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“About two years ago, ”writes a minister,” I visited a woman who was suffering from an incurable disease; but great as was her agony of body, her distress of mind was greater still. One day she said: ' The future is so dark, I dare not look forward at all.'
“To my question, ' Can't you trust yourself in God's hands?' she replied: ' No, I can't leave myself there.' “I repeated the hymn, ' Simply trusting ev'ry day,' and especially dwelt on the refrain, 'Trusting as the moments fly, trusting as the days go by.' ' Ah,' she said,' I can trust him this moment; is it like that?' I then sang the hymn to her, and the change that came over her was wonderful. She never lost this trust, and she had the page in her hymn-book turned down, that she might have the hymn read to her. After many months of intense suffering she passed away, ' simply trusting,' to the land where there shall be no more pain." The words of this hymn were handed to Mr. Moody at Chicago, in 1876, in the form of a newspaper clipping. He gave them to me, and asked me to write a tune for them. I assented, on condition that he should vouch for the doctrine taught in the verses, and he said he would. |