Mrs. Nisbet was a kind and moral woman. Resting comfortably on her religious profession, she was happy to talk about spiritual matters with a Christian. From him, she learned that religion was not enough; she needed a Saviour. When she realized this, she turned to a friend and exclaimed: “With all our religion we have never been born again! We are lost, and going to hell!”
She was so upset at this discovery that she became seriously ill, and asked for the evangelist to come to visit her. He came, and she eagerly began to talk about her spiritual need. The nurse, fearing that conversation on eternal matters might excite her patient, began to praise Mrs. Nisbet’s goodness. She ended by saying, “You have nothing to fear, Mrs. Nisbet. Think what a good woman you have been!”
“No! No!” she exclaimed. “That’s all wrong. I’m lost!” Turning to her visitor, she said, “Tell me what I have to do to be saved.”
“You have nothing to do but believe what Christ has already done for you.”
“Yes, that’s it. Oh, if I had the least grain of faith!”
“I believe you have faith, Mrs. Nisbet.”
“Oh, don’t mock me!” she pleaded.
“Who made the world, Mrs. Nisbet?” he asked.
“God.”
“How do you know?”
“From His own Word—the Bible.”
“And I am to believe the same way for salvation?”
“Most certainly; there are not two ways of believing. You believe that God made the world because He says so in His Word?”
“Yes.”
“In the same way I believe that Christ died for me, and that I cannot come into condemnation, because He says so in His Word. He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.”
As the grand old gospel was explained to the worried woman, she stopped looking within for peace and comfort and became absorbed with God’s matchless love to her. As the light streamed into her anxious mind, she cried, “Oh, how simple! Thank God, I see it! I’m saved!” Then, her face shining with joy, she exclaimed, “Blessed Jesus! He bore it all for me. How blind I have been.”
Soon recovering from her illness, Mrs. Nisbet became a very active Christian. She often tells the lost whom she meets that she tried to gain salvation on the ground of her own good works, then on the ground of her faith, and how at last she received it on the ground of the finished work of Jesus Christ.