“All, yes! I once knew and enjoyed all this very much. I have been converted for five years, but I’ve been very unfaithful; but, bless His Name, He has brought it all back again to me.”
This was spoken by James C., whom I visited a few weeks before his death, at his own request, and to whom I had just been presenting “the love of God,” so wonderfully expressed in the fourth chapter of the first Epistle of John. He went on to explain that when I had spoken seriously to him on several occasions, when meeting him on his beat—he was a policeman—he had given me very little encouragement, for his heart had been all wrong; and I drew from him how that he had been ashamed to confess his Saviour before his comrades, and had taken part with them in their worldly and wicked ways.
Feeling anxious not to go on with him on false ground, and most desirous not to bolster him up with false hope, I looked him straight in the face, and said, “Dear C., this is, in all probability, your last illness; you may linger a week or two, but it would be wrong in me to encourage you to hope for recovery. Now, do you mean to say that if God were to call you into His holy presence before this week is over, you could meet Him—the righteous God—without a shudder or a thought of fear?”
He replied emphatically, “I could.”
“Then perfect love has cast out fear?”
“It has, bless His Name.”
“Bless His Name, indeed,” I echoed, and then, referring to the 19th verse of the chapter, I said “Then you love Him because He first loved you?”
“I do indeed, now, but I’ve been very unfaithful.”
After this C. had a very bad relapse, and the doctor said he must be kept quiet, as he was inclined to be delirious; so I did not see him for three or four days, but by-and-by he sent a message to me, begging that I would come to him.
He was calm, but very weak, and on my entering the room he was asleep. As I was sitting by his bedside quietly waiting, he awoke, and with remarkable vivacity reached out his hand, giving me a fervent welcome. I felt it was my Master that he was welcoming, and spoke to him of His love and grace. He soon sat up, and asked me to read to him the 19th chapter of John’s Gospel. At the end of the 3rd verse, he said, “There isn’t that lovely? Isn’t that plain? What can be simpler?”
I asked him if to be with Him was enough?
“Oh, yes, quite enough!”
“That’s all, that’s everything. It is heaven where He is.”
“Yes,” said C., “that will do.”
On another occasion we communed together of “life.” After saying a little on the words, “He that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:1212He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. (1 John 5:12)), I asked him if he understood me. “Oh yes,” he replied, and it was evident that he followed me with keen enjoyment. He grew rapidly in grace; truly as the outward man perished, the inward man was renewed day by day; though getting weaker and weaker, he could listen to God’s truths without weariness for more than an hour at a time, and we never parted without prayer together, with which praise and thanksgiving were always largely mingled.
I often asked him if he needed anything, but each time he was full of gratitude for the bountiful supply of all that he wanted, and said that it was remarkable how many people had cared for him and sent him nice things. He gratefully acknowledged a Father’s hand in it all, saying that other sick folk were not thought of in such a way. I constantly spoke to him of his prospect of soon departing “to be with Christ, which is far better,” and, though in the fluctuations of his disease he occasionally fancied he was getting better, yet he was always more than calm—quite happy in the thought of “going to be with Him, bless His Name!”
One evening I told him the following story of a poor impenitent worldling who had been under the medical care of my uncle when I was a youth:
“Mr. N. had been transported as a convict to Botany Bay, but through good behavior had obtained much liberty out there, had traded, and at the end of his term had returned to England a wealthy man. He lived in a large house in the neighborhood, and drove about in his carriage, and being ‘well-to-do,’ was pretty generally received into society, for ‘men will bless thee when thou doest well unto thyself.’ But ‘it is appointed unto men once to die’; this poor man’s time came, and all the skill of my uncle, and of the physicians whose attendance wealth could easily command, could not arrest the power of the fell enemy. The poor man’s soul was racked with agony. He had a dim but terribly real sense that after death was the judgment—that he must ‘come into judgment,’ for he was unforgiven! His last evening on earth came—the doctor told him that the end was near.
“‘Die, doctor? No, I cannot die, I will not die!’ he repeated, in terror. ‘Doctor, I’ll give you two hundred pounds to save me!’
“‘Calm yourself, my dear sir, I can do no more for you, you will but hasten your end by this excitement. You must prepare yourself to die.’
“‘Doctor, doctor, I won’t die! Five hundred pounds for another day.’... but the doctor could give no hope, and left him.”
“There now, look at that,” said dear C., “and I wouldn’t give five hundred pounds—no, not five hundred pence—to keep me from dying. The Lord is my physician, the blessed Lord is my doctor.”
Just then he was taken with a severe pain in his side. I gently laid him down, and asked him if I could do anything for him. “Oh, no, it will all be over soon—the Lord’s my doctor,” he repeated. “I prayed to Him in my first illness to raise me up, and He did it, and now He’ll do as He pleases.”
On a subsequent evening I took him some wall texts, and nailed them up for him. One text— “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” set him thinking, and after a minute or two he said, “What troubles me is that I cannot pray, the words won’t come straight.”
“Oh, C.,” I said, “but you can speak to God as a simple child to a loving Father; tell Him your wants, and bless Him for all He has done for you.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, touching his poor chest on the left side, “it’s all right here! I can pray that way to myself, but the other night I told Bessie (his loving wife, who never left him) to kneel down by the bedside, and I tried to pray with her, but somehow the sentences wouldn’t come out right.”
“Ah, C.,” I replied, “you said you had been unfaithful. ‘God is not mocked,’—did you ever ask Bessie during the last five years, when you were well and hearty, to kneel down and pray with you?”
“Ah, no! there I’ve been all wrong! Oh, I’ve been too bad, too bad!” And the tears welled up in his eyes, while beads of sweat stood on his brow, and I thanked God for this evidence of real self-judgment.
“Now, now, James, you mustn’t cry,” said his poor wife; “you know the doctor said it’s the worst thing you could do.”
“Oh, let him alone,” said I, “a few tears of real repentance will do him good. But, James,” I said, “not ‘too bad,’ not ‘too bad.’”
“Ah, no! there I’m wrong again; not too bad for Him—bless His Name!”
On the morning of Thursday, the 25th December I called, and found him bright and happy, not at all regretful that he wasn’t to have a “merry Christmas,” but rejoicing that before long he would be with Him whom the world had rejected, scorned, scourged, and cast out—a now risen, glorified Saviour!
On the Saturday morning I called again, and found dear C. very weak, yet remarkably bright and lively. I noticed, too, how he thanked his wife, and others who waited on him, for their little efforts for his care and comfort, so I said to him before them all, “I see grace has done something for you, I remember your impatience with your brother, the first evening I came, when he put your coat over you not quite as you liked it; but now your tone is very different.” He smiled sweetly, and said, “Yes, I remember.” We read together the last two verses of the fourth, and the first five verses of the fifth chapter of second Corinthians, especially triumphing together over the thought of “the eternal weight of glory,” which shall be ours “when clothed upon with our house which is from heaven,” or when “mortality shall be swallowed up of life;” and again we thanked the Lord for the rich provisions of His grace in Christ, and commended the sorrowing wife, and the dear children, so soon to be orphans, to Him who “relieveth the fatherless and the widow.”
As I rose to leave, C. said, “I thought I was going yesterday morning, and was nearly sending for you—you will come, won’t you I want you to be with me when I’m going home.”
I said I would come with pleasure, if it would comfort him. He then asked vein particularly where my house was, and as I went out of the room he looked at me, oh so brightly! and with a cheerful tone and expression, as if he were speaking of some earthly journey to a pleasant land, he said “Mind, I shall send for you when I’m going you will come?”
“Oh, yes, willingly, at any hour; but He will be with you, dear C.—His rod and Hi! staff they will comfort you.”
“True, true, but I should like you to be with me when I’m going home.”
I saw him no more alive. On Lord’s Day morning, about five o’clock, he awoke his tender, watchful wife, and asked for his bread and milk. He sat up and said—
“I’m going home, Bessie dear: I know I’m going! Come, kiss me, Bessie. You have been a kind, good wife, and nursed me patiently. But now I’m going, and I can’t cry, dear Bessie; I know God will take care of you and the dear little ones. You mustn’t think me unkind, Bessie, not to cry, but I can’t cry at going home!” He took a little bread and milk and leant heavily upon his kind but worn-out nurse. She laid him on his pillow, and he said, “Send for Mr. W.”; but in a few minutes, as she looked at him, his face shone with that brilliant light, so often seen on the countenances of triumphant saints on the threshold of “the glory,” and he fell “asleep in Christ.” Without a pang, a groan, or a flutter, he was “gone home.” And so “He giveth His beloved sleep.” W.