THE first time I ever knew the meaning of Romans 5:55And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. (Romans 5:5), ‘Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost,’ it was conveyed to me under circumstances which I can never forget. I was called, in the early part of my ministry, to visit a poor creature dying with a fever. It was a hovel on a mountain side in the county of Wicklow. The door leading from the miserable chamber to the kitchen was built up to prevent infection, and the only entrance was through a window about a foot and a half square, out of which the frame had been taken for this purpose.
In the corner of that wretched apartment, on some straw, lay a young man of twenty-one years dying, but in full possession of his faculties.
“A few moments’ conversation convinced me that I was there not to teach, but to learn, in witnessing the triumph of a believer over sin, death, and hell. The young man was rejoicing in Christ, and as a passage of Scripture which seemed appropriate to his state of mind, I opened the 5th of Romans, and began to read it, applying each successive sentence to the young man, as according to his experience; to which he gave a most cordial response. When I reached the fifth verse, I said, ‘Now you feel this to be true; you have that blessed hope which maketh not ashamed, for you feel such love to God shed abroad in your heart, that it must be by the Spirit of God which is given you.’
“‘Ah, sir,’ said he, ‘that is not the meaning of the text at all.’”
“What,” said I, ‘not the meaning and I looked at the verse again, never having thought that any other could be attached to it; what meaning then do you give to it?’
“Ah, sir,” he replied, ‘it would be a poor hope I should have if it was derived from any love I feel to God. When I think of what He has done for me, and how I ought to love Him, I feel so cold and dead compared to what my love ought to be, that I would be in despair, instead of having a hope that maketh not ashamed, if my love to Him was to be the ground of my hope. No, sir; it is God’s love to us poor sinners that the Holy Ghost sheds abroad in our hearts, and it is that gives us the hope that maketh not ashamed. Read on, sir, and you will see.’
I read on, and the three next verses convinced me at once that he was right.
That poor youth had, not many months before, been brought to the knowledge of the gospel through the means of my lecturing in the cottages in that distant district of the parish. Too poor, too much engaged in labor to go to school, he had learned from a young companion to read in the evenings when his work was over, that he might read that book which had revealed a Saviour to his soul. He had read, and had been taught by Him who can teach not as man teacheth.
“His name was never printed in this world before, but as certainly as it is recorded here, so surely in the Lamb’s book of life is written the name of Charles Armstrong.” R. J. M’GITEE.