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The Gospel That Saves

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 10, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 44.

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The Gospel That Saves

By way of illustrating the power of the Cross, we venture to reprint an oft-told story of the lamented Rev. Dr. Charles A. Berry’s experience (of Wolverhampton), as he told it to his friend Rev. J. H. Jowett, of Birmingham, England:
“One night there came to me a Lancashire girl, with her shawl over her head and with clogs on her feet.
“‘Are you the minister?’ she asked.
“‘Yes.’
“‘Then I want you to come and get my mother in.’
“Thinking it was some drunken brawl, I said:
“‘You must get a policeman.’
“‘O, no,’ said the girl; ‘my mother’s dying, and I want you to get her into salvation.’
“‘Where do you live?’
“‘I live so-and-so, a mile and a half from here.’
“‘Well,’ said I, ‘is there no minister nearer than I?’
“‘O, yes; but I want you, and you have got to come.’
“I was in my slippers, and I soliloquized and wondered what the people of the church would think if they saw their pastor walking late at night with a girl with a shawl over her head. I did all I could to get out of it, but it was of no use. That girl was determined, and I had to dress and go. I found the place was a house of ill-fame. In the lower rooms they were drinking and telling lewd stories, and up-stairs I found the poor woman dying. I sat down and talked about Jesus as the beautiful example and extolled Him as a leader and teacher; and she looked at me out of her eyes of death, and said:
“‘Mister, that’s no good for the likes o’ me. I don’t want an example—I’m a sinner.’
“‘Jowett, there I was face to face with a poor soul dying, and had nothing to tell her. I had no Gospel, and I thought of what my mother had taught me, and I told her the old story of God’s love in Christ’s dying for sinful men, whether I believed it or not.
“‘Now you are getting at it,’ said the woman. ‘That’s what I want. That’s the story for me.’ And so I got her in, and I got in myself.
“‘From that night,’ added Dr. Berry, ‘I have always had a full Gospel of salvation for lost sinners.’”
Can the new religion give us anything to take its place? — Missionary Review of the World.