THOSE people who tell us that instantaneous conversion from a life of sin to a life of godliness is impossible, have never arrived at a true conception of the power of God’s Holy Spirit in its operations on the human heart. The days of sudden and glorious conversion did not end with the apostles: and if in our day we do not see the Spirit of God working amongst the people and producing in men’s lives those marvelous changes of which we have read and heard, it is, more than to any other cause, due to the apathy and lack of consecration and faith on the part of God’s children.
Some fifty years since a great revival broke out in many parts of England, and amongst other places it was felt largely in the West of England.
A most successful mission was being conducted at a little village in Somersetshire. God owned and blessed the labors of a little band of faithful stalwarts, and some marvelous conversions were the result. The subject was on everyone’s lips Some went to the meetings horn curiosity, some with joy to hear the living Word faithfully expounded, and some with the avowed intention of interrupting them, making a butt of the various speakers, and having a general “lark.” Amongst the latter class was one young man—strong, full of animal spirits, and without God or hope in the world. He determined to go, and also determined to be a ringleader in an attempt to break up the meeting. He started out, and got within twenty yards of the chapel. (I know the chapel, the man, and his story, every word of which is absolutely correct. How many times in latter years have I heard him, with streaming eyes and a beaming smile, tell it!) But here some irresistible impulse stopped him short, and threw him to his knees. He could not go farther—it was a physical impossibility. I will tell you in his own words of what followed. “It was the hand of the Lord,” he said, “pulling me up out of the miry clay in which I was fast being swallowed. I saw myself as the Lord saw me—vile, undone. I saw hell open, and knew I was fast going there. The blackest darkness came over me, and I was in an agony from fear and shame, on my knees, in front of the chapel where I had come purposely to upset the meeting. I cried out loudly to the Lord for mercy. Some friends from the chapel came out and took me in, and there I prayed again and again, and these friends with me, till presently I saw that though I was a black sinner, yet Jesus was my Saviour— He had died for me. My chains fell from me, and I rose to my feet praising the Lord for His mercy, and vowing I would live for His glory.”
And right worthily has he kept that vow all the years until last summer God called him to Himself to receive the crown of victory that fadeth not away. Night and day, weekday and Sunday, the Lord was indeed his delight. In the street, the market, the workshop, or the church meeting, his talk was of the Lord. No gloomy religion was his; neither was it something to be put away during the week. With the apostle whose conversion was also instantaneous he could truly say: “For me to live is Christ:” —and to die was gain: for his end was perfect peace.
Is God’s arm shortened, that it cannot save? A thousand times NO! None are so far dead in sin as to be beyond His power, through Christ, to save. To say that one is too vile for Him is but a lie of His arch enemy’s. History, ancient and modern, God’s Word, experience—all prove that God can and does save the vilest, and often as swiftly as in the case above.
A. L. O. S.