A SHORT time since as I was returning to my lodgings about mid-day, I passed by a number of working men. It was the dinner hour, and they were resting a little after dinner before resuming their afternoon work. I had a few suitable gospel tracts with me, and felt much constrained to give them one each to read in the quiet moment they were having.
They all received them very willingly, and in giving to the last one, I made the remark that the little tracts were all about ONE who had been my greatest Friend, and had done for me what none other could ever do, at the same time pointing my forefinger to heaven. The receiver’s face lit up, and he said, “And He has been that Friend to me too.” “Praise the Lord!” I rejoined, “now we can rejoice together as brothers in the Lord, children of God by faith in Christ Jesus; members of the family and household of God, born again, born of water and of the Spirit, born of God. What a blessed relationship!”
He then sought to encourage me in what I was doing by telling me how God had deigned to use him just recently in the manifest conversion of a fellow-sinner, and how wonderfully God had used just His own very Word to bring it about.
He said he was delivering something into a lady’s house in Clifton, and on coming away, the lady was settling with a man for a light cartload of peat. There was a little dispute, which ended in the man using very bad language. My informant waited a little, and felt very constrained to speak a word to the man about the awfulness of his language, of the day of judgment, and the wrath of God to come; quoting, at the same time, the scripture— “But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matt. 12:3636But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. (Matthew 12:36)).
The peat-seller replied that he believed in nothing at all of that sort of thing—neither a hereafter, nor a judgment—but that at death there was an end of us, like all the other animals.
My informant only quoted one more scripture, “Then shall the dust, return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:77Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7)), and left him.
A short time after, the peat-seller saw and overtook him, pulled up his horse and cart, and said, “Oh! I am so glad to see you, I have been longing to do so. I have such good news to tell you. God has used you and those two portions of His Word, He gave you to speak to me, to be the means of my conversion to Him. They went right home to my very soul and wakened me up to see what a vile sinner I had been. I can’t tell you the agony of soul I passed through, the remainder of the week, and on the next Lord’s Day I went to the little chapel in the village where I live, which I had never gone to before, and there, that very day, I sought and came to the Saviour, and had the assurance of His salvation, through His bearing and suffering Himself for all my guilt upon the cross.”
What a blessing the writer had in thus giving round those few gospel tracts. What a blessed work God is still doing in this sinful world. He is still calling out of it a people for His name, whom it pleases Him to make His people. He gives them first to know themselves, their ruin and their sin, and then to know Him and His dear Son whom He has sent, which is eternal life (John 17:33And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:3)). He blots out their sins, and gives them the Holy Spirit, and thus seals them to be His forever.
Dear reader, do you know the Lord? Oh, seek Him while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.
W. F.