A Gospel Address, delivered at the Victoria Hall, Exeter, by Heyman Wreford.
“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. And the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it said to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped; and all the world may become guilty before God.” —Rom. 3:10-19.
AND destruction and misery are, in their ways. The daily destruction of the sinner’s life goes on; the breaking up of God’s commandments, day by day, and hour by hour; the mental and physical deterioration caused by natural and Satanic influence swaying the life; the barque of life with the devil at the helm, churning the billows of sin and shame straight for the tempest that broods upon the deep; and the awful shipwreck of a lost life. “The destruction that wasteth at noonday.” The awful expenditure of human life, millions perishing in the ways of death, other millions treading in their footsteps, “hell enlarging herself,” stern laws scarcely restraining the unhallowed impulses of sinners on every hand. Oh, God! what shipwrecks strew the sands of time! What a ghastly hecatomb of death this poor world is! Oh! the misery of it all! Destruction and misery the terrible companions of the sinner in his sins. Poor lost sinner, think of it. “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” The heavens are bending over you as if to woo you to your God. The flowers bloom fair upon a thousand fields. The birds sing out the happiness of rejoicing hours, and forests wave their leafy banners out to catch the winds of God. The cattle on a thousand hills are His, but you are the devil’s plaything, and the way that seems right to you in your fatal self-will is the way Satan has chosen for you. And vet God is calling, Christ is waiting to save you; angels watch your wandering feet. Come home tonight. Come home tonight. Then the misery of ill-spent hours shall pass, and the building up of a lite for God begin.
Let me repeat an experience that swept across my life, and may you from it learn how darkness can be changed to light, and how despair can turn to joy.
Then and Now.
I was a poor, lost, weary, miserable and guilty sinner, afar from God, and alien from my fellows. I stood in utter darkness, with the shadow of death hanging over me, and the pit of hell close to my sliding feet.
Deeper and deeper I sank in the quicksands of despair. Rudderless, tempest-tossed, and wretched, I drifted on the sea of life to an everlasting eternity. Eternity! the word burned into my brain. Where should I spend eternity? And then voices of the damned seemed to answer me (I was so near then to my ruin), crying out, “With us in hell! With us in hell!”
“O God,” I cried, weary with the strife, and with the burden of my sins crushing me down deeper and deeper, “O God, where art Thou? Is there not mercy? From Thy eternity look down and help, and save. I am a sinner, and I know not what to do, or where to go.” And then, methought I heard, beyond the darkness, a voice which said, in accents softer than the sweetest breathings of an earthly love, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And again I cried, “Where art Thou, Lord? I cannot see Thee. Rest? Thy rest and peace I want. What must I do to be saved from this horrible hell, this lake of fire?” And lo! I deemed a great light shone about me, and a vision swept before my wondering sense. I saw One nailed upon a tree, with the thorn crown on His brow, the nail-prints in His hands and feet, and the spear wound in His side. I saw Him there, and, weeping, I fell down before His blessed feet, the hardness of my nature softening as I wept and prayed there, beneath the shadow of His unutterable love. And as I gazed upon the cross, methought it was whispered in, my ear, echoing through every chamber of my heart, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
With untold gladness flooding all my being, I cried aloud, “He died for me! He died for me! Lord, Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief.” And again the message came, and thus it spake, “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.”
And then there was joy in the presence of the holy angels that stand about the throne, for a brand had been plucked from the quenchless flame, a wandering sheep had found the fold at last, and a lost and ruined soul had found a Saviour’s hand to guide him from darkness into light; had found that all the sinner wants to light him up to heaven is the lamp of a dying Saviour’s love, and that the blood of a crucified Redeemer is the only passport to glory, to the golden gates beyond which are the many mansions round about the throne. And now the pen of gladness wrote the promise on my heart, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” And I thought that when I gazed again I saw a vacant cross, while from the heaven of heavens I heard the sound, “Take up thy cross, and follow me.” And I knew that He Who died there for my sins, was now at the right Hand of the Majesty on high, for my security.
And I am treading the narrow road that leads to Him; the road marked by His blessed footprints, feeling that “underneath me are the everlasting arms,” and before me the white robe of His love, and the eternal happiness of His presence forever and forever.
“The way of peace they have not known,” There can be no peace apart from a knowledge of God in Christ. “He is our Peace,” and apart from Him there can be none. The belittling of the Lord Jesus is going on all over Christendom today. God is speaking to the world in these last days by His Son, and the devil is seeking to close men’s ears to that heavenly voice. From the blasphemer in the City Temple to the newly-fledged minister who oftentimes thinks more of his white tie than he does of his Saviour, this denial of Christ goes on. The Redeemer is patronized by some, and denied by others.
The exponents of modern thought can never worship with the angels over Bethlehem; they have no “gold or frankincense or myrrh” to lay before the feet of the infant Saviour. The splendor of the life of Jesus that shone in the world for thirty-three years has never been seen by them. “To him give all the prophets witness,” but Who, say they, believes in the prophets nowadays? And “Moses wrote of him,” but Moses made mistakes and is unreliable! Moses and the prophets must be swept aside! The marvelous poetry of Isaiah, and the deep pathos of Jeremiah; the wondrous melody of the Psalms, and Ezekiel’s imagery must all be given up, as far as their witness to Christ is concerned, because these poor creatures of a day have so decreed! The wisdom of the schools is against Christ, and so Christ must go! But He is my peace, the Christian says, and I will not let Him go. Not one of these men who are thus humanizing Christ have ever known the way of peace, and they never will without Him. We cannot do without our Saviour, can we?
“Who is on the Lord’s side?” Let the answer come from every heart tonight, “Christ for me, Christ for me.” You children cannot do without Him, for He took the children in His arms and blessed them. You mothers cannot do without Him, for some of your children are in heaven, and you want to meet them again. You poor anxious sinners cannot do without Him, because He alone can save your souls from hell. And you, my clear old Christian friends, you cannot do without Him, for He has been your stay and comfort for many years now. You have proved His goodness, you know His love; He has been with you in hours of sorrow and of joy. You have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
When these arrogant blasphemers stand before the Great White Throne to be judged by Him they denied on earth, you will be with Him in the glory.
Let me give you the record of the conversion of a saint of God, Mr. Wig-ram, written by himself. He says:
“Good instruction as to the contents of the Bible were mine at school, at seventeen, under a John the Baptist ministry; but I never knew the gospel till, at nineteen, I went abroad, full of the animal pleasure of a military life. I and my comrade spent a long and tiring day on the field of Waterloo in June, 1824. Arriving late at night at―, I soon went to my bedroom. It struck me, ‘I will say my prayers.’ It was the habit of childhood, neglected in youth. I knelt down by my bedside, but I found I had forgotten what to say. I looked up as if trying to remember, when suddenly there came on my soul a something I had never known before. It was as if some One, Infinite and Almighty, knowing everything, full of the deepest, tenderest interest in myself, though utterly and entirely abhorring everything in and connected with me, made known to me that He pitied and loved myself. My eye saw no one; but I assuredly knew that the One Whom I knew not and never had met, had met me for the first time, and made me to know we were together. There was a light, no sense or faculty my own human nature ever knew; there was a presence of what seemed infinite in greatness, something altogether of a class that was apart and supreme, and yet at the same time making itself known to me in a way that I, as a man, could thoroughly feel, and taste, and enjoy. The light made all light, Himself withal; but it did not destroy, for it was love itself, and I was loved individually by Him. The exquisite tenderness and fullness of that love, it appropriated me myself for Him, in Whom it all was, while the light from which it was inseparable in Him, discovered to me the contrast I had been to all that was light and love. I wept for awhile on my knees, said nothing, then got into bed. The next morning’s thought was, ‘Get a Bible.’ I got one, and it was thenceforth my handbook. My clergyman companion noticed this, and also my entire change of life and thought.
“We journeyed on together to Geneva, where there was an active persecution of the faithful going on. He went to Italy, and I found my own company and stayed with those who were suffering for Christ.
“I could quite now, after fifty years’ trial, adopt to myself these few lines, as descriptive of that night’s experience:
“Christ, the Father’s rest eternal,
Jesus once looked down on me;
Called me by my name external,
And revealed Himself to me.
With His whisper, light, life-giving,
Glowed in me, the dark and dead;
Made me live, Himself receiving,
Who once died for me and bled.”
This is how this young officer found the way of peace, and after fifty years of living for Christ he could testify with all his heart to the abiding love of Christ. Yes, the way of peace is to walk with Him on earth, but “there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” No peace on earth, no peace in hell.
(To be concluded, D.V.)