ON my way home the other night, a Christian woman stopped me and begged me to go and visit a friend of hers who was dying of consumption. So the next day, on my way to the office, I turned aside to see her. “Well, Mr. S., I am glad to see you, I have been waiting for you all day, and I have been wondering every moment if you would come, and whenever there was a knock I thought it was you,” were the first words of greeting. I immediately took the chair set for me by the head of the sofa.
“And why have you sent for me?” I said.
“I want to know how my soul is to be saved,” was her deeply earnest answer, with her eyes riveted on me.
“‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved’ is God’s Word—can you trust it?”
“I wish I could!” was her reply.
“If you were drowning in a river,” I said, “and a man was on the bank, and threw you a rope, what would you do?”
“I should seize it,” she said.
“Well, you are drowning; God has seen your lost state, and has given Christ to save you, and now He is waiting for you to accept Him as your Saviour.”
“I wish, I wish I could,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “if you owed a month’s rent, and I were here this afternoon with the money in.my hand offering it to you would you lie there, and keep saying, ‘I wish I could take it! I wish I could take it!’”
“No, I should take it at once.”
“Well, do so with Christ, and you will then have the joy of His salvation.”
She paused and replied in deepest earnestness, “I will accept Christ.”
ML 10/28/1917