W.S. is a retired tradesman, a thoughtful and rather reticent man; brought up a Socinian, and professedly such still. I am trying to lay siege to him, not without merciful tokens of hope from the Lord. And the simple plan is, not to open the controversy between Socinus and Scripture, but to arrange that each visit shall have its short Scripture reading, its friendly talk, and its prayer, all bearing mainly on the deadliness of sin and the wonder and glory of salvation. I happen to know that the married daughter of W.S., a very intelligent woman, was brought from heresy to a divine Saviour's feet by means of a sermon, not on Christ's Godhead, but on the sinfulness of sin.
T.H. is a sturdy old blacksmith, old enough to have been bred in the infidel school of Carlile (quite another person than Carlyle), and steeped in old-fashioned Chartism. He always has the newspaper on his now helpless knees, never the Bible; but he almost always has some Bible difficulty ready for me. It is pleasant to be able this afternoon to show him, holding the page up before his eyes, that his last stumbling-block is one of his own (or his friends') bold invention. He meets civility always civilly, and never resents a natural transition from the last bit of politics to the Gospel. But it is a hard, sad case. The Lord only knows how the apparently motionless conscience fares.
T.G. is a fine, manly artizan, a coach-painter, scarcely yet in middle life; lately the somewhat bitter and very self-satisfied critic of his good and devoted wife's simple faith. I have had rather discouraging talks with T.G. before to-day; but now he is very ill, and a few Sunday afternoons ago he sent across the road for the Curate, who to his own solemn joy found him broken down in unmistakable conviction of sin, asking what he must do to be saved. It is a blessed thing to visit him now, for already the rays of the eternal sun are shining between the clouds of a deeply genuine repentance; and the visitor's task is plain,--
"To teach him all the mercy, while he shows him all the sin."
Soon it will be my happiness, I hope, to administer to him, as a penitent believer, with his now happy wife and a faithful friend, the precious Communion; and I look forward to see him depart in due time in the peace of God, to be with Christ, for whom already he has learnt to testify.
Then comes another visit, to one of our "bettermost" neighbours; this door bears, or ought to bear, the proverbial brass knocker. But be the door what it may be, there is great need and great mercy inside it. The dear man, W.T., lately in active professional life in the home civil-service, is sinking under the most agonizing of human maladies, and it is very near the close; this is the second visit to-day, in his urgent need. But, blessed be God, grace, once absent, has found its way through the terrible obstacle of pain, and his scarcely articulate utterance--intelligible to his visitor only because now so familiar--speaks of the joy and rest of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the sufferer's longing for the salvation of another soul, a soul very dear to him.[23]
[23] Wonderful to say (it is to me very wonderful), I have known more than one bright conversion take place amidst the untold pangs of such an illness.
Such visits tell upon the heart, and upon the head, and perhaps the round among the suffering has been long enough to-day. To-morrow we will try to get a quiet half-hour with W.R., a shopkeeper, sinking in consumption; a man of no common natural refinement and thoughtfulness, but long troubled with that sort of scepticism which is generated (who knows in how many cases?) by the mysteries, not of God's revelation, but of His providence. For him, too, the visitor's business is to lay a gentle siege, "here a little, and there a little," trying never to lose patience with objections and difficulties, but rather to sympathize with them _as to their pains_, and then to suggest the answer in Jesus Christ. And oh joy, the Lord is finding the way in, through His Word, and the clouds are passing away from the man's mind, and soul, and forehead, as he is getting to "know WHOM he believes."[24]