How Long Will It Do to Wait?
Dr. Nettleton had come from the evening service in some country town to his home for the night. The good lady of the house, rather an elderly person, after bustling about to provide her guest with refreshment, said directly before her daughter, who was in the room: “Dr. Nettleton, I do wish you would talk to Caroline. She don’t care nothing about going to meeting nor about the salvation of her soul. I have talked and talked, and got our minister to talk, but it don’t seem to do no good. I wish you would talk to her, Dr. Nettleton.” Saying which, she soon went out of the room. Dr. Nettleton continued quietly taking his repast, when he turned round to the young girl, and said: “Now, just tell me, Miss Caroline, don’t they bother you amazingly about this thing?” She, taken by surprise at an address so unexpected, answered at once: “Yes, sir, they do; they keep talking to me all the time, till I am sick of it.” “So I thought,” said Dr. Nettleton. “Let’s see—how old are you?” “The fact is,” said Dr. Nettleton, “religion is a good thing in itself; but the idea of all the time troubling a young creature like you with it, and you are in good health, you say. Religion is a good thing. It will hardly do to die without it. I wonder how long it would do for you to wait?” “That’s just what I have been thinking myself,” said Caroline. “Well,” said Dr. Nettleton, “suppose you say till you are fifty? No, that won’t do; I attended the funeral the other day, of a lady fifteen years younger than that. Thirty? How will that do?” “I am not sure it would do to wait quite so long,” said Caroline. “No, I do not think so either; something might happen. See, now, twenty-five or even twenty, if we could be sure you would live so long. A year from now; how would that do?” “Neither do I. The fact is, my dear young lady, the more I think of it, and of how many young people, as well apparently as you are, do die suddenly, I am afraid to have you put it off a moment longer. Besides, the Bible says, ‘Now is the accepted time.’ What shall we do? Had we not better kneel right down here and ask God for mercy through his Son Jesus Christ?” The young lady, perfectly overcome by her feelings, kneeled on the spot. In a day or two, she by grace came out rejoicing in hope, finding she had far from lost all enjoyment in this life.—Christian World.