A WELL known preacher was about to retire one night when there came a knock at the front door. Upon answering it he found a poor little girl drenched with rain. From the slum district where she lived she had come through the storm to find the preacher. As he stood looking into her thin, haggard little face, she inquired, “Are you the preacher?”
“Yes, I am,” he replied.
“Well, won’t you come down and get my mother in?” she asked.
The preacher wisely answered his little inquirer: “My dear, it is hardly proper for me to come and get your mother in. If she is drunk, you should get a policeman. He is dressed for the occasion.”
“Oh, sir,” she replied in haste. “You don’t understand! My mother isn’t drunk; she’s at home dying, and she’s afraid to die. She wants to go to heaven, but doesn’t know how. I told her I would find a preacher to get her in. Come quick, sir; she’s dying!”
The preacher could not resist the appeal of the little night caller, so he promised her he would come as soon as he was dressed. As he walked with the little girl through the night, she led him into the slum district to an old house, up a rickety stairway, along a dark hall, and finally to a lone room, where the dying woman lay in the corner.
“I’ve got the preacher for you, Mother. He wasn’t ready to come at first, but he’s here. You just tell him what you want, and do what he tells you, and he’ll get you in!”
At that the poor woman raised her feeble voice and asked, “Can you do anything for a sinner like me? My life has been lived in sin, and now that I’m dying I feel that I’m going to hell, but I don’t want to go there; I want to go to heaven. What can I do now?”
On his own confession the great preacher declared, “I stood there looking into that face and thought, What can I tell her? I have been preaching salvation by reformation, but this poor soul has gone too far to reform. I have been preaching salvation by character, but she hasn’t any. I’ve been proclaiming salvation by ‘ethical culture,’ but she wouldn’t know what the word means and bides she hasn’t time for that. Then it came to me, Why not tell her what your mother used to tell you as a boy. She’s dying, and it can’t hurt her even if it doesn’t do her any good.”
So bending down beside her the preacher began: “My dear woman, God is very gracious and kind, and in His Book, the Bible, He says, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ "
“Oh,” exclaimed the dying woman, “does it say that in the Bible? My! That ought to get me in. But, sir, my sins, my sins!”
It was amazing the way the verses came back to him. “My dear woman,” he continued, “the Bible says that ‘the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ "
“All sin, did you say?” she asked earnestly. “Does it really say, ALL sin? That ought to get me in.”
“Yes,” he replied, kneeling down beside her. “It says ALL sin. The Bible also says that ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.’ "
“Well,” she said, “if the chief got in, I can come. Pray for me, sir!”
With that the preacher bent down and prayed with that poor woman and SHE GOT IN. And in the process, “while she was getting in,” he confessed, “I MYSELF got in. We two sinners, the preacher and that poor woman, were saved together that night in the little room.”
ML-10/21/1962