The Saving Name | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 22, 1875

The Saving Name.

MRS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER, of Philadelphia, in an address delivered in Cleveland, Ohio, related the following anecdote as recorded in the "Evangelical Messenger."

In 1863, immediately after the fall of Vicksburg, she visited the hospitals in Helena, Arkansas. Going into a large ward one day, filled with sick and wounded soldiers, she saw in the remotest corner of the room a very sick man. She noticed him the more because he looked towards her, and there was upon his face such a look of agony and despair as she had never seen on any human face before, and wished never to see again. The surgeon, who had stepped in with her, referring to this man, said, "He is almost gone, poor fellow; he'll not live long." Mrs. Wittenmeyer, whose heart was deeply touched, went directly to the sick man. Approaching him, she said, very tenderly:

"You seem to be very sick, my friend."

"My friend!" he returned, "I have no friend. I am here dying among strangers, and nobody cares whether I live or die." Mrs. Wittenmeyer entreated him not to say that, and assured him that he had many friends in the North. She was about to say, she would be his friend, but remembering how empty such a profession of friendship would be on the part of a stranger, she directed him to another saying:

"There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Can you make Jesus your friend in this dark hour?" On hearing the name of Jesus he cried aloud, "Oh, would that Jesus were my Friend! but I am a great sinner."

"But," responded Mrs. Wittenmeyer, "Jesus is the sinner's Friend."

"Oh, lady," said he, "you don't know what a great and wretched sinner I am, or you would not think that Jesus could save me."

"You don't know," she answered, "what a great Saviour we have, or you would not doubt. He is able to save to the uttermost. He can save you."

"It is too late! It is too late! too late!" he cried, with such deep agony of soul, that the brave young men lying upon their cots covered their faces with their bedclothes and wept like children. Mrs. Wittenmeyer urged that it was not too late, and commenced telling him of the thief on the cross; but she stopped her, saying:

"Oh! I know about the thief on the cross; but, lady, I am a thousand times worse than the thief on the cross."

She answered, "If you were ten thousand times worse, Jesus could save you, for he can save to the uttermost."

This assurance gave hope, and he exclaimed, "Pray for me!" She knelt by his bed-side, and while he cried, "God be merciful to me a sinner," she pleaded the precious promises of the gospel. And while he prayed and she pleaded, the mighty power of God's saving grace came down upon his soul, driving away, in a moment, every sign of agony and distress, and filling his heart with joy—joy unspeakable and full of glory. The lady remarked that if she had been an infidel up to that time, it seemed to her that she should have been convicted of the truth of Christianity in that presence. It was such a wonderful display of God's power to save. The man was healed soul and body. Three days from that time she found him on the shady side of the house, reading the Testament which she had given him the day previous. Seeing her, he said: "Oh, I am so happy this morning! I have a furlough, and I am going home. How glad my Christian mother will be to hear and see that I have found salvation."

"Young man," said she, "wherever you go, remember, that you were snatched as a brand from the burning."

"I can never forget that," he answered. "My disease and despair were crushing me down. And I am sure that I should have died, if salvation had not come just then. But when you mentioned the name of Jesus, I knew that you were a Christian, and that you would help me if you could." Oh, what power there is in the name of Jesus, and in an earnest sympathetic appeal to the unsaved!