IT was a beautiful sunny April afternoon. The birds sang sweetly, and everything in nature seemed full of spring life; but one object caught my gaze in striking contrast with all around; lovely girl of thirteen, fast sinking in decline, sought to gain strength by enjoying the warm sunshine, and her mother carried a stool for the poor girl to rest upon every few minutes, as very little walking exhausted her. As she rested her tired body, I wondered if she had found eternal rest for her soul. I watched where her home was, but found, to my disappointment, it was a police barrack, where I was not then permitted to go by my parents.
The next day, on meeting the poor girl and her mother, I found her reading a book. On inquiring after her health she said, “I am better today, for I can read my storybook.” I asked her if she had ever read the story of Jesus, to which she sharply answered, “I do not read the Bible, my father would not allow me, and I would not do anything to displease him.”
“Then you know nothing of how the precious Jesus went about when on earth, tenderly and graciously meeting the need of the sick and diseased in soul and body?” “I have heard of Him,” she said. “Would you not like to know more about Him, my poor girl?” I asked.
“Yes, please,” she faintly said. The way being thus opened, I quoted several scriptures, dwelling chiefly on the Lord Jesus going about meeting every kind of need; and what first arrested the dear child’s mind was the Lord’s grace in taking children in His arms, and blessing them, with the invitation, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”
On several other occasions I met the dear girl, and found that the truth was gaining access to her soul. We were ten days without seeing our little friend; excitement had proved too much for the poor weak frame, and she was obliged to keep quiet in the house. When we next met she said, “Oh! I was longing to see you;” so we asked her if she could come down and sit in our summer house for a while every day, and get rest and refreshment there. To this proposal she joyfully acceded, saying that it was the delight of her heart to hear about the precious Jesus. For three or four days she succeeded in walking to our house, and eagerly drank in the truth put before her; but the task of even walking this short distance proved too great, and on the last occasion when she came she said—her face beaming with joy— “Miss G—, I have thought of a plan by which I can come to you; our servant can wheel me here every day in the barrow, because I cannot do without hearing the story of the precious Jesus.”
The next day, when we met, I spoke to her of the Lord’s individual love for souls, quoting that verse, “He must needs go through Samaria,” with which she seemed greatly struck, asking, “Whom did He meet there? Was it little children?” Speaking of the woman at the well of Sychar, who took the water of life from Christ, I asked her if she would like to drink of it, to which she replied, “Oh, yes! I would take drink after drink from Him.” I then reminded her that this woman was a great sinner, asking if she knew that she was a sinner. “Yes,” she said, “I know I was born a sinner.” I then spoke to her, in contrast, of Nicodemus, in the third of John, showing her that the openly profane and the naturally amiable must stand on the same platform, and be born again. “Except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” She was struck with the difference between seeing and entering, and she said, “When I first met you, I could not bear to hear you talk of Jesus; now it is the joy of my heart to listen to you. Do you think I see now?” “Would you like to see Him?” I replied. “Oh! if I saw Him,” she said, “if I was able, how I would run to Him. And do you think I would be too big for Him to take in His arms?”
After a time, being quite unable to come to us, the Lord graciously opened the way for me to be allowed to go and visit her; and now a new scene presented itself. Her father was a Roman Catholic, and therefore was thoroughly opposed to our entering the barracks; but love to his daughter caused him to yield to her wishes, which proved, as the sequel will show, of the Lord’s ordering, fulfilling His purposes of grace. One day when I went to see her, she cried, “Now I can say Jesus is precious to me, for He loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
Having found Christ herself, all her anxiety was about her beloved father, that he might know Jesus, who was so precious to her. On one occasion she said to me, “Father allowed me to speak to him last night about Jesus, but I had to hide the Bible.”
Another day her father asked her what I was talking about; so she went over our conversation in her own simple way, asking him if he would like to have a talk with me. He replied in the affirmative, but added that it must be in her room. I spoke with him accordingly, but he evinced no desire at all to hear me, making an excuse for leaving the room.
After this my poor little friend sank day by day, and she could only speak a few words at a time, which were always about Jesus. “Oh! to see the Lord,” she would often say. “Oh! to be with Him!” One day she said, “Father is very much on my heart. Have you any hope of him, Miss G—?” I answered that I was sure the Lord would make him His own. “Ah, yes!” she said, “because He is the God of all grace.” “Yes,” I added, “and He is the God of all consolation, too; and He has given you this assurance to cheer your heart.”
That night she was dying. When almost gone, she was aroused by some noise. Calling for her father, and catching hold of both his hands, she said, “Father, I would have been with Jesus, only for some noise which wakened me. I saw, oh t I saw streets of gold, and bright and shining courts!” Then asking for her bible, she put it into her father’s hands, adding, “Father, won’t you read it, and listen to the ladies?” after saying which she lay back, and fell asleep in Jesus.
Some months after the death of the dear girl, her father became seriously ill with the same disease consumption; and now the Lord graciously began a work of conviction in his soul.
Several times he sent for me, but being away from home, it was some time before I saw him.
When I entered his room he exclaimed, in a frantic manner, “Miss G—, don’t come near me! I’m only fit for hell, and that will be my portion!” Seeing that I hesitated to advance nearer, he said, “Will you not come to me, and tell me something to give me comfort, for I am most wretched—too bad for God to look on me?” I then asked him if he were worse than the thief on the cross, whom man was putting out of this world for his bad acts. “No one ever went so far as I did,” he said; “for when you came to read the Bible to my poor child, I so hated the sight of it and you, that I cursed you in my heart, and took the policeman into the room to hinder her hearing what you read.”
“Well, as you have gone so far with the thief who said ‘We, indeed, justly,’ for you own you deserve hell—tell me, are you content to remain there?” He seemed in great distress, so I said what I could to comfort him.
I waited next day to see if he would send for me, which he did. On entering his room I said, “Well, sergeant, I was both surprised and pleased to get your message.” Desirous of resuming the subject of the thief I then said, “I remembered you last night before the Lord, and prayed that you might go on step by step as the thief on the cross did, and be able to say, like him, ‘Lord remember me.’ If you only knew how those three words comforted me when the Lord was leading me to Himself; they seemed to say, now Lord I have Thy remembrance, I don’t need any other, The answer of Jesus, ‘This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise’ proved what joy it was to His heart to hear the request. You would say that one fitted to enter that place was a person who had done many good deeds, given alms, and borne a good name before men, &c.; but how different are the thoughts of God,”
“That reminds me,” he said, “of what Jane read to me about Nicodemus and the poor woman at the well, both were alike guilty before God.” He then said, “Dear, dear, Jane! I wish I had listened more to her.” “Well,” I replied, “listen to the words of Jane’s Saviour, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;’” (Matt. 11:2828Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28).) After this I left him with the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to read.
On the following day he received a visit from the parish priest, to whom he told his wretched condition; but the reply to the dying man was, “You have brought it all upon yourself by listening to those outside the pale of the true church; no one can be saved out of that.”
Directly the priest had left he sent for me, and told me what had been said to him, adding, “But, Miss G—, I have been reading that beautiful chapter in Isaiah which you marked for me, and the two words, ‘us ALL,’ have fastened themselves on my mind. The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of US ALL! Would not that include me, bad as I am? but then no one can be saved outside the one church, I’m told.”
To this I replied, “That was the very mistake Peter made.” I then read parts of the tenth and eleventh of Acts, showing him how the Lord graciously disabused Peter’s mind of his prejudices. He then asked me if the same scriptures were in his Bible, so I marked them for him, especially these words, “God is no respecter of persons.” As an illustration of this, I took the case of the Queen offering a free pardon to all in prison, adding, “But if you were there, bound with shackles and fetters, surely you would receive the pardon; and when free you would, in gratitude to your deliverer, do that which would please him or her, not for deliverance, but because you were delivered ... ” “Oh, yes; you mean ‘The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all;’ but what about the one church?” He then requested me to pray for him, that the Lord would enable him to believe His truth; so, again pointing out some passages in Acts 10 and 11. I left him.
The next morning he sent for me, and as I entered he exclaimed, “Oh, Miss G—, I am all right now, the Lord has turned my darkness into light; the loving and gracious Saviour, the Holy One and the Just, has paid the debt I owed. I fell asleep while reading that verse.
‘God is no respecter of persons,’ a fine word for me; and while asleep I saw—as plainly as I see you—a vessel let down from Heaven that would hold. the world, suspended by a woolen thread; and as I looked on it the thought came to my mind of what you had so often said of the power and simplicity of the way a sinner is saved; this vessel would hold the world, and yet the woolen thread was not broken.” He further added, “There were many of your family in the vessel, and Mr. Tom had one foot in it.” This allusion to my beloved brother, about whose soul I was anxious, made me weep.
Seeing this, the poor sergeant said, “Why do you weep, Miss G—, don’t you know that when God begins a work He will surely perfect it?” And so it proved; for last year my brother died in the Lord.
The description the poor sergeant gave of the vessel which he saw let down was singularly illustrative of the grace of God, as well as of the power of Satan. He said, “It was truly wonderful to see how easy the way was made for everyone to go into the vessel, as there was a snow white plank from it to the edge of the field, so that one had neither to step down, lest he might slip—nor up, if too feeble—but right on to it. Some were kept from stepping on, by turning aside to tables temptingly spread with every kind of luxuries; others, by amusements of various kinds; but most were deterred from trusting themselves in the vessel through fear that the woolen thread might break. One man, whose gaze was turned upwards to the source from whence the vessel had come, heeded not the allurements around, and went on the plank right into the vessel. I was so much attracted by him that I followed, neither looking to the right hand nor the left but what I feared the enemy would use against my entrance into the vessel was the weakness of the woolen thread. How could I feel secure when held by so weak a cord? But, trusting simply to it and looking upward, without either fear or difficulty, I stepped upon the plank and entered the vessel.”
The next day, when I went up to see the sergeant, his wife said, “He cannot speak much, he is so weak today.” I found his thoughts all centered upon Christ, and he said, “Oh, Miss G—, my heart is overflowing with love to the One who holds the vessel, for I am now in His keeping, and I long to see Him,”
He lived for some time after this, and it was beautiful to watch, day by day, his increasing love to the person of Christ who had saved him, and he rejoiced to listen to the word being read to him. On one occasion while I was thus engaged, he said, “Oh, that I had studied the Bible more, it tells so much of Christ.” Another time while with him, lie exclaimed, “Precious Jesus! I am held in Thy hand, and watched over by Thine eye.”
On the night of his death some Roman Catholic friends, according to their custom, put a lighted candle into his hand, and although he had not spoken for many hours, he then said, “Take away that, it is a false light, I do not need it, for I have the light of the Spirit of God now.” The next morning when I called I found he had passed away quite quietly, to be “Forever with the Lord.”
J. S. G.