AN old man had been brought into the accident ward of the— Infirmary in a precarious condition, having attempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat.
A young Christian nurse bending over him, asked how he was.
“Very bad; I am going to die, and I feel I am going into the darkness.”
"Do you know the Lord Jesus?”
The old man looked awkward and evaded the question.
“Because if you do know Him you will not go into the darkness.'?
“Oh! but I have committed such great sins. I feel God can never forgive me.”
"But God says the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin, and if you trust in Him, His blood will cleanse you from all your sins.”
Then she went on to show him that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," and as sinners all must be saved in the same way—by simply coming to God as lost and guilty and trusting in the finished work of Christ.
Being afraid of exciting the old man, who was in a critical state, she said, "Now I must leave you; but just turn to the Lord, and trust Him as the One who died for you.”
After this he was continually overheard repeating the verses the nurse had pressed upon him, so much so that it was thought that he had religious mania, and he was strictly watched.
Happily, however, he could now give a different account of himself: "I have trusted in Christ as my Saviour. I know He died for me, and that His Blood has cleansed all my sins away.”
“I know I am saved," he said a few days later to the nurse, "but my thoughts trouble me as I keep thinking what great sins I have committed." She recalled to his mind the all-cleansing virtue of the Blood of Christ, who had borne the judgment of his sins on Calvary's Cross, and with his mind thus turned from himself to Christ, he was again happy and at rest.
That firm ground for peace and rest! Is it yours? F. A.