IN going through one of the wards of the ―Hospital, I passed and repassed an old German woman sitting beside one of the cots, with her head bowed down on her breast as if asleep, and looking so listless and uninteresting, I did not for some time speak to her. When at last I went to her, she put her hand to her breast and told me of her dreadful pain and misery, her countenance expressing the painfulness of her suffering. After a few words of sympathy, noticing a large Bible lying on her stand, with her spectacles on it, I said, “You have your Bible beside you, I see.” At once her face brightened, and, looking at me with an expression that only the love of Christ in the soul can give, said, “Oh, yes, that is all my hope and trust.” I said, “What does that book give you to hope and trust in, when your body is so full of pain?” Looking in my face, in a surprised way, she said, her voice assuming a defensive tone, “Because it tells me of my Saviour Jesus, who bore my sins in His body on the cross; and it tells me that He is going to take this poor body to be with Himself in glory.” After a little more drawing out, she said, “And when He suffered all for me, He had no sin, and He died to save the poor sinner.
Oh, it makes my pain easy when I think of Him.” After a few words of fellowship with her in the death and glory of this Lord and Saviour, I left her, thanking God that He “had chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, heirs of the kingdom;” and His blessed Spirit, for using this poor woman for comfort and help where nature had seen nothing.
S. A. C.