EACH time that I speak of the depths from which the grace of God rescued me, I am filled with sadness to think what my life was without Christ; and filled, too, with praise, for the love and pity that sought and found me.
I am a native of the south-west of France, and was brought up a Roman Catholic; but not in the Church of Rome did I find the salvation of my soul.
Seven years of my youth were passed in a seminary, i.e. a college where young men are prepared for the priesthood. Here I made many serious studies in theology, philosophy, and like things, and successfully passed my various examinations and took my degree.
I was thoroughly in earnest in religion, seizing every opportunity of drawing near to God so far as I knew how, and to this end went three times a week to confession, and as often took the sacrament. But I was ever ill at ease, conscious of evil and worldly desires, which I could not repress, and finding no rest for my soul in the weary round of religious duties imposed on me. To destroy the spring of sin in my heart which tormented me, I set about tormenting my body. Many days I went wholly without food or drink. I spent long nights in repeating prayers, and frequently scourged myself with a knotted rope, such as you may have seen round the waists of the Dominicans.
Perhaps I need hardly tell you that I utterly failed in attaining the holiness I thus sough after, and in my failure I became utterly disgusted, not only with myself; but with the semi-monastic life I was leading, and wickedly resolved that, when again I had my liberty I would give a free rein to my passions.
At twenty years of age my opportunity came. I had then, of course, my time to serve in the army, and with a sigh of relief left the seminary, worse than when I went in. Having taken my degree, and being somewhat advanced in studies, I had the option of serving either ten years as a professor in a Lycée, i.e., a military college, or five years in a regiment of the line. I chose the former, and during the time that I occupied that position I went into all the wild excesses that: had hitherto been shut out from, reveling it my freedom, and vowing never again to submit myself to any man.
I own that I was thoroughly miserable during those years. The pleasures of sin an such that the deeper you drink the mon deeply you thirst, and the more intense becomes your dissatisfaction. My conscience, too, occasionally awoke, and for awhile I would then grope for light, and crave fen peace, until I sank again beneath the be numbing influence of the life I was leading.
After I had been three and a half years at the Lycée, there came a government inspector, who proposed sending me to another college. My pride took umbrage at the manner in which he spoke of moving me from one place to another, even though he was suggesting a promotion, and telling him haughtily that I would obey the commands of no one, I resigned my professorship. Through this act, by the laws of our country, I became a soldier, having to serve the full term of five years in the army, the time I had served in the college counting for nothing, as I had broken my engagement with the government.
I need not tell those who know anything of the soldier’s life what a rod I had now cut for my own back! I, who had declared I would submit to no one, had to render the most implicit and prompt obedience, the most unquestioning submission to every officer and non-commissioned officer above me. God, whose hand was undoubtedly tracing out all my path, knew how needful to a rebellious nature was the stern discipline which was now my lot. There are many ways and means in the army of bending a proud neck to the yoke, and I knew it, and also what would be the bitter end of in subjection. Thus I learned to obey.
Indeed, I threw my whole heart into the soldier life, and rose rapidly in the service, until I became a non-commissioned officer, and was preparing to pass the examination for the higher grade. My vain and passionate temper was gratified by exacting the utmost respect from the men under me, and, wonderful to tell, it was through this impatient and haughty temper that God, whom I in no wise regarded, was to reach me.
One day, when, as usual, I was making my rounds in the barracks, I noticed that one, out of the four-and-twenty soldiers belonging to the room I was inspecting, was utterly indifferent to my presence. He rose, indeed, with the others, but stood in in absent way, looking at a paper in his hand, and quite forgetting that respect to his superior demanded his standing in line, with his heels together, and his hands straight at his side. I was indignant at his careless attitude, which I took as a personal insult. Angrily I sentenced him to two days in the lock-up, and went the length of roughly snatching the paper from his hand. I crumpled it in my finger; but did not let it drop, for I felt curious to know what should so far absorb my fellow-soldier. When I was alone I smoothed out the paper, and sat down to read it; I own there was a lack of delicacy in my action.
Three words, in large letters, at the head of the tract, riveted my attention:
“GOD! SOUL! ETERNITY!”
No new words to me, you will think. No, but they came with a new power; and as I read, I bowed before the truths the writer urged, of a living and a holy GOD, with whom I must have to do as to my never-dying SOUL, and that upon the settlement of these matters depended my ETERNITY.
I sat long pondering the tract, and when at length I rose, I could not shake off the impression it had made, I immediately ordered the release of the soldier from whom I had taken it, bidding him come to me. I asked him plainly if he believed that leaflet. He answered that he could not say more for himself than that he was, and always had been, a Protestant, but that he was not a Protestant like the Protestants who had sent him the tracts, and that these were the kind of people to tell me all I wanted to know. I begged him to at least, get me some more of their writings, which he promised to do from a gentleman in Geneva, and by the return post I received a liberal supply. Though I read all with the deepest interest, yet I did not then find the Saviour.
Shortly after, I and this soldier both went on furlough, and I accompanied him to his home in the mountains, where he promised me I should see some of those “other Protestants!’
I was made heartily welcome by his parents, at their comfortable farmhouse, and on the evening of our arrival all the village was invited up to do us honor. Two-thirds came; about sixty people, old and young. A table, on which stood a large Bible and a number of hymn-books, was placed in the middle of the room, and all grouped themselves around it, I being the only guest who seemed at all surprised at this arrangement. They began singing hymns, all together or one alone, to the evident enjoyment of the party. After this had gone on for some time, a venerable, white-haired peasant took the great Bible, and reverently read several passages aloud. Then all knelt down and began praying.
Strange as it may sound to you, this was the first time in my life that I heard prayer, and I cannot tell you how deeply it moved me. True, I had repeated prayers by the dozen in those sad days in the seminary, but now I heard prayer! Young men and maidens prayed, old men and women; in fact everyone in the room, except my comrade and myself; and it stirred me to the very depths of my soul.
I was relieved when at length I could get to my own room. But I tossed on my bed, and could not sleep. The faces, the voices, and the prayers of the evening all came again before me, and in the silence of the night I faced the fact that I was not as these people, that I did not know God, and that I was unsaved. Then the devil whispered to me that I had far too easily allowed myself to be upset. He stirred up my pride, asking me if I was going to let a set of uncultured peasants get the better of me in this fashion, allow men that could not even speak decent French to disturb all my theology, and so on! At his suggestion, I determined to stand my ground, and to give them the benefit of my superior knowledge in the morning, and, with that resolution, I at last fell asleep.
Early next day I accordingly sought out the gray-headed peasant, who had taken so prominent a part on the previous evening, and quickly launched into what I meant to be, a theological argument. He was a feeble, stammering old man, who could only speak broken French, relapsing frequently into his native patois; but, my friends, I may tell you frankly I got the worst of it! The old man had the word of God at his fingers’ end; and he knocked me down with, “It is written,” whichever way I turned. Seeing how combative I was, he at last said simply, “You are then determined to remain a sinner?”
“You, too, are a sinner,” I answered.
“Yes,” he replied gently, “I am a sinner, but a saved sinner.”
With that I left him.
In the evening there was a meeting for prayer in the village, and I and my comrade went to it. My old friend of the morning was present, and as soon as he saw us enter he set to work praying most earnestly for the conversion of the two visitors. “Lord,” he said, “Thou didst need to be very powerful to change my heart. Show Thy power now in overcoming any resistance that may be in the heart of either of these young soldiers.”
Others followed, entreating God to open our eyes to see our need of a Saviour, and to bring us both to Himself. I was fairly broken down. The sins of all my lifetime rose before me, as they say they do before a drowning man, and, utterly overcome, I fell upon my knees, and, burying my face in my hands, I sobbed aloud.
While thus with many tears I owned myself a lost and hell-deserving sinner, a lady came to my side. She asked the cause of my distress. I told her that I saw how thoroughly evil my life had been, how hopelessly wicked my heart, and how unfit I was for God’s holy eye, so that eternal judgment was all I deserved from Him.
“Then God,” she said, “has something to say to you.” She opened her Bible, and made me read for myself: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall he as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isa.1:28,) “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” (43:25.)
God graciously brought His word home in healing power to my troubled soul. I believed and I was saved. I do not say that I had full peace from that night, but it came as I learned more fully the finished and perfect work of Christ, and understood my oneness with Him now in the glory. Two books that were very helpful at this crisis were sent me from Geneva: “The road that leads to God,” by Moody, and “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”
I went back to the barracks with a Bible under my arm, and a hymn-book in my pocket. The Master gave me courage to own His name among my fellow-soldiers, but when I told them of the joy and peace that were now mine, some said I was a Jesuit, others that my head was turned. Still the Lord blessed the testimony to His saving power. First my dear comrade came to Jesus, then another, and yet another, until we were ten Christians in our regiment. We hired a little room in the town, where we met every night, in spite of much opposition, for prayer and reading the Word; and oh, what blessed times the Lord gave us, and how richly He fed our souls!
I had yet a year and a half to complete my time in the army after I was saved. I had no ambition now to rise to be an officer. My whole heart was set on being God’s free man as soon as might be, so that I could give myself up altogether in glad service to Christ my Lord.
It is now my joy to own to the full the Lord’s claims upon me, for I am His, purchased at the cost of His own life-blood.
A. P. C.