He lay in his wretched hovel swearing his last hours away. No one dared go near him or speak to him of Jesus. He had often been approached, and had as often sternly refused to listen to the gospel. Poor Jack! His infidelity had done little for him, for there he lay miserable, sick and lonely.
A woman visiting that neighborhood heard of Jack, and her heart went out in pity for that wretched man. She had one bunch of flowers in her basket, and summoning her courage, she went up the stairs and knocked at Jack’s door. In answer to a hoarse “Come in,” she entered, walked up to his bedside, and laid the fragrant flowers by his cheek without speaking a word.
Jack looked wildly into the stranger’s face, and asked, “Who sent that?”
“God,” she answered, and left the room without saying anything more.
That night about a dozen old cronies dropped in to see Jack, most of them infidels like himself. They have little to say, for they see too plainly that their old friend Jack is fast nearing the end of his days, and infidelity has little comfort to give at the approach of death.
At length Jack breaks the silence himself:
“I tell you, mates, there is a God. As T lay here all alone, I thought, ‘Suppose there is a God, and a hell, and heaven: where will I be?’ I nearly went mad at the thought that I would have to meet Him. So I put it to Him this way: ‘If there be a God, and if I’m wrong, let Him send me a token and I will believe Him.’ About five o’clock I was lying with my eyes closed when I heard a step, and looking up I saw that bunch of flowers. A woman brought it, and when I asked who sent it she said ‘God,’ and left. I tell you, mates, there is a God and I’m going to believe on Him. He sent me those flowers, and along with them He sent this message” (pulling out a text card from under the pillow): “God is love. Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.’ There is a God, mates, and He loves me.”
Silently the circle broke up, and one after another slipped away. But the message sent from God that day reached the soul of “Infidel Jack,” and brought him to Himself. The voice of the lovely flowers spoke to his heart of a—Creator God; and the text that accompanied it told of His love and of the salvation that He had provided for sinners.
Infidelity is a poor friend to a dying man.
It may fill the mouth with argument, and calm the conscience in life; but in death it leaves its victim to “fall into the hands of the living God.”