THE subject of this paper lived in London, where I called upon him one Lord's Day afternoon to speak to him about JESUS, the Saviour of sinners, and his immortal soul's eternal welfare.
Though a very aged man, he wore no glasses, had all his faculties in a remarkable degree, and looked the very picture of health! After asking me to be seated, he inquired about the object of my visit, as I was a perfect stranger to him.
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 in the most determined manner that I might save my breath and time, as he did not believe in anything of the sort, and was not in the slightest troubled about the future.
“I am ninety-seven years of age," he said,” and no thanks to anybody hut myself. I have lived a most careful and abstemious life, and I mean to live three more years, until I am a hundred years old, and then I think I shall have seen and had enough of life, and 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" and then for the space of nearly an hour he quoted to me the most blasphemous passages from his favorite infidel authors.
It was difficult to keep one's seat, and my blood seemed to curdle in my veins as I listened unwillingly to his awful conversation, and looked at him and thought of his nearness to eternity, and the dread future that awaited him if he died as he was. But I felt God had sent me to him with a message from Himself, and I must bide my opportunity to deliver it.
I told him that I had listened to him for nearly an hour, and now he must listen to me for ten minutes. I saw that to reason with the old man would be useless, and a. waste of precious time; and I had and have no faith in it either. So I began quoting the Scriptures, which I knew were the sword of the Spirit, such as "The FOOL hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psa. 53:11<<To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, Maschil, A Psalm of David.>> The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. (Psalm 53:1)). PSA 53:11<<To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, Maschil, A Psalm of David.>> The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. (Psalm 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 heaven, as a brand plucked from the burning, and washed from all his sins in the blood of the Lamb.
As I rose from my knees our eyes met, full of tears, and as I took my leave of him he grasped my hand, and said, " 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 how, whilst I have only one to mine.”
I was unable to call again until that day fortnight, when I found myself again knocking at his door.
His wife, who was a Christian woman, answered my knock, and to my first questions “How is your husband?" bade me follow her, which I did, into the old man's bedroom, and there the first object that net my gaze was the mortal remains of her husband!
She said he complained of a spot on one of his feet giving him pain, which rapidly grew worse, until inflammation set in, followed by mortification, which closed his long career on earth.
Thus had God summarily cut the impious old boaster down, who had said he would live three years more in this world.
His wife informed me that the doctor who attended him in his last brief illness was also an infidel, that he urged the old man to stick to his infidel opinions, and to die like a brick; but that her husband found no comfort from his miserable, guilty adviser he to stick to in infidelity? No God, no Christ, no Holy Spirit, no precious blood, no hereafter! What was there in the baseless myth of infidelity, the thin, cold shadow of a fool's heart, to stick to?
I asked the poor, weeping wife to tell me her husband's last words.
She said, " He took my hand in his, and looking earnestly at me, he said, as loud as his remaining bit of strength would allow him, ' Wife, I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, heaven and hell,' and then breathed his last.”
Dark, cold infidelity hath nothing to cheer its deluded votaries in the hour of death. Christianity hath everything to cheer its happy followers in sickness and in health, in poverty and plenty, in life and in death, in time and in eternity. There is everything to cheer and nothing to chill in Christianity.
“What think ye of Christ”