No. 2.
“Your husband is not at home, I fear, Mrs. —? I wanted to see him, and to hear him say more about that blessed Saviour he has found. What a mercy it would be if you too were saved!”
“I believe I am all right,” she replied.
“Do you, indeed. It is a great thing to say; but there is nothing like it. Only think, right for all eternity! right for all eternity! No, Mrs. —, there is nothing like it.”
“God is very good to me. He hears my prayers. Oftentimes, when I have asked Him to help me, He has done it. When we had the illness, He was a friend to us all those weeks; and I am sure us poor folks could not get on without Him.”
“Quite true; and a mercy it is that you do pray to Him; for, alas! many live as if there was no Creator at all. But what makes you think you are all right for eternity?”
“Why He hears my prayers, and helps me; so I know He is kind.”
“But surely, Mrs. —, you are never going to rest the salvation of your soul upon God’s goodness in giving you bread, and clothes, and house? He feeds the sparrows, and the young lions when they cry, and does not so much as forget the flowers, but supplies them with rain and sunshine, and they have no souls to be saved. Really, you must not think you are quite like the flowers and sparrows.”
“I don’t see what you mean,” replied Mrs. —.
“It says in scripture, ‘He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and unjust.’ But because God is kind, and supplies us His creatures with clothes, and hears our cry when we are hungry, it does not show one bit that we are saved, and all right for eternity. Don’t you see, don’t you feel, that you may be evil and unjust still, and your soul bad and wretched, notwithstanding God hears your prayers about your body for daily mercies. Believe me, unless your sins are washed clean away in the blood of Christ, you will perish in hell! Your husband will go to heaven, because God has forgiven him his sins. You will never get there as you are, but be in torment.”
So we parted, and Mrs. — pondered over her faith in God, and found it was not saving faith,—that it was faith about her body, but not about her soul. “And oh,” said she, “what an awful thing it will be if (her husband) goes to heaven and I am down in hell fire! There he will be singing along with the angels and all the holy people; perhaps the children there too; and I a poor wretch lost in hell fire, with devils and everybody that is bad and wicked.”
The earnest cry, “What must I do to be saved?” now broke out. Neither was it long before she found joy in Christ as her Saviour.
If you were now to speak to her, you would hear her tell of God’s love in the person of His Son, of the gift of Jesus, and of His blood, which cleanseth us from all sin. And the knowledge of His everlasting love only makes it the more sweet to run to Him in every time of trouble, should the children be sick, or anything be wrong indoors or out; for none of our troubles or wants are too big or too small to bring to God.