ONE Sunday evening, opening my Bible at the tenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John, my eye rested on the words, “I am the door; by Me, if any man enter in, he steal be saved.” While pondering them, I remembered a young woman who had but a few days before entered our service, and who was in some concern about her soul’s salvation.
So sending for her, I said, “Lydia, I want to read a verse to you from the Bible. ‘I am the door;’—it is Jesus Christ who says it— ‘by Me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved.’”
I had her attention. She was gazing earnestly at me as I slowly read and explained “All those who go in at the door, that is by Jesus Christ, are saved. Do you understand that, Lydia? But if any do not go in at that door, they are lost!—lost! Lydia, do you see that?”
“Yes,” she falteringly answered.
Again, I said, “Lydia, are you saved or lost?”
With a quivering voice she answered, “Lost!”
“Lost?” I said. “Lost! With the door wide open before you, and the blood of the Good Shepherd sprinkling all the way by which you go in? Lost!” I said. “With the voice of Jesus Christ Himself calling you to come in, and find pardon, peace, and safety? Lost and the Shepherd Himself standing waiting at the door to take you by the hand and lead you in, that He may fold you to His bosom as one of the lost ones He has found.”
By this time she was in tears, for the word had entered, and her heart was broken. I knelt with her in prayer, and on rising, said to her, “Now go to your room alone, cast yourself, with all your sins, upon Jesus, who died for sinners; open your whole heart to Him, He will not cast you out. Go right in at the door, and He will save you now—this very night; ‘for Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.’”
The dear girl did not go in vain. Surely “the Lord is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” (Heb. 11:66But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6).) She went down from her room saved. That night she confessed to a Christian house keeper what the Lord had done for her soul. No longer afar off, but made nigh by the blood of Christ; no longer outside, but brought within the door, to listen to His voice, to go in and out, and to find pasture.
Dear fellow-servants in the Master’s house, let us use the opportunities given us, and listen to the monitions of the Holy Ghost, when He reminds us at a given moment of an opening for holding forth the word of life. We have often to lament, when too late, that a fellow creature has crossed our path on his way to eternity, at a seasonable time which will never come back again. A. S. W.