for us?
“Yes.”
“That He bore all our sins there?”
“Yes.”
“That He bore yours as well as mine?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, the Lord says, you are saved, you have eternal life, you have got it now.”
She seemed intensely surprised, but could not quite grasp it. I found her some proof passages in her own Bible, and after a short time left her.
Several days passed before I could go again. At last I found myself once more beside her bed. She welcomed me very warmly, and said, “Oh Miss, I am so glad you have come. I did want to see you. I have thought over all you told me, and read your verses again and again.”
“Well,” I said,” and are you afraid to say now that the Lord has saved you? Can you trust Him now?”
She looked at me with such a bright face, her eyes beaming, and the color mantling her poor wasted cheeks, whilst a smile that seemed to say almost more than her words played round her mouth as she said, “Oh yes, Miss, I see it now.”
I saw her often afterward before I left the place, and had many happy times with her.
The Lord give you, dear reader, to taste the joy of being His own!-saved, and of having eternal life. “And that life is in His Son.” I.