A CHRISTIAN who through a long and tedious day had been following his usual laborious calling, feeling very fatigued, was retiring to bed rather earlier than was his custom, when he heard a timid knock at the front door.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“If you please, sir, I’ve come to ask you to come and see mother,” were the words uttered in girlish tones.
“I cannot tonight,” he replied, as he wondered however he could drag his aching limbs to the address given.
“Oh, do come,” pleaded the child.
“I will call early in the morning,” he rejoined. But as the child was turning away he felt suddenly constrained to go, so called out after the retreating child, “But tell mother that I will come along in a few minutes.” And hastily putting on his boots and lifting a silent prayer to God for His guidance and blessing, he set out to the address given, endeavoring to forget his bodily weariness.
When he arrived at the lowly cottage and was ushered into the bedroom, he saw lying upon a bed a woman whom he at once recognized as being a listener to the glad tidings of God’s salvation which he had proclaimed in an adjoining factory some time previously. Upon her face was a look of deep dejection, and she was uttering the solemn words, “I’m lost; I am going to hell. I’m lost; I am going to hell.”
“You know, then, that you are a poor, lost, helpless sinner,” remarked the visitor; “but let me remind you that God has in His great love provided a way of escape for you. Do you believe the Scriptures?”
“I believe the Bible,” was her faint reply.
So turning to that beautiful passage in Gal. 2:20,20I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20) “I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me,” he asked, “Do you believe that Christ loved you?” There was a stillness in that chamber for a few minutes, for God the Holy Ghost was speaking to that woman’s heart. She was halting between two opinions. Should Christ or Satan have the victory? Should there be rejoicing in heaven over another soul being brought from darkness to light?
“Do you believe that He loved you?” again asked the visitor.
“Yes,” was her hesitating reply.
“Very well, then,” he continued; “not only does He love, but the verse says, ‘He gave Himself for me,’—for me—so you see it requires individual application.”
There was another momentary pause, when suddenly the sick woman exclaimed, her face aglow with newly found joy: “I’ve got it! I see it!” for she saw for the first time in her life, that although she was lost, sinful, and passing onward to endless ruin, yet the love of Jesus Christ was so great that He died for her sins, gave Himself for her. Thus was she born again and made through divine grace an heir of God, even at the eleventh hour. At midnight her ransomed spirit was set free; under three hours after the glorious knowledge that her many sins were all forgiven.
The above is not recorded to encourage you, dear reader, to put off the weighty matter of your soul’s salvation until upon your deathbed; but it is written to magnify the triumphant grace of God.
We would remind you that comparatively speaking the above is an exceptional case, and that sometimes in a soul’s history after grace has been willfully slighted, perhaps for a lifetime, God speaks, saying:
“Let him alone.”
Then the Christ rejecters die as they have lived—unsaved! For, “He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life, and he that bieveth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36)).
A. G.