“IF I can’t believe, I can’t.” Such were the last words which the writer ever had the opportunity of hearing from the lips of a man who was an avowed infidel, and with whom he had frequently discussed the question of the divine authenticity of the Scriptures, which, however, is no question at all, but a fact. At the moment of uttering these words he was lying on his sofa, suffering, though not very severely, from bronchitis, which at that time (some twenty years ago) was epidemic in some parts of London, and had been remarkably fatal in several instances. They had been speaking together on the old subject, and the infidel finding all his arguments worthless, and having had all his objections met, fell back upon what afterward proved to be a direct falsehood— “If I can’t believe, I can’t.” Meaning that he could not believe the Bible to be God’s word, although he could bring forward no reason or ground for his opinions than what had been already proved fallacious. After some further attempts to convince him of his folly, his visitor left, but warned him of the dangerous nature of his disease, which had carried off several, both young and old, in that neighborhood.
About a week or ten days afterward, the writer learned one morning that a woman had called between eleven and twelve o’clock the night before at a house where he was known, to inquire for him, saying that her husband was dying, and earnestly wished to see him. She was told that he resided too far off to be sent for at that time of night, and was advised to go and get someone else. But sometime after midnight, she came again, saying that her husband had insisted on her doing so, and after describing a terrible deathbed scene, she added— “The death-rattle is in his throat, but he dare not die as he is.”
“If that is the case,” was the reply, “it is too late—too late to fetch any one to him, especially from such a distance.”
As on each occasion of calling she had forgotten in her distress to say whence she came, while the housekeeper, aroused from his bed in the dead of the night, forgot to inquire, some weeks passed away before the writer knew who it was that had sent such urgent messages. But one day wishing to learn how the infidel was, and whether he had yet seen the folly and wickedness of his pretended disbelief of the authenticity of the Scriptures, he called at his house. On knocking at the door, it was opened by a woman in a widow’s cap, whom at a glance the writer knew as the wife of the infidel. He was dead! It was he that in his dying agony had sent for the writer, because in his inmost soul he knew the Bible to be God’s holy word, and vainly hoped that something could be done or said that would save him from “the judgment to come,” just as the poor benighted Romanist sends for the priest to administer “extreme unction” in his last moments. And now the true ground of his infidelity came out. The poor widow had a sad tale to tell of long years of cruel neglect from her husband, who, having taken up with another woman, adapted infidel views by way of quieting conscience, and persuading himself that it was not true that “it is appointed unto men once to die, and AFTER THAT THE JUDGMENT.” And so long as any chance or hope remained of being able still to go on in his iniquity, he persisted in clinging to and asserting what after all he felt in his own soul to be false. But when all hope of life was past, when death and judgment stared him in the thee, when the last moment was come, and he was sure he could not live, when “the death-raffle was in his throat,” and not before, he let go the wretched prop with which he had sustained himself in evil, and wanted to be saved in his sins.
But the unhappy man had gone too far. He had been convinced again and again of the authenticity of Scripture, had willfully belied his own convictions, had persisted in that which even natural conscience told him was sin, had mocked God, and despised His offers of mercy until it was too late.
Reader, have you accepted the gracious message declared by the Holy Ghost, sent down from a risen and glorified Christ— “Be it known unto you... that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things”? Or are you still neglecting and deferring the subject on various pretenses to some future time, that you may still “enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season”? Oh, be persuaded before it is too late! Let that midnight message sink into your ears, and touch your heart with a sense of the terrible consequences of procrastination from any cause! “The death-rattle is in His throat, but he dare not die as he is.”
K.