The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 165

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

165

Late one night a messenger came to the doctor’s
door with the message: “Come at once to the
hospital, for a woman is lying there who is deadly
sick. She wants to sce no one but you.”

It was Viola’s mother. What a sight the doctor
beheld as he stepped into the room where the woman
lay, dying of a loathsome disease brought on by a
life of shame! Tossing restlessly about in her bed,
she finally stammered: “O yes, yes, Viola, my
daughter, how is she?”

The doctor told her that Viola had grown to be
a beautiful young girl, that she had received a
Christian training, had but a few weeks ago renewed
her baptismal covenant, and had ‘vowed faithfulness
to her Savior. “Thank God, thank God!” exclaimed
the woman. “How good, how good and gracious,
Thou hast been !”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “God is good and
gracious. Ie sent Jesus into the world to save also
«wretched outcasts such as you are.”

She replied: “But He will not save me.
was once a Christian. I sinned, and then I fell
deeper and deeper. Oh, what a wasted life I’ve led!
How black, black, black my sins are! No, He will
never, never save me!”

The doctor, drawing a chair to the bedside of this
despairing soul, told her in simple words that by
His suffering and death, Christ paid the penalty for
sin, that He shed Tis blood also for harlots, thieves,
murderers, and other great sinners. THe offered to
call his pastor, but the woman would not hear of it.

“Would you like to see your daughter?” asked
the doctor. :

“Oh, how I wish I could!” said the mother. “But
I never want her to see me in my sickness and
shame. I do not want the thought of my wasted
body and life to haunt her all her days.”

It was arranged by the doctor to have this woman
see her daughter, without the girl’s knowing who the
wretched woman in yonder bed really was. He had
the superintendent of the hospital move the woman
into a room where many other patients lay. On his
visit to the hospital the next morning he took Viola
with him, as he had often done. The patients knew
Viola. She had sung for them beautiful Christian
hymns, had told them of the Savior of the lost, had
scattered cheer and sunshine in those dreary rooms.
As the doctor entered the room where the dying
mother lay, the poor wretch, covering her face with
her hands, uttered a cry of surprise and anguish at
the sight of her daughter, a cry that echoed through
the long halls and room of the hospital.

“That poor, poor woman!” said Viola. “What

I, too,

can her trouble be?” Sending Viola to other beds,
the doctor stepped close to the mother and asked,
“Would you like to hear her voice and have her talk
to you?” “Please,” pleaded the mother, “but do not
tell her who I am.”

Standing at the bedside of her own mother,
Viola stroked her fevered brow, spoke to her words
of cheer and comfort, and directed her to Him
whose wondrous love redeemed a lost and sin-sick
world. Leaving the bedside after some minutes, she
promised, “I?ll not forget to pray for you.”

The next day the Lutheran minister, hearing of
the case through the doctor, entered the room where
the woman lay alone in the hospital. It was evident
that there was not much time to lose. Through the
words which the doctor had spoken to her and also
her daughter, God had brought this vile sinner to
the conviction that Jesus would save even her. This
the pastor had found out. After he had pictured to
her Him who will not cast out any who come to
Him, she pleaded with him to remain with her until
she would draw her last breath. This the pastor
gladly did, strengthening her faith with comforting
words as she passed through the valley of the shadow
of death into the company of those who have washed
their robes and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb.

She was buried from the Lutheran church. The
doctor had a cross placed at the head of the grave,
a.cross with the inscription: “Saved by Grace.”

Standing with Viola at the foot of this grave
a few months later, the doctor told Viola that in it
her mother lay buried. He assured her that the
woman she had spoken to in the hospital on that
occasion was indeed her mother and that God had
answered her prayers of the past eight years, saving
her mother from the jaws of destruction.

Walking along the shaded pathway on leaving
the cemetery, the doctor’s only further comment
was, “Now, my dear child, you can care for your
dear mother’s grave.” .

Tell me, friend, does not such a story move you?
Are you a Christian? Then why not assist in the
glorious work of saving the lost? No, you may not
be able to do just what that doctor did, but you can
do what the Savior would have you do. You-can tell
others about Jesus and His love. There is the friend
who comes to visit you, the man who leaves milk at
your doorstep, the grocer, the people in the house
next to you or those living in the flat above you. Or
there is the man working in the same office or shop.
Tell him about your.Savior and your Church. Then,
some of us work in the fields with people who know