IT was a sad story that was told me by two servants of the Lord, as we sat together in a railway carriage in the south of England a few months ago, and the artless way in which it was told made it all the more deeply interesting to me, so that in passing it on, in printed form, I trust that it may serve both as warning and blessing to many.
“We were traveling,” they said, “by the London and South-Western Railway about a year ago, and had beside us a young fellow whose dejected appearance struck us very forcibly. We longed to know something about him so as to help, and by God’s grace to rescue and lead him to Christ. After a short preliminary conversation, in which we sought to win his confidence, we learned that, tired of the restraints of home, and wishing to have his fling and enjoy the world, he had left his parents’ roof, had gone to sea, had spent a few years in going from, place to place, had been sickened by sinful habits, and then had returned to this country a humbler but most unhappy man. Having landed at a certain seaport, he felt that his best course was to make for home, tell out in the ears of his father and mother the wretched tale of his sins and folly, and seek to obtain if possible their forgiveness, and then spend his succeeding years in a way that would make some amends for the cruel and heartless way in which he had treated them.
“Well, he made for home. He reached the village and looked for the little cottage of his infancy and boyhood, but it was gone! His heart sank within him. The walls of that little dwelling of sorrow had been destroyed; no vestige remained. He wondered if the downfall of the house was an evidence of a greater loss. What of father and mother? Where could they be? How could he find them?
“Alas, he had never written them, nor could they learn his whereabouts. He had treated them with awful cruelty. He made inquiry of some neighbor, only to find that, crushed by grief, both parents had died, one shortly after the other. Killed by sorrow they had dwined and died, and the sad tale was told.
“This was the cause of his dejected appearance but, poor fellow, so wretched did he feel, and so utterly unable to rectify his fearful mistake, that he could see no better thing to do than to commit suicide. He was on his way to carry out that awful deed. We felt that we must do our best to prevent such a thing. We took him under our care; we prayed to God for and with him; we told him of another home where death is unknown, and where even he could find a welcome; how even his dark sins could be all washed away by the blood of Jesus, and that he might become a child of God through faith in Him. We kept him with us in a home for six weeks, and believe that he repented before God of his past career.
He gave evidences of a new life, and went again to sea, where he still is, we hope and believe, a truly converted man.”
A sad but not very uncommon story, I thought, as I could only thank God heartily for His grace to such an out-and-out prodigal, and for giving so much real charity to these two dear servants of His whom it was my privilege to meet on that occasion: then we parted.
I have given their story as nearly as I can remember in their own words, and I need hardly say that it made a great impression on me.
What struck me, apart from feeling the wanton cruelty of a child leaving his home and never informing his parents of his existence, was the contrast presented between the remorse which was leading him to a suicide’s grave and the blessed repentance which led him to turn to God, and find in the blood of His Son cleansing from his sins and frank forgiveness too.
The contrast is most striking. Remorse is, indeed, sorrow for sin, but there may be plenty such sorrow which stops short of repentance. Remorse is little more than wounded pride; and, when the wound is healed by the lapse of time, the unbroken will and unsubdued passions break forth again as bad as, or perhaps worse than ever.
The drunkard, for instance, has keen remorse when the effects of the drink have passed away, but the taste remains, and he returns to his wallowing.
Remorse is but transitory, though it may be so deep, and produce such hopeless misery that it ends in suicide. Such was the case with Judas Iscariot. Repentance, on the other hand, is not only sorrow for sin, but is also the judgment of it in the presence of God. It is a “repentance not to be repented of.” Sin is seen as exceeding sinful, and as having been committed not only against man but against God.
This makes sin, every sin, very serious. It is an awful thing for a creature to violate the law of God—to be lawless and unsubject to Him Such is sin! But repentance, when true and real, leads to certain forgiveness. The publican in Luke 18 cried, “God be merciful to me the sinner,” and went down to his house justified. David, the guilty monarch of Israel, quailed under the prophet’s charge, went down into the small dust of repentance before God, as we read in Psalms 51, and found forgiveness, as we see in Psalms 32, and David ended his days with a song of salvation.
Finally, the prodigal of Luke 15, as we all remember, flung his guilty self on his father’s bosom, told out the dreary tale of his prodigality in terms of deepest repentance, and found a welcome to the bosom and board of that tender father against whom he had sinned. Such is grace.
The story of sin—be that sin what it may—is always distressing, because, though sin may have its pleasure for a season, it is demoralizing and degrading, and must leave its bitter consequences behind.
The story of grace is always interesting, because, coming as it does from the very heart of God, it meets, on ground rendered perfectly just by the blood-shedding of the blessed Saviour, the poor guilty sinner who in penitence desires salvation.
Thus it was with the young wanderer above, and so it may be with any reader of these lines who in like manner repents before God. “He that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall find mercy.”
“None shall seek who shall not find;
Mercy called whom grace inclined;
Nor shall any willing heart
Hear the awful word ‘Depart.”
J. W. S.