DR. Nettleton had come home from the evening service in some country town to his home for the night. The good lady of the house, rather an elderly person, after bustling about to provide her guest with refreshment, said, directly before her daughter, who was in the room, “Dr. Nettleton, I do wish you would talk to Caroline. She doesn’t care anything about going to service, nor about the salvation of her soul. I’ve talked and talked, and got our minister to talk, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. I wish you would talk to her, Dr. Nettleton.” Saying which she soon went out of the room.
Dr. Nettleton continued quietly taking his repast, when he turned round to the young girl and said:
“Now, just tell me, Miss Caroline, don’t they bother you amazingly about this thing?”
She, taken by surprise at an address so unexpected, answered at once:
“Yes sir, they do; they keep talking to me all the time till I am sick of it.”
“So I thought,” said Dr. Nettleton,
“Let’s see—how old are you?” “Eighteen, sir.”
“Good health?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The fact is,” said Dr. Nettleton, “religion is a good thing in itself; but the idea of all the time troubling a young creature like you with it; and you’re in good health, you say. Religion is a good thing. It will hardly do to die without it. I wonder how long it would do for you to wait?”
“That’s just what I’ve been thinking myself,” said Caroline.
“Well,” said Dr. Nettleton, “suppose you stay till you are fifty? No, that won’t do; I attended the funeral the other day of a lady fifteen years younger than that. Thirty? How will that do?”
“I’m not sure it would do to wait quite so long,” said Caroline.
“No, I do not think so, either; something might happen. See now, twenty-five or even twenty, if we could be sure you would live so long. A year from now, how would that do?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Neither do I. The fact is, my dear young lady, the more I think of it, and of how many people, as well, apparently, as you are, do die suddenly, I am afraid to have you put it off a moment longer. Besides, the Bible says, Now is the accepted time. We must take this time. What shall we do? Had we not better kneel right down here, and ask God for mercy through his Son Jesus Christ?”
The young lady, perfectly overcome by her feelings, kneeled on the spot. In a day or two, she by grace came out rejoicing in hope, finding she had far from lost all enjoyment in this life.
ML 04/15/1906