Echoes of Grace: 1931
Table of Contents
In a Prison Cell
"Three months, with hard labor," was the sentence pronounced by the judge. A hardened criminal would not have minded that very much, but to the prisoner at the bar it was a terrible Mow.
He was led away from the dock, and presently found himself dressed for the first time in prison garb, and in his cell alone. Then the full shame of his position dawned upon him; this was the result of his waywardness and sin, and what would the end of it be.
The thought of it brought him down to his knees, and he groaned aloud before God. Then and there he made his decision, and it was that from that time he would quit the service of Satan.
Now that was a good decision to make, but it did not give him the peace he sought. He discovered, as many have done before him, that resolutions with regard to the future cannot wipe out the sins of the past. There lay his black record. How could it be met? Could he in any way make amends for that?
"You ought to have prayed before you got in here," sneered the warder, who saw him on his knees; "but perhaps better late than not at all."
But the prisoner heeded neither jest nor scorn; his whole desire was to be right with God.
There were two books in his cell. One of them was a book of instruction as how to live right, the other was a Bible.
To the former the anxious soul turned. He read there deceptive words, for the writer knew not God's way of salvation, and advised his readers to fast and pray in order to secure pardon of God. Ah! thought that lonely reader, I have been praying without fasting, that is why I do not have the peace I seek. I will fast as well as pray. And fast he did. Much of his food was returned untasted, and while he continued to perform his allotted prison task, he felt his hand getting weaker, his step less firm, until at length it seemed that he must sink to the ground through sheer exhaustion.
Then he reached his extremity; he had resolved and sorrowed, prayed and fasted, but he was still a stranger to peace.
Then it was with a despairing cry that he took up the Bible. Ah! blessed Book of God! if he had turned to its pages sooner, how much agony would he have been saved. It was not a familiar book to him, and he scarcely knew to what part to turn, but God had his eye on that penitent sinner, and the book fell open at 2 Sam. 12, and the first sentence that met his anxious gaze was,
"The Lord also hath put away thy sin" (ver. 13).
That was enough for him. The heavy burden rolled away, the clouds uplifted, and his astonished heart beat forth its gratitude to a pardoning God.
But he did not long remain in ignorance as to how God could pardon and yet remain the just God, for that long-neglected book became his cell companion, and therein he read of Calvary, of the precious blood, and of the resurrection of Jesus, whom Christians gladly own as Lord. He read of His exaltation, and glory also, and that marvelous story of redeeming love, which shall enthrall a full heaven eternally, opened his eyes. All became as plain to him as the daylight which streamed through the grated window into his cell.
Upon this his soul rested as upon a firm foundation. Yes, he discovered that God had freely justified him by His grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; that, great as had been his sins, the grace of God was greater; and the precious blood of Jesus, which is the basis of all blessing, had made him clean in the sight of God.
"He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment; but is passed from death into life." John 5:24.
It is probable that you, my reader, have not had to stand at the bar of an earthly judge; you may have been decorous and upright, but in God's sight you are a sinner, and the awful possibility of standing at God's bar is straight before you. What think you of it?
"I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, and from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them, and I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God;.... and they were judged every man according to their works." Rev. 20:11-13.
A Conversion
One morning, I was called out of the city to visit a patient who was very ill. An immediate operation was advised and the patient went into the hospital the same day.
The patient was a woman in middle life, of a cheerful and hopeful disposition—who never seemed to realize that she was gradually failing in strength and weight. She constantly entertained the idea that she would get better, though all the evidence was to the contrary, and in spite of the fact that I gave her no assurance of recovery.
She was one of the most active members of a prominent church in the city of T____, and was the life of every gathering she attended. Her brightness and willingness to help, gave her prominence and favor everywhere she went, and she was regarded as one of the best and most valuable members of her church.
Time after time I tried to interest her in the things that endured; riches in Christ, hopes for the future, the heavenly inheritance, but I always failed to get a response. She looked at me as if I were speaking a dead language, or in an unknown tongue. She did not seem to be at home on this ground. As soon, however, as my conversation turned to other themes, her face brightened up and she was then ready and able to give her contribution to the conversation.
In spite of these discouraging attempts, I was impelled repeatedly to endeavor to interest her in spiritual things. Her failure, however, to understand or appreciate those things distressed me greatly and gave me much concern, as I had been in prayer for her daily.
At last seeing that her days must be few indeed, I determined, with the Holy Spirit's help, to be very specific and clear, as I could not bear to see her pass away without definite assurance that she had passed from death unto life.
Her extreme pallor, her wasted strength and ebbing days aroused my pity as I observed the strong interest she still possessed in earthly things, and her indifference to the future things she must so soon experience.
I did not wish to alarm her, so I said quietly and gently,
"Tell me, Mrs. D., about your hopes for the future. Have you assurance that you are saved?"
"O," she said with hesitation and embarrassment, "I think I am all right."
"Will you tell me just why you think so? I should like to know."
"Well, I have been a very good woman and I have always been willing to help anybody and do the best I could."
"So these are your claims for heaven and eternal life! Are you quite sure they are sufficient?"
"Well, I think they ought to be, as I have been very earnest and sincere, and have brought up quite a family, and worked hard in the church when I could."
"I suppose you found something in the Bible to support your claims and expectations for salvation?"
"O, yes! I think so."
"Would you mind telling me where in the Bible God promises salvation on these conditions?"
"Well, I can't just say, but I thought they were there. I always understood we had to do our best to be saved."
"Tell me, then, where the crucifixion or the atoning work of Christ comes in on your program?"
"Well, I don't just know how it does help me."
"Do you know that there are two kinds of righteousness—the one that man tries to produce and by which he ignorantly tries to satisfy God, and the other, which God provides!
Have you not been putting your poor, paltry, vain and sin-stained filthy rags in competition with the perfect and eternal robe of righteousness which God has provided in Christ? You have been expecting God to be satisfied with a state that He has condemned. Your good deeds at best are but efforts to have God overlook your guilt. God on the contrary is asking you to abandon all this as vain, and to place your trust and confidence in His righteousness, which is received only by accepting Jesus Christ."
"I am sure I did not intend to do that! I thought I had to do my part."
"So you have. Your part is to believe in God; believe in His love; believe in His Son; believe that His death paid the penalty of your sins and, on the ground of sin having been dealt with at the cross, that God can now freely forgive you as His child."
"Why, that is quite different, isn't it, and it makes salvation certain!"
"Indeed! It does. Do you know what God said about your working for salivation? He tells you to stop it and to repent of it, that is, to come to the conclusion that it is utterly worthless. He puts it this way:
`To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness'."
"Well, I have been wrong all this time—I thought I had to work for salvation. God doesn't want me to try so much, as to trust."
"Now you are getting the thought. He wants you to regard yourself as guilty, as helpless and indeed hopeless without Him. He wants you to cast yourself in dependence upon His everlasting love and mercy. Will you just now believe what God says about His Son and trust in His goodness and strength rather than your own?"
"Indeed I will! I never heard this before" "O, yes you have, but you did not understand it."
"No, I never heard it this way before. Why are we not told how to be saved? I have been trying more or less all my life to put so many good deeds to my credit. The salvation is already provided and all that we have to do is to believe in it. O how simple it is! How happy it makes me feel to know that all my sins are washed away in His blood." She rejoiced in the assurance that "whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
Reader! How is it with you? Where is your trust and faith in view of an eternity that is as certain as it is endless? Is it in Christ? For you He died. He invites you to come to Him, and be saved from all sins.
"God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Rom. 5:8.
I Always Meant to Be Saved
"I am lost! I am lost! Yet I always MEANT to be saved," were the last words of one who had to meet death suddenly by the upsetting of a boat on one of the Lakes.
Alas! this sad retrospect, "I always meant to be saved," must be that of many a dying soul who has put off the acceptance of God's mercy until too late.
Perhaps the unkept resolve was made when thoughts of death and judgment were pressed upon the mind, or it may have been at some street corner, where was being told out,
"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.
"Christ died for the ungodly." Romans 5:6, "The blood of Jesus Christ (God's Son) cleanseth us from all sin." 1 John 1:7.
"Him that COMETH TO ME, I will in no wise cast out." John 6:37.
O, how freely God forgives the repentant sinner who turns to Him, in virtue of Christ having made atonement for sin—but Satan's whisper prevailed,
"Time enough, death for you is a long way off." And, with still the fullest intention of being saved sometime, it was put off for the present.
Then, filled with the cares and pleasures of this life, days, weeks, months, years fled quickly by, and at last death came to claim its victim.
O, what might have been now, if there had been the turning to God for His forgiveness before it was too late!
Alas, NOW there, is only a lost eternity, the going "forth into a night of sorrow, a stranger ever to His saving grace."
"HOW SHALL WE ESCAPE, if we NEGLECT so great salvation?" Heb. 2:3.
My reader, NOW, NOW is the time to turn to God, you may never have a TOMORROW.
O, the awful risk of "I always meant to be saved," resulting in "Too late, I am lost."
"Are you troubled, sin oppressed
Come to Jesus now;
Would you find your only rest?
Come to Jesus now."
Within Reach of the Blessing
I was asked by some friends to speak to a young lady who was intensely unhappy. The cause of her misery was not because of any mere earthly happenings, or that she had had some special ambition in life thwarted, but because she believed that she had sinned away her day of grace. She believed that for her there was no hope of salvation, that having turned away from Christ when she might have trusted Him as her Savior, and, having chosen the world instead, she could not hope that God would offer her mercy any more.
Her relatives thought that she would surely lose her reason, and had been strengthened in this notion by a doctor, who did not understand her case, and who had advised them not to allow her to read the Bible or any book likely to accentuate her morbid condition.
She looked just as miserable as her friends said she was, but she brightened considerably when I told her that I had been looking in my Bible for a text especially for her, and had found one that would suit her case exactly.
She expected that I would turn up an obscure passage that she had overlooked, but instead I opened my Bible at the third chapter of John's gospel, and read to her the sixteenth verse,
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
A look of complete disappointment succeeded that of hope, which for a moment had brightened her countenance, and she said,
"I have read that scores of times."
"I know you have," I replied, "but you have never understood it yet. Tell me, what is it that 'God so loved'?"
"The world," she answered.
"Well," I asked, "are you in the world?" "Of course I am," she replied, somewhat impatiently.
"All right," I said, "then things are not so terrible as you imagine, for if you are still in the world there is hope for you. It is the world that God loved, and for it He gave His only-begotten Son, consequently, before you can get out of the reach of this blessing, you must take lodgings in the moon, or fly away to one of the planets, or drop down into hell."
She looked at me in a questioning sort of way for a moment, then deliberately took the Bible from my hand, and read over the wonderful words, and as she did so, the cloud of misery lifted, and that poor perplexed creature stepped into the sunshine of the love of God.
It was very sudden, and very surprising. How completely changed was her appearance as she begged the loan of my Bible (for hers had been taken from her), so that she could read over those precious words in secret, but the change was as sure, as it was sudden and surprising, for eleven years after I received a message from her reminding me of her great deliverance.
The question may arise as to how such a phenomenon can be accounted for, and my answer is in the words of Scripture,
"The entrance of Thy words giveth light." Psalm 119:130.
The same words have given light and liberty to thousands, for when they are believed, then the whole outlook is reversed. It is seen that instead of God being an indifferent Spectator of the miseries into which the follies and sins of men have plunged them, He is infinitely concerned about them, and has, by His most unspeakable Gift, opened up a way by which every man and woman may be eternally saved.
The Story of a Well-Known Hymn
In the year 1836, a young lady was preparing for a great ball to be given in her native town. Full of gay anticipation, she started out to the dressmaker's to have her dress fitted. On the way she met a Christian friend, an earnest faithful man, and in the greetings which passed between them he learned her errand. He reasoned and expostulated, pleading with her to stay away from the ball. Annoyed and disturbed, she told him to mind his own business, and went her way.
In due time the ball came off, and this young girl was the gayest of the gay. She was flattered and caressed by all there; but after dancing all night she laid her head on her pillow with returning day, yet most unhappy. The real friend whom she had met had always been such a loving and cherished one, and the truth of his words came to her conscience and would give her no rest. After three days of misery, during which life became almost unbearable, she went to him with her trouble and to apologize for her rudeness.
She said, "For three days I have been the most wretched girl in the world, but I want to be a Christian. What must I do?"
We need not be told that he freely forgave her for her rudeness to himself, nor that he joyfully directed her to the true source of peace, telling her to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, just as she was.
This was a new gospel to her; and one which she had never contemplated before.
"What, just as I am?" she asked. "Do you know that I am one of the worst sinners in the world? How can God accept me as I am?"
"That is exactly what you must believe," was the answer. "You must come to Him just as you are."
The young girl felt overpowered as the simple truth took possession of her mind. She went home, knelt down, and sought that Savior whom she had slighted, telling Him of her guilt and vileness. As she knelt, peace, full, over-flowing, filled her soul. Inspired by her new and rapturous experience, she then and there wrote the hymn, so familiar to generations of Christians for almost a hundred years.
Has my reader had a similar experience to Miss Charlotte Elliott, to whom this incident refers? Three verses of the hymn run as follows:—
"JUST AS I AM, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come."
JUST AS I AM, poor, wretched, blind,
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee I find;
O Lamb of God, I come.
JUST AS I AM, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe;
O Lamb of God, I come."
The same Savior whom she sought and found still waits to be gracious, and will assuredly respond to the cry and utterance of everyone who feeling his or her guilt and burden of sin, will thus seek Him. His own word is,
"Him that cometh to Me I will IN NO WISE cast out" John 6:37.
"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life." —1 John 5:13.
"Lost thou believe on the Son of God?" —John 9:35.
I’m Going by the Book
The Night before Passchendaele
Why Die in Your Sins?
The Devil Dramatized
Decision
What Do I Care?
The Scarred Hand
Supper Time
Faith in Christ
The Text
Prepare to Meet Thy God
The Old Railway Man
What Will You Do With Jesus?
I Have My Ticket
A Bright Testimony
Rest at Last
I Always Meant to Be Saved
Christ Receiveth Sinners
The Only Way of Peace
Jesus Died for Me