As long as he lived, this man was unwearied and unflinching in testifying, to all that crossed his path, how much Jesus Christ had been to his heart and soul; and he died in the possession of a full and blessed hope.
Another Infidel, whose wife was a Roman Catholic, also became unwell, and gradually sank under great suffering and agony. His blasphemies against God were known and shuddered at by all the neighbours. His wife pled with me to visit him. She refused, at my suggestion, to call her own priest, so I accompanied her at last. The man refused to hear one word about spiritual things, and foamed with rage. He even spat at me, when I mentioned the name of Jesus. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him!” There is a wisdom which is at best earthly, and at worst “sensual and devilish.” His wife asked me to take care of the little money they had, as she would not entrust it to her own priest. I visited the poor man daily, but his enmity to God and his sufferings together seemed to drive him mad. His yells gathered crowds on the streets. He tore to pieces his very bed-clothes, till they had to bind him on the iron bed where he lay, foaming and blaspheming. Towards the end I pled with him even then to look to the Lord Jesus, and asked if I might pray with him? With all his remaining strength, he shouted at me,—
“Pray for me to the devil!”
Reminding him how he had always denied that there was any devil, I suggested that he must surely believe in one now, else he would scarcely make such a request, even in mockery. In great rage he cried,—
“Yes, I believe there is a devil, and a God, and a just God, too; but I have hated Him in life, and I hate Him in death!”
With these awful words, he wriggled into Eternity; but his shocking death produced a very serious impression for good, especially amongst young men, in the district where his character was known.
How different was the case of that Doctor who also had been an unbeliever as well as a drunkard! Highly educated, skilful, and gifted above most in his profession, he was taken into consultation for specially dangerous cases, whenever they could find him tolerably sober. After one of his excessive “bouts,” he had a dreadful attack of delirium tremens. At one time, wife and watchers had a fierce struggle to dash from his lips a draught of prussic acid; at another, they detected the silver-hafted lancet concealed in the band of his shirt, as he lay down, to bleed himself to death. His aunt came and pled with me to visit him. My heart bled for his poor young wife and two beautiful little children. Visiting him twice daily, and sometimes even more frequently, I found the way somehow into his heart, and he would do almost anything for me and longed for my visits. When again the fit of self-destruction seized him, they sent for me; he held out his hand eagerly, and grasping mine, said,—
“Put all these people out of the room, remain you with me; I will be quiet, I will do everything you ask!”
I got them all to leave, but whispered to one in passing to “keep near the door.”
Alone I sat beside him, my hand in his, and kept up a quiet conversation for several hours. After we had talked of everything that I could think of, and it was now far into the morning, I said,—