How good it is to know that God is a God of love, and that He has many ways of speaking to us, if only we have ears to hear. I am going to tell you about Emily and how God spoke to her.
She had been sent away. from home to a boarding-school in the country, and it was while staying there that she had a remarkable dream which she has never forgotten to this day, for it was through the dream that she was led to seek and find a Saviour.
As her parents were Christian people; there is no doubt that she had often heard them speak of the Lord Jesus coming again to this earth, as we read in Scripture, to take away all those who love Him; and that was what she dreamed—that the Lord had come and taken her father and mother away, while she was left behind.
Although she was asleep, the thought was terrible that if her parents had been taken and she left, she knew that all hope of salvation for her was over forever.
Awaking out of her sleep in deep distress, she pulled violently at the bell, which instantly brought the school-mistress into her room to know what was the matter. She told her trouble to the matron, who being a Christian woman could easily understand her sorrow, and she was able to assure her that the Lord Jesus had not yet come.
Somehow this did not comfort her very much, and she thought if only she were at home with her father and mother, she would be quite sure that she was all right.
But the fact is, God was speaking to her about her soul, though it was only a dream, and by that dream she was led to seek Christ as her Saviour, and we know there is no other One who can fit us for the presence of a Holy God but the Lord, Jesus, who has loved us aiid given Himself for us.
I believe that God has often spoken to boys and girls by means of a dream, but we don’t always heed the voice or the warning as the case may be. As we read in Scripture,
“God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.”
Now that we have a complete Bible, there is no need for God to speak by an audible voice straight from heaven, as Fie did to Samuel in Old Testament ornes or to Saul on the road to Damascus. No, there is everything in His precious Book that we need to know, and though God may sometimes speak means of dreams, yet His usual way now is to bring some text of Scripture our notice that contains the message He has for us.
For instance, suppose we are in the Sunday-school, and someone gives an address on the text,
“All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
Many of the boys and girls may think nothing of it, yet there may be one or two that are arrested by it. The text strikes their attention, they think about it, they go home; but the text still seems to sound in their ears.
Why is this? ‘Very likely it is because God is speaking to them through that text, and they begin to think: If all have sinned, it must include me. Then they begin to say in their hearts,
“What must I do to be saved?”
When they reach that point, it is generally not long before they get the wer to the question,
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”
Reader, have you believed on that blessed One?
ML 03/11/1945