Simplicity of Faith

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Aug 22, 1854

Simplicity of Faith.

The simplicity of faith was once illustrated by a pastor thus:—

“I was preaching,” he said, “my ordinary weekly lecture in the evening, when I was sent for in great haste, to visit a woman who was said to be dying, and who very much desired to see me. I closed the service as soon as I could, and went immediately to her house. She was a member of my church, whom I had known very well for years—with whom I had been acquainted ever since her first serious impressions, before she became a communicant. As I entered the room where she lay, I found it filled with her friends who had gathered around to see her die. Making my way through the midst of them, I reached the side of her bed, and found her apparently in the last agonies of death. She was bolstered up in her bed, gasping for breath, almost suffocated by the asthma; and the whole bed shook by a palpitation of her heart, which seemed to be shaking her to pieces. It appeared to me that she could not live a quarter of an hour. I said to her—

“Mrs. M., you appear to be very sick.”

“Yes,” said she, “I am dying.”

“And are you ready to die?”

She lifted her eyes upon me with a solemn and fixed gaze, and speaking with great difficulty, she replied—

“Sir, God knows—I have taken him—at his word—and—I am not afraid to die.”

It was a new definition of faith. “I have taken him at his word.” It struck me in an instant as a triumph of faith. “God knows I have taken him at his word, and am not afraid to die.” It was just the thing for her to say. I have often tried to think what else she could have said that would have expressed so much in so few words.

I prayed some four minutes by her bedside; and recited to her some passages of God’s word, and was about to leave her for a moment to her friends, whom she seemed anxious to address. She held me by the hand, and uttering a word at a time, as she gasped for breath, she said to me—

“I want to tell you—that I can—trust—in God—while—I am dying. You have—often told me—he would not forsake me—and now I find—it true. I am—at peace. I die willingly—and happy.”

In a few minutes I left her, uttering to her such promises of the Saviour as I deemed most appropriate. However, she did not die.

She still lives. But that expression of her faith has been of great benefit to me. It has aided me in preaching, and in conversation with inquiring sinners very often. It gave me a more simple idea of faith than I ever had before. It put aside all the mists of metaphysics, speculation, and philosophizing. It made the whole nature of faith plain. Everybody could understand it: “God knows I have taken him at his word.”—Pastor’s Sketches.