240 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
have had such a sight of my own defects and unfaithfulness, and such a view of the purity and holiness of God, as almost made me despair of finding mercy at the last. I remembered that when your brother John was dying, he was delivered from his last fear by remembering and repeating the verse, "Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness." I asked that the hymn-book might be given me ; I opened it, and the first lines on which my eyes rested were those commencing, "Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness." All my fear, doubt, and distress vanished, when at the reading of that verse I cast my soul on the Atone ment ; and since that time I have enjoyed perfect peace.
During a visit to London in May, 1783, the Rev. Charles Simeon, who was then in his twenty-fifth year, undertook occasional duty for a clergyman at Horsleydown. On the day that he expected to attend his brother s marriage he was suddenly summoned to conduct a funeral. As he waited in the churchyard, he read on a tombstone the lines
When from the dust of death I rise To claim my mansion in the skies, Even then this shall be all my plea, Jesus hath lived, hath died for me.
He was struck with the sentiment, for most of the epitaphs would have been in place on a Jew s or a heathen s grave, and looked round for some one to whom it might be made a blessing. At a distance he saw a young woman reading the inscriptions on the gravestones. Simeon said to her, You are reading epitaphs, mistress ; read that. When you can say the same from your heart you will be happy indeed ; but till then you will enjoy no real happiness in this world or in the next. She read the words without apparent emotion, and coolly replied that a churchyard was a very proper place for her, for she was much distressed. Mr. Simeon found that she was a widow, with two children and an aged mother dependent on her. Her health had broken with the strain ; she had been repulsed when she turned for help to her sister, and after wandering five hours in the graveyard she had determined to drown herself. Mr. Simeon did not know what was in her mind, but comforted her with some promises from the Word of God, visited her home that evening, and had the joy of helping her in her distress. A year later he found her living a holy and consistent life. Thirty years after he said, If my whole life
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