On a bright, sweet day in June, when the air was sparkling with sunshine, and the odor of the first summer roses was wafted by the cool breeze in at the casement, which stood open, giving a fair view of sea-coast and ocean―just such a lovely time and scene as was calculated to soften the feelings, and bring the heart into abeyance to its influences―I remember (for it is now some years past) a circumstance occurred, which though it produced a train of serious thoughts at the time, I could not then have imagined to have been a prophetic voice (as it was) of the wondrous mercy and love a gracious God was about to manifest towards me, a careless, unregenerate being, whose whole life and thoughts were at emnity against Him.
I was like very many other young people, fond of those worldly amusements which are regarded by many older persons, and even religious professors, as innocent and harmless, viz. dances, operas, public shows, &c.; and it was of these pastimes I was then thinking, and longing to become a participator in. The Prince of Wales was paying a visit to our metropolis, and a large public ball was to be given in honor of the event, at which he and some other royal personages were to be present.
Gay friends had asked me if I were going, and represent to me what a loss I should have, it not there. Though much against the wishes of my nearest friends and advisers, who reasoned with me that such public ‘scenes were of no advantage to young persons, I was determined to go to this ball.
A lady of fashion had promised to allow me to accompany her; and nothing now remained but to procure a card for the entertainment.
I opened my writing-book, and sat down to beg of a friend to procure me one. It was Sunday afternoon; for so anxious was I for this gratification, that to wait until Monday to write seemed waste of a day, and I feared the tickets might be all disposed of. I had attended church that morning, and was nominally a Christian, though certainly not a religious professor. If anyone had spoken to me of acquaintance with the Lord Jesus as a personal Savior, or pressed on me that “now was the day of salvation,” it would have been to me an unwelcome theme, apparently too visionary for me to grasp, suited to preachers, Sunday-school teachers; or saints of by-past days.
I turned over the blotting-leaves to find some note-paper, and as I did so, something fluttered from the sheets, and fell into my lap. I took it up: it was a leaflet, which had been sent to me in a letter, doubtless months, or perhaps even a year, before; for I never could recollect how it came into my book. The heading caught my eye ― “A Debtor to Christ.” I read the verses all through, and as I did so, a feeling of awe, mingled with bitterness, arose in my heart. Those lines of Robert M’Cheyne’s
“When this passing world is done,
When has sunk you glorious sun,
When I stand with Christ in glory,
Looking o’er life’s finished story
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.
When I hear the wicked call
On the rocks and hills to fall;
When I see them start and shrink,
On the fiery deluge brink―
Then, Lord! shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe”―
wrung from me the mournful feeling, in that hour, I shall owe nothing; there will be for me but a fearful looking for of judgment. I paused, and a wail seemed to rise in my heart, Oh! why cannot I be “A DEBTOR TO CHRIST,” as well as others? why not have the sweet assurance ― amidst this world’s uncertain and often, as I had even then found them, unsatisfying pleasures ― that when all will be over, and one’s senses hushed to its enticements forever,
“Then, Lord! shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe”?
I sat for some time irresolute, dissatisfied with myself and my thoughts and finally closed my writing- book. I will not at least add to my other sins, I thought, by writing this worldly letter on Sunday; for in spite of my carelessness I always knew and felt the hours of that day ought to be regarded as sacred; I then believed to be the Sabbath, I had yet to learn that it is, in a higher and holier sense, the Lord’s-day. So I put off my letter-writing, and wandered out into the garden, to soothe my run al mind and still the voice of conscience.
Well, dear reader, in spite of this message from God to my soul, I went to that ball; and what a scene of unsatisfying pageantry it was: brilliantly illuminated and decorated, and graced with the presence of royalty and rank; yet so overcrowded and overheated, that dancing or pleasant conversation was almost out of the question; and when the hour came to return home, it was with soiled and torn dresses and wearied limbs that the poor guests departed.
I did not recover the over-fatigue of that night for some time, besides catching cold while passing through the drafty passages from its gas-heated saloons. So much for the world and its joys!
One night, a short time after, I had the following strange dream: ―
I was again decked in the dress and rose-wreath I had worn on that evening, again I mixed in the mazes and heard the music of the dance: a friend, full of gay life, advanced and elicited me to join with him in a waltz. He offered his hand to lead me on, and I gave mine, willingly to participate, when suddenly my lively friend became metamorphosed into a Black Spectral Shadow! The hand so full of eager, buoyant life which had met mine, became a cold skeleton, and tightened with a frightful and iron clasp round mine. Everything faded round me, and I felt myself drawn irresistibly from the scene by this awful figure, while my very being seemed frozen with terror and despair at finding myself in what appeared to me the grasp of the Specter of Death. In vain I endeavored to break from its hold, and cried aloud for aid; it drew me on, until, in an outer passage of one of the halls of the palace, it pointed to a deep, dark staircase, which it told me I must descend. I gazed down its perpendicular descent, and saw the steps apparently unending, while a fearful black chasm lay beneath. Terror gave me new strength, and again I struggled to free myself. Just as the phantom drew me on to the first step of the descent, I succeeded in breaking from its power, but, in so doing, fell with frightful noise and rapidity down the staircase, dashing against every step as I fell until I reached the blackness below. With the fear and shock of this dream I awoke. It filled me with superstitious dread and awe at the time, and I believed it to be a presage of death or some great calamity.
I have never been at a large public ball since. Two months after a severe illness laid me on a sick-bed, which might have seen the fulfillment in that dream, and proved a bed of death to me, out from which I was raised up by the One who loved me with an everlasting love, and Who, through a course of after discipline, bearing on the gracious work of awakening commenced during that illness, was teaching me the meaning of those lines ―
“When I stand before the Throne,
Clothed in beauty not my own;
When I see Thee as Thou art,
Love Thee with unsinning heart―
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.”
When I look back on that period of my life, my love of the world, and my utter distance from and rebellion against a tender Savior God, I am filled with wonder and gratitude at the way in which He led me into His fold, and taught my cold heart to bow in adoring homage, and utter the joyful acknowledgment, “How MUCH I OWE!” He has indeed shown me, ere too late, that this world’s pleasure is, at best, a deluding phantom, leading its votaries with remorseless and skeleton grasp down a rapid declivity, into an abyss of darkness and destruction’. Hey many loving messages are slighted, and solemn warnings put aside or misinterpreted, and the poor soul goes on, its outer form decked with the rose-wreaths and flimsy trappings of a hollow mirth, playing its short part in the exciting drama, until suddenly, and amidst circumstances the least expected, the dark shadow of death enters and snatches its victim from health, friends, and pleasures, casting it into outer darkness, an exile forever from the presence of the Prince of Peace.
Dear thoughtless one! do not think I am writing romance: it is strict truth. When I read in God’s Word of “the worm that dieth not,” and “the fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:4343And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: (Mark 9:43)), I long to be the means of bringing some troubled, or perhaps even careless soul, to know the blessed privilege and liberty (if I may use a paradox) of being “a debtor to Christ.”
Is your heart cold and careless? So was the Samaritan’s at the well of Sychar; and yet He taught her what it was to be a debtor for the living water, and all unsolicited too, for we do not even hear that she brought repentance before that gift; of course it followed.
Is your heart bowed with sorrow and shame for sin, open or hidden? Take the case of the sinner of the city, and our Redeemer’s beautiful parable, called forth on her behalf: “There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And HE said unto him, Thou halt rightly judged.”And then its comforting, heart-assuring application: “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; for to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” (Luke 7:4747Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. (Luke 7:47)).
But perhaps your heart may suggest the thought, “She loved much, and I feel hard and unsoftened, no melting or tenderness towards this pardoning God.” Hear the gracious words of God the Holy Spirit, speaking through the beloved disciple: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, BUT THAT HE LOVED US, and sent HIS SON to be the PROPITIATION FOR OUR SINS... We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. GOD IS LOVE” (1 John 4:10, 1610Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)
16And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)). And again by His servant Paul it is written, “God commendeth His LOVE TOWARDS US, in that while we were YET SINNERS, CHRIST DIED FOR US” (Romans 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)).
Unsaved one! nothing will soften the hard heart so much as to realize that we can positively bring no good thing out of ourselves. We must take the place of debtors to Christ, and accept all as a free unmerited gift. Well has it been said, “True repentance is a penitence of love,” not of fear or duty or self-merit; nor, as many poor souls seem to think, a pre-payment by installments of human feelings and tears, to be rendered during our sojourn on earth as an anticipated meritorious return for His final acceptance.
Have you never yet realized what it is to be a debtor to Christ? Oh, come without delay! He is now seeking you as the shepherd did the lost sheep on the mountains; ninety-and-nine faithful ones are at home in the fold, but He must have the feeble wanderer.
The aggregate number cannot satisfy His tender heart if even one weakly one be outside. The pierced feet go out to seek it, the pierced hand is stretched out to lay it on His shoulders rejoicing. That heart, which even now-oh mystery of love!-beats beneath His pierced side, glows with divine joy at the first feeble prayer which tells him, like the faint bleating of tin stray lamb, that His sheep, long sought, at lass recognizes His voice. Dear reader, if still outside the fold, hear His own words: “I AM THE Door: by me, if any man enter in, HE SHALL BE SAVED, and shall go in and out and find pasture.” Again, a debtor: BE SAVED, find pasture! Blessed liberty, yet true security, and full promise of food for all spiritual need. Poor soul! not until you have had your sins washed away in the precious blood of the Lamb of God and entered in by THE DOOR into the Father’s house, will you know what it is to have sure peace and happiness amidst the unsatisfying and death-shadowed vanities of this earthly scene of change and transition. Then will you with heart-flowing, gratitude be able to take up the joyful strain of the ransomed debtor ―
“When the praise of Heaven I hear,
Loud as thunders to the ear,
Loud as many waters’ noise,
Sweet as harp’s melodious voice―
Then, Lord! shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.”
K. K.