A VISITOR among the poor was one day climbing the broken staircase which led to a garret in one of the worst parts of London, when his attention was arrested by a man of peculiarly ferocious and repulsive countenance, who stood upon the landing-place, leaning with folded arms against the wall. There was something about the man’s appearance which made the visitor shudder, and his first impulse was to go back. He made an effort, however, to get into conversation with him, and told him that he came there with the desire to do him good, and to see him happy, and that the book he held in his hand contained the secret of all happiness.
The ruffian shook him off as if he had been a viper, and bade him begone with his nonsense, or he would kick him downstairs. While the visitor was endeavoring, with gentleness and patience, to argue the point with him, he was startled by hearing a feeble voice, which appeared to come from behind one of the broken doors that opened upon the landing, saying, “Does your book tell of the blood which cleanseth from all sin?’“ For the moment the visitor was too absorbed in the case of the hardened sinner to answer the inquiry, and it was repeated in urgent and thrilling tones, “Tell me, oh, tell me, does your book tell of ‘the blood which cleanseth from all sin?’” The visitor pushed open the door, and entered the room. It was a wretched place, wholly destitute of furniture, except a three-legged stool and a bundle of straw in a corner, upon which were stretched the wasted limbs of an aged woman. When the visitor entered, she raised herself upon one elbow, fixed her eyes eagerly upon him, and repeated her former question, “Does your book tell of the blood which cleanseth from all sin?’“ He sat down upon the stool beside her, and inquired, “My poor friend, what do you want to know of the blood that cleanseth from all sin?’” There was something fearful in the energy of her voice and manner as she replied, “What do I want to know of it! Man, I am dying; I am going to stand naked before God. I have been a wicked woman — a very wicked woman, all my life. I shall have to answer for everything I have done.” And she groaned bitterly, as the thought of a lifetime’s iniquity seemed to cross her soul. “But once,” she continued, “once, years ago, I came by the door of a church, and I went in, I don’t know what for, I was soon out again; but one word I heard there I have never forgot. It was something about ‘blood which cleanseth from all sin.’ Oh, if I could hear of it now! Tell me, tell me, if there is anything about that blood in your book.” The visitor answered by opening his Bible and reading the first chapter of the first epistle of John. The poor creature seemed to devour the words, and when he paused, she exclaimed, “Read more, read more.” He read the second chapter. A slight noise made him look round; the savage ruffian had followed him into his mother’s room, and, though his face was partly turned away, the visitor could perceive tears rolling down his cheeks. The visitor read the third, fourth, and fifth chapters before he could get his poor listener to consent that he should stop, and then she would not let him go till he had promised to come the next days He never from that time missed a day reading to her, until she died, six weeks afterward; and very blessed it was to see how, almost from the first, she seemed to find peace by believing in Jesus. Every day the son followed the visitor into his mother’s room, and listened in silence, but not in indifference. On the day of her funeral he beckoned him to one side as they were filling up the grave, and said, “Sir, I have been thinking that there is nothing I should so much like, as to spend the rest of my life in telling others of “the blood which cleanseth from all sin.”
Thus the mother and her son were saved; the one to “depart, and be with Christ,” the other to remain yet a little longer in the wilderness, “to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven.”
The despairing woman in her hopeless, helpless misery, was snatched almost at the last moment from eternal woe by infinite pity; the morose and bitter opposer of Christ was brought to his feet, and changed into the zealous messenger of his grace! The one is taken home, to be forever happy with the Lord; the other is permitted the precious privilege of serving for a “little while,” that so, beside salvation, he might, through grace, if faithful, have reward in that day. How gracious is all this! Who cannot see that it was the Lord who led his servant, just at the critical moment, to ascend that broken staircase, to assuage the anguish of that deathbed, and to meet and answer the question which stirred her inmost soul as to “the blood that cleanseth from all sin?”
Who shall tell what she suffered till that question was answered? What must have been her remorse to think that she was once on the eve of hearing all about that precious blood, but madly turned away, and would not hear! As she tossed upon that bed of pain, her mental agony must have been very similar to that which we may suppose THE LOST endure, who have rejected Christ. We can well imagine the bitterness of her self-reproach, the intolerable anguish, the terrible despair that must have wrung her heart! It was probably this that had driven her son from the room — the scene was too terrible even for his morose and savage nature. Oh, reader, if you are not saved, be warned in time; for this day — now, while you read — you have either received Christ, or you have rejected him! You know more than this woman knew about “the blood that cleanseth from all sin,” your responsibility is, therefore, greater than hers. Think but for a moment; you may be on the very eve of passing through what she endured before the messenger of mercy came! And since you have, if not already saved, gone even further than she went in regarding Christ, who shall say that mercy would be offered you? “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”