MY grandfather died when his children were all comparatively young, but from the lips of one of them I have heard with interest and pleasure of his conversion and triumphant departure to be with the Lord.
He was disabled for a year before, and during this time had great yearning to know more of the things of God. While he possibly could, he attended the parish church, but found nothing to satisfy his soul with the assurance of a salvation he so much desired.
Unable to read himself, he was dependent on the little time his busy, hard-working wife could spare for the reading of the word of God; and Satan harassed him with doubts and fears. “Oh!” he would exclaim, “if only I could but get just inside those pearly gates—but no! I can never be where Jesus is.”
Three weeks before his death he was confined to his bed, and only one week before, he astonished my grandmother when she went in to him, by declaring with a radiant face that God had spoken to him. “He told me,” he went on, “that He knew I had long been a repentant sinner, and that I should not only just get inside, but should have an abundant entrance.”
After this vision, as grandmother would call it (and truly it was a manifestation of the light of God’s truth to his poor doubting soul), he was changed from a trembling sinner to a rejoicing saint.
All who came in to see him heard of his wonderful Saviour, who is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him. Nor did he hesitate to tell some of the error of their ways, showing them it would profit them nothing to gain the whole world and lose their souls.
He spoke seriously to his elder children, laid his hands tenderly on the little ones and prayed for them all. His last words, uttered with such love and longing, were, “Come, my Lord Jesus! Come, my Lord Jesus!” and soon he who little more than a week before had feared he could never enter where Jesus was, had gone to be with Him for ever more.
Are you, reader, burdened with a sense of guilt yet yearning for a right of entrance into that everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour? Hear, then, the word God has caused to be written: “Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God.” Come, then, to this Saviour, believing what God has said concerning Him—for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly.
A. E. S.