A FEW years since I was on board an English merchant vessel. We had already been a long voyage, and were, at the time of which I write, lying in a foreign port.
Together with several of the ship’s crew I had just taken my midday meal, and we had come again upon deck to engage in our various duties. One of us, a young man, went aloft to assist in sending up the fore-topgallant yard. This was his first voyage, but he was strong and active, and was considered one of the most expert of the apprentices on board. He was in the midst of youth, and as far as I remember gay and thoughtless—careless of eternal things.
Alas! his was a short career. He had been but a short time aloft, when somehow he missed his hold— he fell. The next moment his poor disfigured corpse lay close to where I was working on the forecastle. It was a ghastly sight. I can see it now. But another thought entered my mind— “Where is his soul?” I knew I could answer the question had it been myself, for I was then ignorant of God and His great salvation, though God’s message of love had many times sounded on my ears when at home. I was at that time a rejecter of Christ, and as a rejecter had I then been called to meet God nothing but hell could have been my eternal portion.
Solemn thought! Are you a rejecter, reader? If so, there would not be the slightest hope for you if you should die as you are now living. No doubt you expect to repent and turn to God some day But God is giving you time now. Satan would delude you by saying there is time enough yet, but God says “now is the accepted time.”
“Haste! haste! haste!
Delay not from death to flee;
Oh wherefore the moments in madness waste,
When Jesus is calling thee?”
Though I was impressed by the death of my friend, the solemn feeling soon wore away, and, sad to say, I still wandered in the downward path.
But God cared for my soul, though I knew Him not. A few months after arriving in England my eyes were, by His infinite grace, opened to see myself a lost sinner needing salvation. And then I was shown another sight. It was Jesus. The scales fell from my eyes and I saw that God’s beloved Son had borne my sins in His own body on the tree more than eighteen hundred years ago. (1 Peter 2:2121For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: (1 Peter 2:21)). Infinite love! He thought of me when I thought not of Him. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Beloved reader, this same Jesus, whose blood has washed my crimson sins away, waits to be gracious unto you. Will you accept Him as the One who has met all the righteous claims of God’s throne against the sinner? This is what gives me peace. I can look up to God now in perfect confidence and say, “Abba Father,” for I know that the precious blood of Christ has perfectly met everything that could be against me. Am I saved because I was more deserving than my poor friend who was so suddenly cut off? Nay, we were both upon the same level before God—lost sinners. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” By His free, unmerited grace I am saved, through faith, and that not of myself, it is the gift of God. (Eph. 2:88For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: (Ephesians 2:8)).
Utterly helpless, unable to do a single thing towards my own salvation, I had to be saved by another. That One was the Lord Jesus Christ, who is now presented to you as a perfect Saviour.
Will you accept Him? Will you let go every other hope upon which you may have been resting and trust yourself for time and eternity to the One who suffered for sin on Calvary’s cross?
“He took the guilty culprit’s place,
And suffered in his stead
For man! (O miracle of grace!)
For man the Saviour bled.”
G. J. H.