A lady was passing a tavern some time ago just as the owner turned a man into the street. He was quite young, but his face showed that he had been drinking heavily; he looked like one on his way to ruin. He was swearing dreadfully and shaking his fist at the man who had thrust him out of the tavern.
So blinded was he with passion that he did not see a lady standing near till she laid her hand on his shoulder, and in a gentle loving voice asked, “What is the matter?”
The young man started as if a heavy blow had struck him. He turned quickly around, trembling from head to foot. He looked at the lady for a moment and then said, “Oh I thought it was my mother’s voice; it sounded so strangely like it. But she has been dead many years.”
“Then you had a mother who loved you?” said the lady. And with this he burst into tears.
“O yes, I had a kind mother who loved her boy. But since she died, everything has gone against me. I am lost, lost to everything that is good lost forever.”
“No, not lost forever; for God is merciful and gracious, and in His pitying love He can save the chief of sinners,” said the lady in the same kind, sweet voice. Her words seemed to have a powerful effect upon that young fellow.
As she passed on her way, he took down the number of the house into which she entered. Then he too went on his way with new thoughts stirring in his soul.
Years rolled by and the lady had almost forgotten the incident when one day a stranger called at her door, and sending in his card, he asked permission to see her.
Wondering who it could be, she saw a fine-looking, well-dressed man. He rose respectfully to meet her and said, “Pardon me, but I have come many miles for the pleasure of thanking you for the great favor you showed me a few years ago.”
“I’m puzzled to know what you mean,” she said, “for I don’t remember having seen you before.”
“I’ve changed so much that I don’t wonder that you have forgotten me,” he replied. “But though I saw you only once, I would have known you anywhere, and your voice too; it is so much like my mother’s.”
The moment these last words were spoken, the lady remembered the poor young man to whom she had spoken to kindly in front of the tavern long ago. He wept and she wept with him. Then wiping away his tears he told her that the kind words she had spoken to him that day had been the means of turning him from ruin and of making him a different man.
“Those words, ‘not lost forever,’ followed me wherever I went; and it always seemed my mother’s voice speaking to me from the grave. I have repented of my sins and now I am trusting in the Lord Jesus. Thankful to say, by the grace of God, I have been able to resist temptation. I have read in His word how to be saved forever from “the wrath to come.”
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation [judgment]; but is passed from death unto life.” John 5:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24). 177
ML-05/29/1977