“I love to tell the story: 
  ’Twill be my theme in glory,
To tell the old, old story,
  Of Jesus and his love.

“I love to tell the story: 
  More wonderful it seems,
Than all the golden fancies
  Of all our golden dreams. 
I love to tell the story,
  It did so much for me;
And that is just the reason
  I tell it now to thee.

“I love to tell the story;
  ’Tis pleasant to repeat
What seems, each time I tell it,
  More wonderfully sweet. 
I love to tell the story,
  For some have never heard
The message of salvation
  From God’s own Holy Word.

“I love to tell the story;
  For those who know it best,
Seem hungering and thirsting
  To hear it like the rest. 
And when in scenes of glory,
  I sing the new, new song,
’Twill be the old, old story,
  That I have loved so long.’”

The last note died away, and for a moment there was silence in the room.  Edward lay gazing into his wife’s eyes with a look of sad, yearning tenderness.

“O Ned! why, why do you look so at me?” she asked, with a sudden burst of tears, and dropping her face on the pillow beside his.  He had been holding her hand while she sang; he kept it still, and, laying his other one gently on her head, “Zoe, my darling,” he said, in tones tremulous with emotion, “it is the one longing desire of my heart that you may learn the full sweetness of that old, old story.  O love! sometimes the thought, ’What if my precious wife should miss heaven, and our union be only for time, and not for eternity,’ sends so keen a pang to my heart, that I know not how to endure it.”

“O Ned! surely I shall not miss it,” she said, with a sob:  “my father and mother were such good Christians; and you, my own husband, are so good too.”

“Ah, my darling!” he sighed, “that hope is but as a spider’s web.  Do you not remember that passage in Ezekiel, ’Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God’?  And it is repeated again and again, ’Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.’  Zoe, dear, no righteousness but the imputed righteousness of Christ can save the soul from death.  He offers it to you, love; and will you continue to reject it?”

“Ned,” she sobbed, “I wish I had it:  I often think I would be a Christian if I only knew how, but I don’t.”

“Do you not?” he asked, in some surprise.  “I will try to make it plain.  Jesus offers you a full and free salvation, purchased by what he has done and suffered in your stead, that ’God might be just, and yet the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus.’

“‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’

“He bids you come to him, and says, ’Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.’”