An Account of God’s Dealings with George Suisted, and his Subsequent Conversion, as told by Himself.
I was born in New Zealand in 1855. When between four and five years old my mother and father died, and I was cast out into the world and had no schooling beyond a few weeks’ night school.
Being physically strong as a lad, at twelve years of age I left my grandfather’s home to shift for myself, and shortly after learned the art of chopping and hewing timber for bridge-building. I was thrown into the roughest society, and soon learned card-playing, smoking and drinking. My brothers were well educated and respectable, and were carrying on an extensive business, and seeing me so reckless they informed me that if I could not behave myself I must leave the town. I said, “Very well, I will leave the colony.”
“Having saved £100 (for I had been well paid at the timber hewing), I left for North America, taking another New Zealander with me, I paying his passage. I went to Utah territory and went into the sheep business: The rough, snowy winter killed about forty-four hundred of the sheep, and I suffered considerably myself. The finger nails on my right hand were frozen off, and I got rheumatic fever and almost died. My hip bones almost came through the skin, and I had to have pads of wool about two to three inches thick put on them to ease the weight of the body. I became delirious with the excruciating pain, and remarked that I wished I was dead and in hell! Oh, if God had allowed me to die then I should have been tormented forever in the lake of fire,” where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.”
But God had His eye on me and spared my life. Still my troubles were not finished, for my little boy two years old died, and soon after my dear brother and one of his children got burned to death through a kerosene lamp exploding. I returned to San Francisco, intending to come back to New Zealand, and after paying my steamer fare I had £20 left. Just before leaving the wharf a man expressed sympathy with me, and invited me to go and have a drink. We went and had more than one drink, and as a result he and another man got £10 of my small store by a “confidence trick.”
We arrived safely in Auckland, although I nearly lost my wife, for she was very ill all along the journey. From Auckland we took steamer to Wellington (my birth-place), and my wife soon recruited. I landed in Wellington with £6 in my pocket. I saw some men raffling a horse (a steeplechaser), and offered one of them £5 for his chance. I waited eagerly to see if this man’s throw with the dice was to be beaten, for I had risked my last £5 note. However, no one beat his throw, and I took the horse worth £30.
I then found a situation at butchering and took to drinking heavily, and in a drunken revelry I sold all our household effects and took my wife to Wanganui. I then kept a hotel as barman, and received £2 a week and food from my brother; I drank the £2 as fast as I earned it. One day my brother’s daughter said to her father, “Uncle steals money out of the till.” Now, no matter what I had been, was not a thief, and this hurt my feelings so much that I told my brother I would leave. He said I ought not to take any notice of what his daughter said; but I persisted in leaving, and as I had no money he gave me £10, so away I went to Bulls and took a place at 25/- a week.
I now tried to lead a moral life, gave up drinking, and turned over a new leaf. After three months I went to work for a storekeeper, who sent me down to a bush settlement named Rongotea to open a store. Here I got amongst a class of people known as “Plymouth Brethren.” The first man I met there was a Mr. J. C―, who spoke to me about my soul. He told me I was going to hell. I said, “Then I will go with the big crowd, and if they can stand it I can.” He then asked me to dinner, and while at the table spoke very plainly to me as to my state before God and my need of being saved.
From that time on I became very troubled about my soul, and some nights I dreamed that the heavens were on fire, and would leap out of bed with horror and tremble like an aspen leaf. Other nights I would dream I was sinking into the flames of a burning hell. Again, on other nights, I would be fighting with the devil. I remember one night a man was sleeping with me, and I dreamed I was grappling with the devil. I got my bedmate by the throat and nearly choked him. At this time I went so far as to load a gun to kill a man, and would have done so had he crossed my path that day. Thanks be to God, he kept clear of me.
But things were coming to a crisis, and I began to wish I could be sure of going to heaven. An evangelist came to Rongotea by the name of Mr. C. H. H―, and I was asked by Mr. C― to go and hear him preach. I said I would, but when night came and my wife asked me if I were going, I said “No.” She said, “You ought to be a man of your word and go.” I replied, “I will be a man of my word, and I will go.” All the way to the schoolhouse the devil kept saying, “If you go to the meeting you will get saved, and you will have your old chums pointing the finger of scorn at you.” However, I went.
When the gentleman got up to preach my heart was filled with a spirit of hatred towards him because he had no gown, no surplice, and no white choker. But as he preached all the prejudice left me, and I became under deeper conviction of sin. He spoke about the door of grace being open, which was Christ, but he said there was no guarantee that the door would be open on the morrow, and if the door was shut I would be shut out forever. I thought the door would be shut before I could enter in, and I became almost frantic with despair. I went home and smoked till early morning thinking over what I had heard.
I pressed my wife to go the next night, and told her whoever the man was he was a man of God; so she went, and came home convicted but not converted.
The next day the evangelist went away. I saw him pass the shop, and said to a man present that I would give that man £5 if he would come in and show me words whereby I would know I was saved; but he passed by my shop. I would have gone anywhere, or I would have done anything, and given anything, to be saved, I was in such agony of soul. If I had possessed a revolver I should have blown my brains out; but thank God, His eye was upon me, and His hand too. I had heard that Mr. C― held what they called a cottage meeting, so I was determined to go to it and see if I could get peace to my poor aching soul. Oh that men and women would come under a deep conviction of sin such as I experienced; there would be no fear but they would get saved.
So I caught my horse and started off, without being invited, to go to the cottage meeting. On my way up I met a bright Christian gentleman by the name of Mr. Geo. M —. I said to him, “What kind of people are these who read the Bible and sing hymns and have prayers and such like?” He said, “You will find them pretty right; go and hear them.” He got off his horse and went under a bridge and prayed earnestly to God to save my soul that night. I proceeded up to the house, knocked at the door, and was welcomed in. When they sang, I tried to sing; when they kneeled down, I kneeled down; when they read the Bible, I listened, and when the meeting was over I had got nothing for my poor aching soul. When I got up to go, Mr. C― followed me outside and said, “How do you feel?” I replied, “I feel wretched and miserable, and I wish I had never been born.” He said “I am glad to hear it.” When he said that, he could not have pierced me worse had he taken a two-edged sword and thrust it through me. Then he asked me this question, “Suisted, do you believe that Christ died to save you?” I said, “Yes, I believe that Christ died to save me,” He said, “Are you saved?” “No,” I replied. “Then you contradict yourself,” he said. I thought the matter over to myself, and said, “Well, I have contradicted myself, but I am not going to say I am saved when I am not.” He then said, “I will come and pray all night with you.” But I said, “It is no use, Mr. C―
Then I got on my horse, and, putting the reins on his neck, said to him, “Now you can go, and I don’t care how fast you go, or how slow.” And he went very slow. The roads were very muddy, and the horse went plop, plop, through the mud. When I got to the bridge where Mr. M― went under to pray for me and ask God to save me that night, I looked up to heaven and out of the depths of my soul I cried to God to show me what was right. And what seemed like a voice said to me, “Why can’t you say you are saved-why can’t you say you are saved, after what Christ has done for you?” I said, “I will take Christ NOW as my Saviour,” and immediately I saw, as in a vision, the person and image of the Lord Jesus nailed hand and foot to the cross. I was born again, born of God, there and then, at about 10 o’clock at night, sitting on my horse.
I went straight home and preached Christ to my wife, and asked her if she could not see Christ bleeding and dying for her sins, and about twenty minutes after my conversion her’s took place. The next morning everything down here bore a new, heavenly appearance: “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away, and all things become new.”
Now, dear friends, twenty-nine years have come and gone, and He has kept me, and will keep me to the end. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” (Acts 16:31.) “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Rom. 10:8-10.)
SEL.