IN a pretty country village, not far from the sea, lived little Agnes, the story of whom I wish to tell you. One Sunday afternoon, among the new faces at our Sunday school were Agnes and her sister Emily, and that is how we came to know them. Agnes was seven years old, Emily three. Their sister Maggie, aged fourteen, took care of them and a baby sister, whom their mother had left an infant when she was taken very ill and died.
Children at Sunday school are often not very attentive, and teaching them is a work of patience. Well, Agnes was about the same as the rest in this respect, but as she sat near her teacher, perhaps she heard better than most in the class.
A few weeks passed away, when one day a sad accident happened. Maggie had gone out on an errand, and left the three little ones at home. Agnes stood on the fender to reach something off the chimney-piece, when her clothes caught alight from the fire.
The door was standing open, and as the wind blew in it quickly fanned it into a flame. Agnes was terrified and ran out of the house across the road to the nearest cottage, screaming for help. But before help could come it was too late. The little dress and petticoat were so burnt they dropped off the poor little scarred body.
The neighbors put Agnes to bed as soon as they could, and sent for a doctor; but she had some hours of great pain before the remedies used began to tell on her, and then she fell into a restless sleep.
The next day Agnes lay for a long while in a kind of stupor and we could not speak to her, but while in this state it seemed as if God spoke to her; for, after a time, from her poor dry lips came the words of the little hymn she had so often sung in school:—
“There is a happy land,
Far, far away.”
Then she became occupied with The One who makes heaven a happy place. She, like Stephen, saw Jesus; and her oft repeated words were, though she had certainly never said such things before,
“Heavenly Jesus! O, Jesus! You are my Jesus! Are You ready? I am.” Then she used the words, “Christ in glory,” and so the day passed away.
Thursday came and it was evident Agnes would not get better, but was passing away. I went to look at her again. She lay as before and had not spoken for some time, but while I was there her lips parted and faintly the words came,
“I am ready; are you?” A few minutes more and she had gone to be with Jesus.
O! that all who read these lines were able to use Agnes’s words and say to others,
“I am ready, are you?”
ML 04/16/1933