“YOU have no right to thank God fox what’s upon this table: it was provided and paid for by me, and no one else: besides, I don’t believe there is such a being:” and Henry H―struck the table fiercely with his clenched fist.
“I’ll tell you what,” he continued, “THERE IS NO GOD. If there is, here’s an opportunity for Him to display His power.”
Placing his watch on the table, he said, “I’ll give God five minutes, and defy Him to His face to do His worst with me.”
With one hand on the table, and the other held aloft, the bold atheist awaited the issue of his blasphemous challenge.
It was a custom of the H―family for all the members of it to meet together once a year.
On this occasion the meeting was at the house of the eldest son Henry.
The aged father, a Christian, had just given thanks to God for the food they were about to partake of, when Henry started to his feet, and gave utterance to his daring and defiant words.
Amid deathlike silence the minutes glided slowly by.
One, two, three, four; at last the minute-hand tells the tale that Henry’s five minutes have run their course.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed derisively. “What about your God now? WHERE IS HE?”
“Harry, my son,” said the old man, “when you were a child I gave you to the Lord, and I have never taken you back. From the moment you put the watch on the table, Harry, I have been praying to God for you. You will be a converted man yet: I may not live to see it, but I KNOW that God will save your soul.”
Years passed away, the aged Christian was called home to his rest. Henry became a confirmed drunkard as well as an atheist, a ringleader in the paths of folly, profanity, and wickedness.
Walking along the street one day, with a shilling in his pocket, he decided to invest, it in two glasses of whiskey and a quart of ale.
No sooner was the resolve formed in his mind than he strode quickly towards one of his favorite haunts. Suddenly he paused: swift as the lightning’s flash the arrow of conviction entered his soul.
The long-forgotten past, his mis-spent life, rose up before his soul like a mighty mountain. His daring defiance of God, his father’s memorable words spoken so lovingly and tenderly to him at the family gathering years before, were brought vividly to his remembrance. “O God! let my dear old father’s prayer be answered: have mercy upon me, a vile and guilty rebel sinner!” was the prayer of his heart.
He turned round and hastened home, where, alone with God, he told out the anguish of his soul.
His wife had a Bible; he opened it, and read the record of God’s love to guilty man, “And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:5-85And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. 6For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. 8But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:5‑8)).
Perhaps you wonder, dear reader, why God did not take Henry H―at his word when he uttered his impious challenge. Friend, come with me to Calvary.
See the earth enwrapped in midnight darkness (Matt. 27:4545Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. (Matthew 27:45)). You think it strange that a holy God should bear with a poor worm of the dust, who dared to lift his puny arm in defiance of his Creator.
That terrible three hours’ darkness explains it.
Jesus, the Son of God, out of pure love to guilty sinners, voluntarily entered that thick darkness, where, ALONE, He sustained and EXHAUSTED the judgment of God against sin!
Never before, in the history of man, had the appeal of the needy been made to God in vain Yet listen: “My God, my God, why halt thou forsaken me?... Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them” (Psa. 22:1-41<<To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.>> My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 2O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. 3But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. 4Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. (Psalm 22:1‑4)).
“All thy waves and billows are gone over ME,” were the utterance of Jesus.
My unsaved reader, this is the language of the SINNER’S SUBSTITUTE, from amid the terrible gloom of Calvary.
This explains why God can now be just, and yet the justifier of every poor sinner who believes in Jesus (Rom. 3:2626To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:26)). God has only one way of saving sinners. Are you still a stranger to God’s salvation? Then listen, dear friend, and BELIEVE.
G. F. E.