“MARY, I can see the Devil.”
“Nonsense,” said his anxious wife.
“Mary, it’s useless for you to say nonsense: I tell you I can see him. He is here, close to me, waiting to take me.”
So spoke G. B. as he was lying in a small bed in a London hospital, stricken with paralysis, hovering between life and death.
He had been a shrewd man of business and a professor of religion he had married a praying wife who to her sorrow had thought him a Christian. He had made money, but was without Christ on his dying bed. His eyes were wild with suppressed emotion, with face dreadful to look on in its agony of fear, as before him rose his sins and the awful fact, that he, the clever, hardheaded, but sometimes generous business man, lay on the point of passing into the unseen world unforgiven.
His wife specially quoted to him, “the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth from every sin,” assuring her poor, paralyzed, terror-stricken husband, that the Devil must flee before that blood. “Only trust in the blood of Jesus and all will be well.” But no! there was no hope, said the sufferer, and his heart seemed as hard as a nether millstone.
His distracted wife, compelled to leave the ward and go home, committed him in an agony of prayer to God, asking His blessing on His own word.
On her return to the ward next day, she was told by the matron he had rallied a little, called for the Bible, and, since reading a little, was calmer. The wife, on approaching the bed, and doing what she could to comfort him, was, to her surprise, asked by him to read the Bible.
“What shall I read?” she said.
“The 3rd chapter of John,” he replied.
She read until she came to vs. 16, “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “That is what I wanted,” he said. She read it again and silently prayed.
After a time he said, “Mary, I see it all: God loved ME and gave His Son for ME. I see it now, I believe in Him who died and rose again, and have everlasting life.” His face brightened as he spoke a little of his new-found peace made through the blood of the cross, and then he passed away.
His poor wife, overwhelmed with joy, even in her sorrow, gave thanks for the grace that vouchsafed such an answer to prayer at the last moment.
Further, in gratitude to God and in the hope that some poor sinner, perhaps yourself if you believe it, might be saved from coming wrath, through the same wondrous message, she had carved for his tombstone the words: ―
“GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH IN HIM SHOULD NOT PERISH, BUT HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE.”
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth Him that sent He, hath everlasting life and cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death unto life.”
“He that believeth not shall be damned.”
A. J. B.