Stephen Holcombe was a most vicious man, and notorious as a gambler on the Mississippi. One night at the gambling table a man accused him of cheating. Quick as thought, Holcombe whipped his revolver from his pocket and fired. The bullet went straight to the mark. Blood poured from the gaping wound, and in a few minutes Holcombe's accuser was dead. The murderer was arrested and tried, but was acquitted on the ground that he had shot the man in self-defense.
Although acquitted by a human court, Stephen Holcombe knew he was condemned before the bar of God and equally so in his own conscience. He sought in every way to find peace, but "there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”
Two years after that awful night he was in his room alone, miserable, his face buried in his hands. The memory of his crime haunted him. Throwing himself upon his knees he cried, "O God, can anything blot out the awful memory of what I have done?”
Immediately the words of the old familiar hymn, learned long ago in the days of his boyhood, came ringing through his heart:
“What can wash away my stain?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
Kneeling there, Stephen Holcombe staked his confidence upon that precious blood. He trusted in the Sacrifice offered on the cross for his sin. He believed that all his sins, the murder and all its consequences, had been laid on Christ who was punished in his stead. Accepting this he found peace, and from that day he was a faithful follower of the One who died to save him.