He was indeed an old man—ninety-seven years of age, wore no glasses, and had all his faculties in a remarkable degree, and looked the very picture of health!
I was a stranger to him, but had been asked to visit him. After inviting me to be seated, he inquired as to the object of my call. I at once informed him that I had come to read the word of God to him, to speak to him about God, about Christ and His precious blood, about his soul and eternity.
He looked steadfastly at me, and said grimly that I might save my breath and time. He did not believe in anything of the sort, and was not troubled in the least about the future.
"I am ninety-seven years of age," he said, "and no thanks to anybody but myself. I have lived a most careful and abstemious life, and I mean to live three more years. When I am a hundred years old I shall have seen and had enough of life. Then I shall quietly lay myself down and die."
"It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment," I rejoined.
"All fudge and nonsense," he said. "When a man is dead he is done with. There is no hereafter for him at all." Then for nearly an hour he quoted to me the most blasphemous passages from his favorite infidel authors.
My blood seemed to curdle in my veins as I listened unwillingly to his awful conversation. I looked at him and thought of his nearness to eternity. What a dread future awaited him if he died as he was! Surely God must have sent me to him with a message from Himself. I must bide my opportunity to deliver it.
As the old man paused for breath, I told him that I had listened to him for nearly an hour. Now he must listen to me for ten minutes. Quickly I began quoting the Scriptures which I knew were the sword of the Spirit.
"The FOOL hath said in his heart, There is no God." Psa. 53: 1.
I then fell on my knees, and asked God to bless His word just quoted to the old man, to open his eyes to his danger, to deliver his precious soul from the diabolical grip of the fiend of hell, and let me meet him in glory as a brand plucked from the burning, and washed from all his sins in the blood of the Lamb in heaven.
As I rose from my knees our eyes met, full of tears. As I took my leave of him he grasped my hand, saying, "If there is a heaven I hope I shall meet you there. If you are wrong and I am right, you are as right as I am; but oh, if you are right and I am wrong, I am wrong indeed. You have two strings to your bow, while I have only one to mine."
I was unable to call again for a couple of weeks. When next I knocked at his door, his wife, a Christian woman, answered. To my question, "How is your husband?" she bade me follow her. As we entered the old man's bedroom, the object that met my gaze was the mortal remains of her husband! Death had suddenly closed his long career on earth. Thus had God summarily cut down the impious old boaster who had planned to live three years more in this world.
In further conversation with the wife, I learned that she still had a hope, a slim hope, of her husband's salvation. After my visit with him, he had found no comfort in infidelity. Although his friends, and even his doctor, who were all skeptics, urged him to "stick to his guns" and "die like a man," his infidel opinions had become to him but the blackness of darkness forever.
The one hope that soothed the wife's sad heart was the final scene with the dying man. Rousing somewhat from the increasing state of coma, he had taken her hand in his. As loudly as his fast ebbing strength would permit, and looking earnestly at her, he had proclaimed: "I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and in heaven and hell." He then breathed his last.
Dark, cold infidelity has nothing to comfort its deluded votaries in the hour of death. Christianity has everything to cheer its happy followers in sickness and in health, in poverty and in plenty, in life and in death, in time and in eternity. Confident of the love of God in Christ Jesus, the believer can say with the psalmist: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me... Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever." Psa. 23:4, 64Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (Psalm 23:4)
6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. (Psalm 23:6).
Yea, tho' I walk in death's dark vale,
Yet I will fear no ill;
For Thou art with me; and Thy rod
And staff they comfort still.
Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me;
And in God's house forevermore
My dwelling-place shall be.