John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides, volume 1 (of 3) : $b An autobiography edited by his brotherPaton, John Gibson
Religion
John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides, volume 1 (of 3) : $b An autobiography edited by his brother
Paton, John Gibson
Missionaries -- Vanuatu -- Biography; Paton, John Gibson, 1824-1907
Another Infidel, whose wife was a Roman Catholic, also became unwell,
and gradually sank under great suffering and agony. His blasphemies
against God were known and shuddered at by all the neighbours. His wife
pled with me to visit him. She refused, at my suggestion, to call her
own priest, so I accompanied her at last. The man refused to hear one
word about spiritual things, and foamed with rage. He even spat at me,
when I mentioned the name of Jesus. “The natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him!” There
is a wisdom which is at best earthly, and at worst “sensual and
devilish.” His wife asked me to take care of the little money they had,
as she would not entrust it to her own priest. I visited the poor man
daily, but his enmity to God and his sufferings together seemed to drive
him mad. His yells gathered crowds on the streets. He tore to pieces his
very bed-clothes, till they had to bind him on the iron bed where he
lay, foaming and blaspheming. Towards the end I pled with him even then
to look to the Lord Jesus, and asked if I might pray with him? With all
his remaining strength, he shouted at me,—
“Pray for me to the devil!”
Reminding him how he had always denied that there was any devil, I
suggested that he must surely believe in one now, else he would scarcely
make such a request, even in mockery. In great rage he cried,—
“Yes, I believe there is a devil, and a God, and a just God, too; but I
have hated Him in life, and I hate Him in death!”
With these awful words, he wriggled into Eternity; but his shocking
death produced a very serious impression for good, especially amongst
young men, in the district where his character was known.
How different was the case of that Doctor who also had been an
unbeliever as well as a drunkard! Highly educated, skilful, and gifted
above most in his profession, he was taken into consultation for
specially dangerous cases, whenever they could find him tolerably sober.
After one of his excessive “bouts,” he had a dreadful attack of
_delirium tremens_. At one time, wife and watchers had a fierce struggle
to dash from his lips a draught of prussic acid; at another, they
detected the silver-hafted lancet concealed in the band of his shirt, as
he lay down, to bleed himself to death. His aunt came and pled with me
to visit him. My heart bled for his poor young wife and two beautiful
little children. Visiting him twice daily, and sometimes even more
frequently, I found the way somehow into his heart, and he would do
almost anything for me and longed for my visits. When again the fit of
self-destruction seized him, they sent for me; he held out his hand
eagerly, and grasping mine, said,—
“Put all these people out of the room, remain you with me; I will be
quiet, I will do everything you ask!”
I got them all to leave, but whispered to one in passing to “keep near
the door.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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