An aged clergyman sat in his study preparing his sermon for the following Sunday. He had preached in that northern parish for over forty years, and so far as orthodoxy was concerned, nobody could find fault with his discourses. Still there was no fruit. People came to church, heard the sermon, and went away just as they came. One generation passed away, and another filled their places, but eternal realities seemed to have little place in their thoughts. As the aged man sat musing, he looked out at the window of his study, into the church-yard, where the graves of many to whom he had once preached were green. They were in the eternal world. Their destiny for eternity was fixed; they would hear his voice no more. Had he been faithful to them? Had he pointed them to Christ and to heaven? These questions pressed themselves hard upon his spirit.
Thus engaged, a knock was heard at the door, and the servant maid made known to her master, that a young man, a farmer’s son, a member of his church, desired to see him. “Send him into the study then,” said the minister.
The young man walked in, and after the ordinary salutations and inquiries about the health of friends were over, he said, “I hope I have not disturbed your studies, Mr. B., but I could not help coming to tell you the good news, that the Lord found and saved me last week, when, I was on a visit to a relative in the South. I have been in your Bible Class for several years, and, as you know, I lately became a member of the church, but I did not see my need of being converted at the time. I’m sure you will be glad to know that now I am the Lord’s, and by His grace I desire to live for Him.”
The aged clergyman was completely taken by surprise by this remarkable story of the farmer’s son. He had never had such a visitor, or heard such a confession all the years he had been in that parish. Alas! he knew nothing of being converted himself. The doctrine of the Gospel he had learned at college and was able to state it in a kind of way to his people, but its living, saving power, he knew nothing of in his own soul. Was it any wonder that the people who listened to his words, were indifferent to the things of God?
For a moment he sat in silence, gazing on the manuscript that lay before him. Then, looking round to his visitor, he said in a subdued voice, “Will you tell me, James, how all this happened?” “Yes, sir, with pleasure,” was the young man’s reply, and then simply, pointedly and clearly as only a young believer can, the farmer’s son related the story of his conversion to God, ending with the words, “It was the personality of it, Mr. B., that I missed for so long. I believed in a general way that Jesus died for sinners, but I did not single myself out and say, He died for me, and through His death, I have life.”
After the young man had gone the aged clergyman sat alone in deep thought. The last words of the young farmer rang still in his ears. “It was the personality of it.” Was it possible that he had preached salvation to others, and yet failed to accept it for himself? The fact began to dawn upon him that it was so. He had never personally rejoiced in, the knowledge of his own salvation as that young man was doing. He could not speak as he did, definitely and decidedly about his “conversion.”
A great struggle followed; the proud will was unwilling to yield to the conviction produced by God’s Spirit that he was unsaved. It was a great descent to have to take the place of a lost sinner, vile, ungodly and unfit for heaven, after preaching forty years. But there was no other way out of it.
God will not save anybody who refuses to take that place.
Self-righteousness and pride exclude sinners from God’s kingdom. Whoever enters it must do so by the one door, that door through which the publicans and sinners entered. The aged man sat late, and all that transpired is only known to God. But at an early hour the following morning, he was on his way to the farmer’s son, to tell him the joyful news, that now he knew “the personality of it,” and could praise God for a known and enjoyed salvation. The news spread through the parish that the minister was “converted,” some said “gone mad.”