A MAN had listened to one of God’s servants preaching and was deeply affected by conviction of sin.
Some nights after this, Evangelist S— visited a dance-hall, with a desire, if possible, to see some of Satan’s pleasure votaries delivered from his kingdom and power, and brought to the feet of Jesus. Here he met this same man who had attended the preaching, and said to him, “Is there not some opportunity for God to work here?”
With a look of almost fiendish hate, and with a voice of almost hellish aversion, he got the reply, “What business have you here! you get out of this place at once!” Accordingly, the evangelist, complying with this abrupt and ill-mannered rebuke, retired and went his way.
The next morning at the hotel where the preacher was staying came a message from none other than the one who, less than twelve hours before, had so reviled him, written thus, “S—, I treated you very rudely last night. I am sorry. I want you to forgive me. I go to Chester today to transact some business, and this evening at five o’clock I shall meet you. I want this question of salvation settled.”
That evening at a little before five o’clock, a man lay prostrate in the streets of Chester, bearing on his troubled brow the stamp of approaching death. A physician was hastily summoned, to whom the dying man said, “Doctor, is my condition anything serious? I have an appointment to soon meet a man in P—, which I must keep.”
“Man,” replied the physician, “you are dying, and, if you have anything to say, say it now.”
Gathering up his remaining strength, he took a pencil and wrote the evangelist the following line: —
“The night I heard you-preach I was deeply moved and troubled. I could not rest, so I took a drink to get relief. I took another and another to drown that terrible voice that harassed me. When I spoke to you at the hall that night I felt as though I were possessed by the devil. And now the question remains unsettled, and it’s too late.”
Having finished this, he raised high his hands and loudly cried, “Oh God, that night I might have been saved, but now I must be damned,” and fell over dead,
Reader, be advised and consider. Stop and reflect. An eternity of endless woe or eternal joy is straight before you. God in mercy and love calls your attention earnestly to it, and addresses Himself to your heart and conscience that you may repent and be converted. The morning with its joy and rapture cometh: also the night with its sorrow and misery. Oh, flee just now for refuge to Jesus ere you wait too long and say, “The harvest is past: the summer is ended and I am not saved.”
ML 12/28/1902