And had Farel’s sermons been useless? It had seemed in his case as though the seed had fallen upon the wayside, and the fowls of the air had devoured it.
But God had a purpose of love and grace in sending His beloved servant amongst the enemies and blasphemers at Orbe. There were those even amongst them, upon whom He had set his love—whom He loved even when they were dead in trespasses and sin—loved them with great love, which many waters could not quench, neither could the floods of their wickedness and rebellion drown it.
It was at the beginning of that month of May that there was joy in the presence of the angels of God over the Lady Elizabeth Arnex, and Hugonin her husband. I cannot tell you how the Lady Elizabeth was brought to Christ. Her husband was, as we know, compelled to hear the preaching by the order from Berne. Perhaps he took his wife with him. The news came like a thunderbolt upon the people of Orbe. It was not long before they said that the Lady Elizabeth was the worst Lutheran in the place. Yes, “on the great festival of our Lady, she stayed at home, and had her washing day.”
However it may have happened, we know that it was the work of Him who loved her and gave Himself for her. He had been seeking out His lost sheep throughout Switzerland and France, throughout England and Germany, and “all the places where they had been driven in the cloudy and dark day.” Of Elizabeth and her husband—of you, if you too are saved—the Lord has said, “Compel them to come in, that My house may be filled.” It is not of the will of the flesh, it is not of the will of man, that any sinner comes to the Savior. And if you are not yet saved, not yet turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, the same love and power that sought and found Elizabeth Arnex is needed to seek and to find you.
Many lost sheep have been brought home in the Shepherd’s arms since He carried safely into Paradise Elizabeth and Hugonin. But all have been found against their will, and all have been carried home by a power not their own, because He whom they hated, loved them with everlasting love, and had need of them to make His joy complete.
“Yes, it is the first great truth of the gospel that, instead of putting me away because of my sins, He comes in love and puts my sins away, and how? Christ bore my sins, everyone of them. They never can be mentioned again any more; and having borne them, His blood makes me whiter than snow, and His blood IS shed; so that if you are coming to God by Him, and your sins are not put away, all of them, once for all, they never can be, because Christ cannot die over again. By one offering, He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Christ has borne sin, and it is all completely cleared away, for all who believe in Him.”
Yes, we come to a Savior who has borne the whole punishment, and through Him we come to the Father, who has now no sin with which to charge us, who sees only when He looks at us how perfect was the work His Son has done.
And, therefore, Elizabeth Arnex could now hear from His lips the blessed words, “Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee.” And it is when we know this unspeakable love and grace, that we abhor ourselves and repent in dust and ashes. We then see that we had no part in the work that saves us, except that we shared in the hatred and the enmity which nailed to the cross the Blessed Son of God. It was when man had done his worst that God opened wide the door of Heaven to him who had done it. “Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.” And this God has explained to us in the tenth chapter of the Hebrews—we have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,” for these “holy places made with hands” were “the figures of the true,” even “Heaven itself,” where Christ now appears in the presence of God for us.
And scarcely had the news spread through the town that these two lions had been changed into lambs, when a fresh thunderbolt fell upon the people of Orbe. Only four days after Peter Viret’s first sermon, George Grivat, the precentor of the church choir, appeared in the pulpit, not to sing Latin anthems, as he had done till that time, but to preach the glad tidings he had heard from William Farel. The best singer in the choir was now a heretic preacher! His father, his brothers, and his friends, were filled with anger and despair.