p. 82 | Another River

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 16, 1875

“Another River.”

A LADY, walking one day near a river, saw a man with his hat and coat off. Thinking he meant to drown himself, she looked to the Lord to give her a word to arrest him. Presently she walked up to him, when he turned and said:—

“A beautiful river, ma’am.”

“Yes,” she replied, “but there is another river—a river that makes glad the people of God. Do you know that river?”

“No, ma’am,” he replied.

She tried to say more, but was unable, and left without saying another word. Hastening home, she told her husband what she thought the man intended doing. Persons were sent off at once to see if he was still there. They found his hat and coat, and searched the neighborhood, even dragging the river, but found no traces of him. Twenty years afterward, the lady was in a chapel, and observed a man looking intently at her. She tried to remember where she had seen him, and while doing so, he leaned over and said, “There is another river; do you know that river?” Immediately she recollected seeing him and all the circumstances connected with their meeting. The word she had dropped had been a word in season.

“Do you know that river,” my reader? Know you the river of mercy which flows down from the bosom of God into the midst of a wretched world? Oh, it is mercy, full and free, to the chief of sinners! The dark river of death, wrath and judgment, has been entered into that you might pass over dry-shod. Christ has been down into death; judgment has spent itself upon him. He tasted death in all its bitterness that eternal life might be yours forever.—Sel.