Some time ago I was asked to visit a sick woman in the City Hospital. Unknown to me, a change had been made in the visiting hours, and I found myself in the ward before the house-doctor had finished his afternoon rounds. As I was about to withdraw, I was invited by the patient in the bed nearest the door to sit down by her and wait for a little while. As I accepted her kindness she said, "Maybe you will be able to tell me words I am trying to remember rightly.”
Her story was this: She had entered the hospital very ignorant of the things of God and was totally careless about her soul. A few days before I saw her, she told me that a lady came into the ward and brought each patient some flowers. "I felt ill and tired," she said, "and did not want to talk; so when she came near me I turned my face to the wall as if asleep. Then she laid the flowers upon my pillow, and passed on. When I heard her go down stairs I took the flowers up. It seemed to do me good to look at them; but I soon saw the flowers were not all—there was a card, and some writing on it. I read the words over and over again, and wondered what they could mean. Soon I began to care more for the card than I did for the flowers. As I read the words I could not help weeping—it seemed as if all my life came back to my mind, and I felt I was a great sinner. When night came I put the card away. In the morning I could not find it, and the words seemed to have gone out of my mind. How I would like to know what they were!”
"Try to remember one word, and I will ask the Lord, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to bring the right verse to my mind," I said.
"There was the word 'sin' in it, and that seems about all I can think of," she answered.
"Were these the words, Tor the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord'?" Rom. 6:23.
The look of disappointment that clouded the face of the poor woman was sad to witness. "No," she answered. "Those are not the ones I wanted to hear.”
I repeated another verse with the word sin in it: "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." 1 John 1:7.
"The very words— the very words! Oh, how thankful I am!" she cried. "And you are quite sure they are in the Holy Scriptures?”
I read the words to her from the Bible. For some time we talked of the wonderful love of God to the perishing and lost. I do not know—perhaps I never shall know on earth— the result of that afternoon's conversation; but I do know that I left her that day with an expression on her face of joy and contentment which had not been there before.
"So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Isa. 55:11.