CHAPTER II.

A CONSUMPTIVE PATIENT.

Every mountain and hill shall be made low.—Is. xl. 4.

In the same ward with the poor lad there was a middle-aged man a little above him in earthly. position who kindly attended to him to the end, and who was touched by the sight, first of his repentance, and then of his great happiness in God.

He presently afterwards left the Hospital, but not long after became so ill in his own home that he felt he was a dying man. He said to his wife, "That poor boy had Christian visitors coming constantly to him, but none come to me." His wife answered, "Very likely if we write to them they will come to you too." So one of them wrote, and sent the letter to the place at which the boy had worked and from which the visitors came to him.

When the visitor who had seen the happy change in the boy came in answer to this request, the sick man told him of his having become a changed character on the beginning of the failure of his health some two years before, and of his church-going as long as he was able, and of all his other religious doings, and said that having thus so entirely turned to God he trusted he was safe now, if He should, as he supposed, be going to take him away.

Yet his tone and manner, notwithstanding his expression of assurance of readiness to die, betrayed an uneasy doubt about it.

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The visitor listened to his account of his religious efforts and performances; and then said, Mr. H —, you have sent for me. It is not I who have volunteered to come to And you. you are a dying man, so it is no time for trifling. You must bear with me in speaking out plainly what I think. As far as one sinner can form an opinion of another, you, with all your religion, are going to hell. But my thinking and saying this will never send you there, and your thinking and saying that you are going to heaven will never bring you to heaven. It does not matter what you think or I think, or what you say or I say, but only what God thinks and what God says, and we can learn that from His Word."

And then he turned to the fifth verse of the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians: "Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves, know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" and said to him, "Now, with all your religious doings, I cannot see the smallest symptom of Jesus Christ being in you, and if not, then you have here the Word of God that you are a reprobate, which does not mean what we generally mean by the word, an open notorious sinner, for you know you are not that, but one whom God tries and finds wanting, so that He has to reject him. So if this is indeed the case with you, and you die as you are, there is nothing for you but hell with all your religion."

The poor man was very angry indeed. He could not bear to have his fine house that he had taken

such pains in building up (Ps. cxxvii. 1; Matt. vii. 26) thus brought down rudely about his ears. But his visitor told him it was no use to be angry, as it would not affect the fact as to his safety or danger one way or other, and that he had better look quietly at what God's Word said, and abide by that, and act upon it. But he could not pacify him, but had to go away, leaving him " in a rage" (2 Kings v. 12).

When he had gone, the man told his wife to leave him alone, and after remaining about an hour in deep thought, said quietly to her, " Mr. — is right: I am going to hell."

The visitor found him next day in this entirely altered state of mind, and the poor man said to him, "Do listen while I pray, to see if I pray right." And so the visitor did listen, while the man, who had a great flow of language, made a long and beautiful speech to God, such as might almost be a model for some dear old deacon in his regular weekly prayer in the week-night prayer-meeting.

The visitor sat by the bedside, in deep anxiety and sorrow for him, and said to him when he had finished his beautiful prayer, "Mr. H., I do not know what to do to help you. If you could pray, all would be right, for God would be sure to answer; but in all that fine speech you have been making to Him I do not think there was a word of real prayer."

But God was better to him than the fears of his unbelieving friend, and soon brought him out of that rubbish of words to the cry of poor Peter sinking in the water, and of the Publican in his soul-trouble in the Temple, "Lord, save me!" "God be merciful to me a sinner."

And when He had thus mercifully given the power to pray, He answered the prayer He had

given. Having brought him into repentance toward Himself, He enabled him also to exercise "faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts xx. 21), and he was filled with joy and peace in believing, and knew that he was ready to go, with a very different assurance (1 Thess. i. 5) from that into which he had before been vainly trying to work himself up by his own religious doings.

He lived just a fortnight from the first time of the visitor seeing him, and passed much of the latter part of this time in happy praise and prayer. His wife bore witness to the sunshine into which he had now come (Ps. lxvii. 1, lxxxix. 15), for she could tell, as no one else could, or at any rate not nearly so well, of the blessed change from the gloom, and at times the bad temper, with which he had made himself, and her too, miserable before. The Word was fulfilled in him in this respect as well as in that freedom of heart which he now had toward God, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. v. 17).

The last night he seemed to pass almost entirely in sweet communion with his heavenly Father and blessed Saviour (1 John i. 3). When his wife, in the morning, seeing that he was close upon death, asked him if he was happy, he answered by a heavenly smile and died almost directly afterwards.

"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him " (Ps. xxxiv. 6).

"Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Acts ii. 21).

"O Lord, my God, I cried unto thee and thou hast healed me" (Ps. xxx. 2).

CHAPTER III.

A PRIZE-RUNNER.

I thought on my ways and turned my feet unto thy testimonies. -Ps. cxix. 59.

He hath filled the hungry with good things.-Luke i. 53.

A YOUNG MAN who belonged to a family of fastwalkers and runners, and so had been led much into walking and running matches with anything but a good effect upon him, was brought down by consumption, by which God mercifully took him aside from the bustle of the world to make him listen and think as he had not done while in it.

A friend visiting him from time to time rejoiced to see his deepening repentance and increasing anxiety to know that he was saved.

On the afternoon of the Saturday next before Christmas Day, which fell that year on Friday, after he had been speaking to him of the blessedness of the "knowledge of salvation" through the forgiveness of our sins, "through the tender mercy of our God" (Luke i. 77, 78), the young man said to him, with deep earnestness in his eyes as well as in the tone of his voice," When may I have it?" for he knew he might die in any of his fits of coughing, and felt it a terrible thing, in this nearness to death, to be still uncertain of being saved.

His friend told him that God's time was now: "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is