The Book that Speaks of Jesus.
Only an old, tattered flower woman! withered and weather-beaten, ragged and wrinkled! How fair and sweet looked the flowers carried by the brown, horny hands!
A kindly smile lit up the rugged face, and there was a hearty ring in the words she so repeatedly emphasized, and the old body had still a thought for others and their needs. “Look here, ma’am, you gave me some of them little books the other day. There’s a poor, old man near me, and he says, ‘Ask that lady if she hasn’t something for a dying man to read.’ That’s just what he says, lady.”
So I fetched a little Testament out of the book-case, and turned the leaf down at the third and tenth of John’s Gospel, and told her to give it to him.
Some days passed away, and then the old body came again. “Oh that blessed book,” she exclaimed, directly she saw me, “He’s been a-reading it, and he says he’s got the peace, and if ever he gets out of his bed he’s a-coming to see you.” The withered old face looked quite radiant, as she nodded and emphasized. “He gets up in his bed to pray for you, he does; and he says that book has told him all he wants.”
Aye! sometimes it tells us more than we want to know. It tells us of the sin so dark, so heinous, that it shuts out from God’s heaven, and God’s rest. But, if you will listen, it tells us also of the Days-man, the Substitute, the One whose precious blood blots out all sin, until not a spot remains, and the soul is whiter than the driven snow. (See Isaiah 1:1818Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18).)
A few days passed away, and the old flower-woman came again. “He’s gone,” she said. “He went at three o’clock this morning, and he says, ‘Tell that lady I’m going to glory and I shall meet her there. You keep that blessed book,’ he says, ‘and get her to write your name and mine in it. I’m full of peace and joy, and I’m going to glory.’ Those were his very words, lady, and it was all through that Blessed Book.”
The weather-stained, old gipsy flower-woman had been the means of placing in those dying hands the bread of life. God had spoken, and he had listened; and the heart had seen Jesus as the Saviour for sinners, and he had passed through death without a cloud, and without a spot.
“British Evangelist.”