Or, “I know that God has pardoned me, and that I am going to Him.”
ON the first day of this year, the day of his twenty-first birthday, Alexander Vanhamme quitted this world from the scaffold with these words upon his lips. He was executed at Melun, France, in company with an accomplice, for the murder of an old man.
His history, short, sad, and solemn, and yet with so blessed a termination as seen in the light of heaven, was as follows, and is only recorded here as a bright witness to the present grace of Him who said to the repentant robber who hung by His side on Calvary, “Today shalt thou be with ME in paradise;” and in the fervent desire that its perusal may be blessed of God to arrest unconcerned souls still on the road to eternal perdition.
In the providence of God, Vanhamme was bereft of a mother’s care when he was only six years of age. Shortly after he was abandoned by his father, and left an uncared-for waif on the sea of criminal life. Growing up without any education, either moral or religious, he made rapid progress in sin, till he committed the crime by which he forfeited his life. After his condemnation to the guillotine, a French Protestant pastor, of the name of Forjal, was allowed to visit him in his condemned cell. He found him a hardened criminal, who not only professed no religion, but had not the most elementary knowledge of Christianity.
At first the heart of his visitor sank within him, as he thought: How could he in the short time that would elapse before his execution “bring this poor dark soul to the light of the gospel”? But God, who opened the heart of Lydia so that she attended unto the things which were spoken by Paul, opened this poor darkened heart to receive the Gospel, and His servant learned that things that are impossible with man are possible with God.
Vanhamme had never before heard of the love of God. He had never before heard of a Saviour; but it seemed that from the very first day his heart was touched, and he readily drank in the words of life.
As simply as it was told him, that “God so loved the world, that He gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” and that “Christ had once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God,” he believed it, and with childlike faith received the forgiveness of his sins, and, with this, peace and the knowledge of the possession of eternal life as a present thing.
He rapidly grew in the knowledge and enjoyment of divine things; was baptized on the 31St December in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by his own request partook of the Lord’s supper the day before his execution, though he then did not know that he was only within a few hours of his end. This was broken to him the following morning by the pastor, and he heard without a word of complaint or question that the appeal for a commutation of his sentence had been rejected. Left alone with him for a short time, M. Forjal says, “For a quarter of an hour, our hands clasped together, we prayed and talked together as two brothers, not indeed without emotion, but without agitation, realizing the presence of God and the nearness of heaven.” He adds: “The last verse of the Gospel that I read last evening,” said my poor friend, “was, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? I am persuaded that neither death nor life,... nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.’”
In the undisturbed sense of this love he walked to meet death, and, as he neared the scaffold, said to M. Forjal, who walked by his side, “I know that God has pardoned me, and that I am going to Him.”
Those of the world who stood around that scaffold, and witnessed the execution of these two poor criminals, saw and thought of nothing beyond the visible fact before their eyes, that told them that the end of “the way of transgressors is hard,” and recognized the power of that government of God, which in this world is His “revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”
Like that similar crowd that stood around the cross at Calvary, and saw nothing there but the execution of two malefactors, knowing nothing of the One who hung between these two, and, as the One sent of the Father “to be the Saviour of the world,” saved one of them, so here they knew nothing of the presence of that unseen Saviour who wrought in saving grace in the heart of poor Vanhamme; but faith, that looks upon the things that are not seen, which are eternal, saw all this, and heard an echo from Calvary saying to him, “Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with ME in paradise.”
Unconcerned reader of this solemn end of a fellow-creature as sin’s desert in this world, yet touching instance of God’s sovereign grace to such an one, be warned as to what your end may be if you continue in your present course of sin and rebellion against that God of grace that seeks to save you. Oh! let the love of Him who suffered on the cross for you appeal to your heart, and lead you, even as you read these words, as a repentant sinner to put your trust in Him Who saved Vanhamme from the very brink of hell, and took him from the scaffold to be with Himself in paradise.
Blessed Lord Jesus! bless the story of Thine own grace to all who read it. Amen.
C. W.