One very hot summer day I was sitting by a patient in one of the wards of an Infirmary. All the beds in the long room were occupied; and my attention was presently attracted by a woman stooping over a bed, and fondly kissing a pale-faced little girl.
When she was gone, I went over.
“Fanny R., aged 14,” was written on the ticket at the bed’s head.
I found that she was ill, and got but little better. The doctors, she told me, did not say whether she would recover.
I soon found that she did not know the Lord Jesus, or the forgiveness of sins; but she looked at me earnestly while I spoke of His love; and when I saw her again, in a week or two, she warmly weomed me.
“O! no,” she said, “she could not say that she was saved; she wished to be; she prayed to be; but she was not happy.”
Not long afterward, I was surprised to meet her in the street.
“O! Miss, I am so glad to see you.” “Why, Fanny! are you so much better?”
“Yes, I am better,” she said; “but I am only out of the Infirmary now for an hour’s walk.”
“Well, and have you been thinking of Jesus since I saw you?”
“O! yes; and what is best, He has forgiven all my sins.”
“Has He?”
“Yes, I know He has; and I’m so happy now. I did ask Him to, every since the first time you came to see E. K.”
Fanny soon left the Infirmary, and came to live at home, close to where I held a little class on a Sunday afternoon. She used to come in with her bright, beaming face, and sit and listen.
“O! I am very happy,” she used to say. “I have Jesus, my precious Saviour, always with me.”
“Fanny,” I said, one day, before some of her neighbors, “you know that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, don’t you?”
“O! yes,” she replied, with such a smile. Her little Bible was always beside her. I never saw a cloud on her sweet face.
“I do love Jesus, and I know He loves me,” would be often her joyful exclamation.
One Sunday afternoon as I was leaving her, she held my hand and said,
“O! Miss, I can’t be afraid to die now, for my sins are all forgiven; and I would rather go to be with Jesus, than stay here. I long to see Him.”
“But He is with you now, Fanny, is He not?”
“O! yes; He is precious.”
ML 08/22/1943