I SHOULD like to write a few lines as to my conversion, now some seventeen years ago. I was then studying in London as a medical student, after four years’ college life at the University of Cambridge. At that time I was caress and indifferent as to my soul’s salvation, neither reading my Bible, nor going anywhere where I might receive good.
One Sunday evening will never be effaced from my memory. I was playing cards that night with other young men, but took a constitutional through the streets before playing. I had gone about two miles from my lodgings when suddenly, like a flash of light, I got the impression that I should not get back alive. I was so powerfully impressed and filled with horror at the thought of meeting God that I turned round and fled as for my life through the streets back home again.
On arriving I poured out half a glass of whiskey to steady my nerves. What filled me with horror was the thought of meeting God, for I knew I was not prepared, and my deserts would have been the eternal judgment of God. I played cards that night, but the shaft from God went home, and I was miserable.
This was merely the start of months of soul agony and distress. What terrible nights I had, waking up after having experienced the horrors of hell-fire. I knew full well that I was absolutely unfit for God’s holy presence, and if I were cut off in my sins I should be lost forever.
In a few weeks’ time I had to leave London, and I had a horror of the place. My father I knew to be a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and if I could only get under the roof of my own home I thought I should be easier. I continued my studies at home, but it was no use, I could not apply myself sufficiently and it seemed a waste of time and money to go on, so I contemplated a farm life. Nine months from that eventful Sunday evening I found myself practically alone on a farm in Dorsetshire, and it was there the light from God broke in upon my soul. If I had seen in the past how utterly unfit I was as a guilty sinner for God’s presence, I was now led to see God’s provision, and I rested my soul’s salvation upon the Lord Jesus Christ, believing in Him as my own personal Saviour.
How happy I was. Those months of misery had passed away like a dream, and I now desired to testify of Him before others. It was impossible to keep the good news to myself, so I started by writing to all the men on the farm, enclosing some little books in each letter; after which I wrote to all I knew, saved and unsaved. I cannot describe the relief it was, this unburdening of my soul.
Previous to this I had tried to keep it all to myself, being too proud to let others know, but now the confession brought deep peace and joy to my heart, and although now seventeen years ago, I have never doubted my conversion to God.
Every soul saved is a triumph of God over Satan’s power, and is a miracle of divine grace, and I now take this opportunity of appealing to any reader of these lines who has not as yet decided for Christ, to make no delay. Life is uncertain, and the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Where will you spend eternity, with Christ or in the outer darkness? The gospel tidings have sounded forth for nineteen centuries. God presents to fallen man His remedy for sin. What is that? you say. The precious blood of Jesus. The question recently raised in the Daily Telegraph, “Do we believe?” has elicited thousands of replies, the majority of which show only too clearly their utter refusal of God’s way of salvation.
Unless your faith, my friend, is founded upon the precious blood of Christ, all I can say is you have none. May God produce (as in my case) a sense of need in your heart, and if an unbeliever, may you have no rest until you can truly say, “Jesus is mine, and I am His.” However much man may have drifted, God in His holiness and righteousness has not changed one whit. If you should pass out of this life without having repented and owned your guilt before God—as one vile and unfit for His presence—there can be nothing but judgment for you, whatever you may be considered in the eyes of men: titled or untitled, king or peasant, religious or irreligious, meet God you must. The gospel day will now soon close. Countless thousands of happy beings have availed themselves of God’s remedy—the precious blood of Christ—the only antidote for the poison of sin. If you rest your soul’s salvation thereon you are safe.
One views with increasing dread the darkness that is rapidly creeping over this highly privileged land of ours. By the majority the gospel is refused. As a result idolatry and superstition are to the front. Numbers of ministers in the professing Church are unbelievers, presenting a false light before the people. God and His Word are really set aside, in their place man introduces his thoughts in the pride and arrogancy of his heart.
God, however, still lingers in mercy and grace, His love being towards all, and “not willing that any should perish, but that all might come to repentance.” But there is a culminating point, and if man refuses point-blank what God presents in sovereign mercy and goodness, there will be nothing left but judgment. May you, my reader, accept God’s terms whilst it is yet today. “Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Heb. 3:1515While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. (Hebrews 3:15)).
F. G. B.