IN the small town of W―, situated in one of the Eastern Counties, there resided about six years ago, a young man full of high hopes, and surrounded by many of this world’s blessings, but he loved the things of this world and not the things of Christ. One night after he had been playing at cards (one of his chief amusements), he took up a tract, which lay in his way, and read of the love of the Lord Jesus. God used that tract to bring him to a sense of his guilt. He confessed his lost condition and his want of a Saviour, and the Lord, who is ever ready to hear the faintest cry, heard him and gave him peace. From that moment he became a changed man.
The change soon showed itself in love to the Lord and to His people, and a few months after his conversion he was found proclaiming the glad tidings of salvation, A few weeks ago he fell sick, and it was my privilege to be at his bedside and to hear from his own lips these words―
“I am going home.”
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“Perfectly happy,” was his reply.
He wished the boys in his class at the Sunday-school to be told, that he realized that his life on earth was fast drawing to a close, and that he felt how little he had done for the Lord Jesus; he also earnestly desired that they should begin early to serve Christ, so that by-and-by they might hear the blessed words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant:... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” It was a particular pleasure to him to listen to the hymn―
“Oh, happy day that fixed my choice
On Thee, my Saviour and my God.”
“Ah!” he would whisper, “it was a happy day.” Some days before his death, he, at the last, nearly lost all power of speech. Suddenly his voice returned with power, and he bade farewell to his friends, commended his soul to Jesus, and so he fell asleep. E. B. F.