WHILE staying on a visit with Christian friends, I went one morning to see two or three sick and aged people known to them. Names and addresses were given me, and I set forth alone to make their acquaintance. It was a bright and breezy day, after a season of wet weather, and all looked cheerful. My heart was light as I walked along, and I felt glad at the prospect of having opportunities of speaking of “Jesus and His love." On my list was the name of “Mrs. Ashcroft," the occupant of a tidy little front room in a row of small cottages.
In a few minutes all reserve was gone, and she spoke to me freely, telling me much of her dear husband who had died four years before. This was a subject evidently very near her heart, and she was pleased to talk about him. As she related the story of his peaceful end, tears of gratitude filled her eyes, while her face was bright with smiles. They had had no family, and they were “all on earth" to each other. Ten years before he died he was truly converted ; but during the last five years the great change in him was more marked, for he then showed more plainly than before that he " belonged to his Savior." Still, although he tried to cast every care upon the Lord, and to trust Him for everything, there was one sorrow that pressed upon him, and proved a source of constant dread. With failing health came the lack of power to earn a living for himself and his wife, and, although they had " parish relief," it seemed as if the time would come when they should have to go to the "Union," and thus be separated—he in one room, and she in another. Poor old man! he "did want to trust the Lord about it all, but it often made him unhappy!"
“But he never went there!" said the aged widow. “He was taken ill on the Sunday, and died on the Thursday. On the Wednesday, the day before he died, he called me to his bedside, and said, Well, Ann, my girl!' You see, ma'am, he came from London, and all the years that we was married he called me my girl,' but this time he said, Well, Ann, my girl! my wife! I'm not going to that brick mansion after all; I'm going to the heavenly one!' He always called the Union The brick mansion.' And then he said, I'm not afraid. I'm quite ready. My sins are forgiven. I'm trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ."
I remarked, “Your dear husband did not dread that sort of separation from you, did he? it was so different from going to the Union."
“No," she said,” he was quite happy to go, and some of his very last words were: ' Meet me there, my girl.' And now I must tell you, ma'am, that kind friends have come forward, and, one way and another, I have been able to live in this room, and neighbors are kind in helping me when the rheumatics is bad. And so I have got on, and the Lord has taken care of me, and I have never had to go to the Union, and some day I shall go up there, too, and meet my husband again in heaven."
How touching are the “short and simple annals of the poor”! How sweet to find simple faith in the finished work of Christ! What a blessing that these two dear old people had both learned that He had died for them; that He had gone to prepare a mansion"; and that they will “together " spend eternity with Him!
Another person whom I saw was a younger widow, in deep decline. Her bodily sufferings were great, and she had passed through much inward conflict at the thought of her own deep unworthiness; but God had revealed His love to her in the Person of His Son, and now her one great desire was to know more of Him, and to be drawn "nearer and nearer " to Himself.
Surely the longing wish of each of those two dear women will soon be gratified, and they will be taken home to the “heavenly mansion," where
“All taint of sin will be removed,
All evil done away,
And we shall dwell with God's beloved,
Through God's eternal day."
H. L. R.