Nearly seventy years ago a young man sat alone in a London back kitchen one Sunday afternoon. Apprenticed to a builder, with whom he lived, he was anxious to learn anything that might be useful in his calling, and therefore had set himself to study short-hand. It mattered little to him that it was the Lord’s day. He might have said with Pharaoh, “I know not the Lord” — nor did he wish to. Moral, respectable, intellectual, yet was he “without God and without hope in the world.” The first day of the week was to him, as to so many today, his own day—not the Lord’s—a day of freedom from business to do with as he liked; to be spent in sleep, or in pleasure, without one thought of that which marks that day from all others. Sunday was only a leisure afternoon to him, and Pitman’s shorthand was not to be acquired by anything but careful practice; so what could be better than to use the day for that purpose?
Yes, but oh, to be uninterrupted! Other young men shared his bedroom; they would be in and out. That would be distracting. His master used the parlor that day, and there he was not wanted. The kitchen was his usual sitting room, but the Sunday dinner had left that to be “cleaned up” by the busy housewife. There was no place left but the scullery! And to the scullery the young man betook himself, borrowed a kitchen chair, and, shutting the door, sat himself down well content to study.
With exercise book and pencil he eagerly turned longhand into shorthand, and then vice versa. But this was slower work! He could only transcribe letter by letter, but gradually he made them out. The words grew beneath his pencil and, as they did, fixed themselves in letters of fire on his heart:
“W-h-o-s-o-e-v-e-r t-h-e-re-f-o-re sh-a-1-1 c-o-n-f-e-s-s M-e b-e-f-o-re m-e-n, h-i-m w-i-1-l I c-o-n-f-e-s-s a-l-s-o b-e-f-o-re M-y F-a-t-h-e-r w-h-i-c-h i-s i-n h-e-a-v-e-n. B-u-t w-h-o-s-o-e-v-e-r sh-a-1-l d-e-n-y M-e b-e-f-o-r-e m-e-n, h-i-m w-i-l-l I a-l-s-o d-e-n-y b-e-f-o-re M-y F-a-t-h-e-r w-h-i-c-h i-s i-n h-e-a-v-e-n.” Matthew 10:32, 3332Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. 33But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 10:32‑33).
And the Holy Spirit, whose words Pitman had used as an exercise, used them to awaken a sense of sin in the young man’s heart. “I have never confessed Christ! So I am going to be denied before His Father!” It was a cry of agony. The shorthand lesson was forgotten as he faced the long, long eternity before him. Denied by Christ before His Father! Denied entrance to His presence, to His home—shut out with the lost forever—oh, the horror of such a prospect! A bowed head and a broken heart were before God in that scullery, and a cry of anguish went up, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
There had been former afternoons when, as a boy, he had attended Sunday school. The lessons there had been unheeded; the texts repeated never were fixed in his memory; it all seemed lost effort on his teacher’s part. All but one thing: one little seed had entered; one precious text—only one—remained in memory’s keeping. The same Holy Spirit who had so wonderfully used the verse from Matthew 10 to awaken conscience, now used the verse from John 3 which He had lodged in the boy’s memory years before; and in response to his cry for mercy the answer came; “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“Lord, I believe!” And then and there the young apprentice trusted himself to the Saviour God had sent, and was saved. When teatime came it was a “new creation” who left the scullery to confess the Lord Jesus before his roommates and master.