HOW wonderful and varied are God’s ways of acting for the salvation of men. He is mighty to save, and He everywhere hath sway. He speaks in great ways — loudly to the conscience of coming judgment and sins to be answered for; or from small beginnings in the soft accents of His grace, proclaiming Himself a giving God — a Saviour God — that He may find an entrance into hearts, and replace all else there. “He is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working,” convicting souls, and arousing them to their sense of need through the solemn declarations of His truth, or melting them with the presentation of His love. His ends are often reached from small beginnings, that it may be made manifest that the work is not of man but of God, who is wise in heart and mighty in strength.
A little child was sitting on its father’s knee; it had just returned from the Sunday-school, and began to sing a hymn. As it went on singing tears began to flow down the parent’s cheeks. He was melted by the tender words that fell from the lips of his child. God spoke by them to his very heart, and shone into it through His grace. He was bowed down and broken before Him, and confidence, and in result joy and peace in believing, took the place of emptiness and nothingness. He was alive now, and alive to God.
This was but the beginning of God’s working in that remote and dark quarter, and soon others were brought under the power of it, and joy in God replaced the former ways of careless indifference among rich and poor alike, who now met for prayer together, and the blessing from God was widespread. One of the proprietors who was careless and unbelieving as to these things went down on his knees in prayer where some of his people were brought together, and to their surprise, solemnly cried to God for His mercy and blessing. It was given, for God is a giving God, more ready to bestow than we are to ask; and henceforth he sought to live for God, and to give Him the first place in his home; and he was only one amongst the many.
Oh! how blessed it is to see men thus turning to God to thank and to praise Him for His salvation given through the work of Christ, without money and without price.
“Salvation! O the joyful sound!
What pleasure to our ears!
A sovereign balm for every wound,
A cordial for our fears.”
Two young friends were walking together. One had recently been brought to know Jesus as her Saviour, and was speaking of His love in dying for us and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree; and His rising again without them, and being now a living Saviour in heaven. The other had been led to think seriously of late, and was deeply impressed with the fact that there were many around her now praising and thanking God for His salvation to whom He had been before unknown and unthought of. This made her anxious as to her own state, and as they were crossing a field she said, “Could we not kneel down behind this haystack and pray?” There they poured out their hearts together, she with a cry for mercy and salvation. God is very pitiful and of tender mercy, and ready to pardon; and there and then as she rose from her knees she was praising God, who had spoken peace to her soul while she was praying. All fear and trembling were gone; her soul was saved, and she went on her way rejoicing — “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.”
Who can tell the far out-reaching blessing that flows from the conversion of one. In her case eternity will alone reveal the blessed consequences to the poor, the needy, and the dying, for in her quiet way she pointed the anxious and wearied hearts around her to “the Lamb of God.”
Who could look on the path through this world of the meek and lowly Jesus, in all its perfectness, unmoved? or on the cross where He bore the judgment of our sins and was forsaken of God, without being bowed before Him?
There is not one link wanting in God’s chain of blessing — it stretches from eternity; and though we may not know it, every word spoken, every act done, every tear shed for Jesus will never be lost, but shine forever to His praise and glory, stored in the treasuries of heaven.
Walking along the road with the preacher of the previous evening, a man confronted us who was a small farmer in the neighborhood, to whom he spoke, telling him in his earnest way of Jesus and His finished work on the cross when He gave Himself to God for us, on the ground of which salvation is freely offered to all, not for any good in us or for anything we can reach to or attain, but to be believed in and received. The man listened with close attention, and as he did so he seemed almost unconsciously to thrust his hand into his bosom, and slowly drew out a little book, battered and torn, saying: “I could not tell how often I have read this. It was given to me when I was a soldier in India, and I have carried it about with me ever since and never lost it.”
He put it into the preacher’s hand, and as I looked at the title of the tract I said, “Oh, the one into whose hand you have put it is the one who wrote it.” A look of astonishment and pleasure lighted up his face as he stretched out his hand, saying, “I’m so glad to see you, sir.” It was a moment of deep interest, stirring the heart with the thought of God’s wondrous ways. The gospel was fully and clearly put before him, and he who had been an anxious and a seeking soul now received blessing from God. Like Abraham of old, he believed God, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness. “There was Abraham at one end of the line and God at the other, and faith between.”
Who gave that tract, so carefully kept, to the soldier in India? Who? None can tell; but the record of it is on high — another of those links in the chain of God’s working which will be known hereafter. The little book did its intended work, reminding him continually that he had a soul to be saved, and that there was an assured salvation for him to be had on the authority of the living God, which he now bowed to and received.
“Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.”
His purposes cannot fail — they stand forever; and His promises are all Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus.
In much desire for blessing and in utter helplessness and weakness, constant prayer was made to God to bless souls around. Some time passed, and a large company of both rich and poor were assembled to hear the gospel of the grace of God. Isaiah 6 was read. Man’s deep need as a sinner was proclaimed, and God’s free grace to meet it; and the holiness, greatness, and majesty of that God with whom we have to do, and before whom the very angels veil their faces with their wings, combined with the mercy which in a moment, when man takes his true place before Him as “unclean” and “undone,” stoops not only to save, but to crown with blessing. The Altar — the value of the sacrifice made to God on the cross — is ever before the eye of God, and the eternal efficacy of the blood of Christ is applied to the soul; iniquity is taken away, and sin purged. It was a wondrous message from God.
Eyes filled with tears were to be seen on every side. The power of God was there, and as the company slowly dispersed the effect produced was marked. Afterward a message was sent to the preacher,” Come to us,” and on his return, he said, “I have left a roomful of salvation.” Many will be found in heaven the result of that night, when the grace and love of God were so specially manifested then, and afterward as the tide of mercy flowed on.
“The river of God is full of water.” It is a dark day in which we live, and truth is fallen in the streets. God and His Word are denied — they stand or fall together. Men’s minds are trafficking now with the plain truth of the Bible, in which the holiness and love of God shine on every page from beginning to end.
What is the resource at such a time, and where? God Himself is the only resource. He is unchangeably the same, and His word endureth forever. “His arm is not shortened that it cannot save.” He is to be looked to and counted on for blessing at all times and in all ages. Men change, times change — God never. He is free to bless, and His grace and love flow on, and will, as long as the world remains, and until the last soul is gathered in by the living power of the Spirit’s working.
“Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God,” to His heart, to His home, to heaven, to be known and enjoyed now, and throughout the endless ages of eternity.
“No mortal tongue can tell Thy ways,
So full of life and light and love.”