BY the side of a rippling brook, in one of the secluded glens of Scotland, there stands a low, mud-thatched cottage, with its neat honeysuckled porch facing the south. Beneath this humble roof, on her snow-white bed, lay old Nanny the Scotchwoman, patiently and cheerfully awaiting the moment when her happy spirit would take its flight to “mansions in the skies;” experiencing with Paul, “We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” By her bedside, on a small table, lay her spectacles, and her well-thumbed Bible— “her barrel and cruse,” as she used to call it, from which she daily, yea, hourly, spiritually fed on the “Bread of Life.” A young minister frequently called to see her; he loved to listen to her simple expressions of Bible truths, for when she spoke of her “inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away,” it seemed but a little way off, and the listener almost fancied he heard the redeemed in heaven, saying, “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood.”
One day, the young minister put to the happy saint the following startling question, “Now Nanny,” he said, “what if, after all your prayers, and watching, and waiting, God should suffer your soul to be eternally lost?” Pious Nanny raised herself on her elbow, and turning to him a wistful look, laid her right hand on the “precious Bible,” which lay open before her, and quietly replied, “Ae, dearie me, is that a’ the length you hae got yet, man?” And then continued, her eyes sparkling with almost heavenly brightness, “God would hae the greatest loss. Poor Nanny would but lose her soul, and that would be a great loss, indeed; but God would lose His honor and His character. Haven’t I hung my soul upon His ‘exceeding great and precious promises,’ an’ if He brake His word, He would make Himself a liar, AND ALL THE UNIVERSE WOULD RUSH INTO CONFUSION.” Thus spake the old Scotch pilgrim. These were among the last words that fell from her dying lips; and most precious words they were, like “apples of gold in baskets of silver.”
Let the reader consider them. They apply to every step of the pilgrim’s path, from the first to the last. By faith the old Scotchwoman had cast her soul’s salvation upon God’s promise in Christ by the gospel. She knew that His dear Son had said, “He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, HATH everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” She knew that God hath said, “By Him (Christ) all that believe are justified from all things;” that “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from ALL SIN;” for “He bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” This was the first step. And all through life the Scottish pilgrim hung upon HIS “exceeding great and precious promises, for all things and in every hour of need. The divine argument of Romans 8 was hers by faith— “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” In every sorrow she had found Him a “very present help in trouble;” and now, about to leave the weary wilderness for her everlasting home, could she think that He would prove unfaithful to His word? No; sooner than should poor old Nanny’s soul be lost, God’s honor, God’s character, GOD HIMSELF must be overturned, and “ALL THE UNIVERSE RUSH INTO CONFUSION.” Dear old pilgrim!
ML 03/29/1903