“HE died for me on the tree.” These were the precious words that fell from the lips of an old woman over ninety years of age. She lived in the County Donegal, and during a recent visit to that portion of the North of Ireland I first spoke to her on the subject of her soul’s eternal destiny.
A dear Christian friend, who lived in the neighborhood, suggested some visiting before the evening preaching, and to this I gladly assented.
Our path led to a mountain which commanded a magnificent view of Lough Swilly reposing in unruffled serenity under the beams of the noonday sun. Well-cultivated fields of waving corn stretched far away in the luxuriant valleys beneath, and the entrancing beauty of the scene was such as to cause one’s heart to praise the goodness of Him who sendeth “rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”
After a delightful walk we halted opposite a structure, built of stones loosely piled together. Upon entering the solitary room of the habitation, we found ourselves almost completely excluded from the light of day. There were no windows to admit the light, and it was a considerable time before I was able to discern, stretched upon a bed, the old woman we had come to see. The position of the bed was readily ascertained by the sounds of pain and suffering that escaped her lips, but at no time during our stay were her features distinctly visible. Sitting near the bed was her idiot son, a man in middle life. It was reported he wished her dead, and fears were entertained that he harbored the idea of strangling her, under the supposition that she had lived too long and was a burden to the neighbors. I found her hearing defective, and had to repeat in loud tones my question as to what she rested on for eternal safety. When my words were understood by her, the sounds of pain ceased for a time, and, gathering her failing strength, she said clearly, “The precious blood of Christ;” and then with a vehemence that carried conviction to our hearts she said, “He died for me on the tree.” Her painful breathing continued, only broken again by occasional repetition of precious passages from the Word of God.
How evident it was that heavenly light had shone into her soul, although material darkness reigned in her desolate home.
We looked on one another for some time in silence, pondering the wonderful ways of Him who hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. What a change of circumstances, beloved reader, from the depths of human poverty to the heights of exaltation in the presence of Him who died for her on the tree.
And such will be the eternal portion of one thus simply resting her soul upon the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Reader, should death enter your chamber this night, and still the pulsations of life, would you enter the blackness of darkness forever, or into the light of His presence? Can you now say, My sins are under the blood? Or are you, amid all the priceless privileges that surround you, still neglecting the great salvation provided by Him who gave His beloved Son to die on the tree for sinners such as you? The King of Terrors may assert his claim on thee this night, and usher thee laden with all thy sins into an eternity of untold and awful despair. And doubtless the most bitter ingredient in thy cup of sorrow there will be the conviction of the goodness of God that would have led thee to repentance during thy short sojourn on earth.
He who has raised from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the One who died on the tree, still waits in long-suffering grace; and “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
“Hark! hark! hark!
‘Tis a message of mercy free
O sinner, thy many sins were dark,
But Jesus hath died for thee.
Haste! haste! haste!
Delay not from death to flee.
Oh, wherefore the moments in madness waste
When Jesus is calling thee?”
W. M. B.