A MAN was one day giving his testimony at an open-air meeting as to what God had done for his soul. His life, prior to conversion, had been anything but exemplary. He had fallen into the habit of drinking to excess, until he had gained the unenviable reputation of being a drunkard. But he stood that day, through the grace of God, a new man, having been made a partaker of the washing of regeneration and of the renewing of the Holy Ghost, and at the street corner he testified that God had saved his soul. At that moment, among the stream of passers-by, was a woman on whose ears his word of testimony fell. “Saved," she said to herself, for there could be no mistaking what he had said. “Saved," that was a great thing to say, and then for her own satisfaction she gave the word a limited interpretation.
Now it must be noted that this woman on her own confession was a religious person; she was a church-member, had been so for fifteen years, and she was regular in her attendance at her place of worship; indeed, during one part of that period, for the space of five years, she had not been absent from the church on one single Sunday. During all the time of her church-membership career no one had ever spoken to her about her soul, and as for being saved, why, that was a thing she never dreamed of! Nobody could ever know that he was saved in this life, she had been taught, yet here was a man whom she knew, a man who had lived in the same block of buildings as herself, yes, in the very same close as she did—a man whom she knew to have been a drunkard—here was he standing up in a public thoroughfare and telling the people that he was saved. “Oh! I know what he means," she said to herself; "he means that he has stopped drinking, and that now he's saved from the drink." This was the limited interpretation she put on his words.
She thought a good deal that night of what she had heard him say, and as proving that his words had stirred her up—a fact she was afterwards ready enough to confess—on the following day she took occasion to say to his wife, " I was very glad to hear that your husband had stopped the drink, I am sure you will be glad."
“Oh, yes! praise the Lord," the wife replied, " he has stopped the drink, but better than that he is saved."
This answer tore to shreds the religious woman's idea that he only meant having stopped the drink in saying he was saved, and it completely outdid her.
If she had never been aroused before, she was certainly aroused now. To think that this man, who had been a drunkard, could now say that he was saved, and that she, a respectable, religious woman, could not say it, was unbearable. What could it mean?
Not long after this a child of hers was taken seriously ill. She sat up all the night with it, and as she had not found the rest that Jesus gives, what between the illness of her child and the trouble of her own soul, her mind was acutely distressed. Another child, older than the one that was ill, was lying fast asleep in another bed close by, and in its sleep it gave utterance to a line of a hymn it had learned somewhere, the line being" Open, open, let the Master in." The distressed mother felt as if it was a message from God to her soul through her sleeping child, but still as yet she did not enter into the kingdom.
Death carried away her sick child, and her husband went to the minister of the church they attended, to ask him to come and pray with them. When her husband returned, she asked him what the minister had said.
He replied, that the minister had said in reference to the little one, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven."
"Of such is the kingdom of heaven," she said to herself, repeating the words she had heard ' " of such is the kingdom of heaven," and thought the words were " just beautiful," but felt none the less, that if she had died, they could not be applied to her. She knew that she was not of such as belong to the kingdom of heaven.
Being determined to find out the way by which she could belong to it, she commenced to read her Bible with diligence and earnestness, but the more she read it, the further she seemed to get away from every hope of salvation. She felt as if every page she turned over only spoke to her of condemnation. No hope could she see. Condemned, CONDEMNED, CONDEMNED, that was all that the Word of God seemed to have to say to her. Surely she had the sentence of death in herself, written there by the finger of God, that she might learn not to trust in herself, but in God who raiseth the dead, and who raised up from the dead our Lord Jesus and gave Him glory that our faith and hope might be in God.
In due season her dark, deep night of conviction ended, and the morning of grace broke in upon her soul. The words that brought peace to her heart were these: "Be not afraid, only believe."
Coming to her heart as those words did in the power of the Holy Ghost, she said, “Well, I will not be afraid any longer, I will trust and not be afraid."
She did trust, and from henceforth her soul was at rest. To bear testimony to what Jesus has done for her soul is now the joy of her heart. J. C.