Some weeks since, while traveling from Exeter to Teignmouth, I received from a Christian gentleman, who sat opposite to me in the carriage, the narrative of a very striking instance of the grace of God. The name of the subject has escaped my memory, but the leading facts of his case I can never forget. I delight in the records of God’s work in the souls of men, in scenes from real life, in pieces of living history. They tend to illustrate the true nature and proper effects of the grace of God in the gospel.
The young man, to whom our narrative refers, had been a garroter and pick-pocket. He had, if my memory serves, been trained in these vile pursuits. He was a finished thief — an adept in crime. But he was not beyond the reach of that grace which has come down into this world to seek and to save that which is lost, and which, moreover, never raises a question as to whether it is a lost garroter or a lost moralist. The young man was converted, turned from darkness to light, from guilt to righteousness, from Satan to God. He was plucked as a brand from the burning. Marvelous triumph of free, sovereign grace!
But then came the inquiry as to occupation, as to how he was to earn an honest livelihood. He spoke to the person who had been the means used in his conversion. “What am I to do?” said he; “no one will employ me; no one will trust me. I have no character.” The gentleman offered to give him a letter of introduction and recommendation. And to whom do you think, reader?
Perhaps to some chemist, druggist, or apothecary, or it may be some person whose business did not present any great temptation to the quondam thief. Not at all. The letter was to a goldsmith and jeweler! Think of this! A garroter and pick-pocket recommended for employment to a jeweler! However could he think of running such a risk? On what do you think the eye of that gentleman was resting when he penned the letter of recommendation? Was it upon hopes and expectations based upon moral reform? Was it upon the vows and resolutions of mended nature? Ah! no; it was upon the efficacy of the grace of God, and the power of the Name of Jesus. It was, we may safely assert, with the eye of faith resting upon the virtues of that precious grace and that peerless Name, that the letter of recommendation was penned. The writer of the letter occupied, according to his measure, the selfsame ground as that on which the apostle stood when he sent back the runaway slave, Onesimus, with a letter of recommendation to his injured master.
But what of the jeweler? How did he feel in the matter? It was all very well for another to recommend to his notice a pick-pocket; but it was quite a different matter for him to let the pick-pocket in amongst his watches and jewelry. Surely it was a risk. But ah! the same grace that filled the heart of the writer, gave confidence to the reader. The jeweler read the letter with his eye resting upon that mighty grace that can convert a thief into an honest, industrious, and liberal man; and, trusting to this grace, he entrusted his property to one who had been trained as a thief.
And was he deceived? No, blessed be God; no one that ever trusted the grace of God or the Name of Jesus was, or could be, disappointed or confounded. The young man is now, I believe, a successful preacher of the gospel; though, as if to prove at once the power of old habits, and the superior power of divine grace, he found himself, on one occasion, after his conversion, actually picking a lady’s pocket in a railway carriage. It was the old thing breaking out in a moment of forgetfulness; but grace was there to assert its holy power and gain its moral triumph. He at once returned the purse to its owner, with an apology, accounting for the act by telling her of his former infamous career, and of what the grace of God had done for him and in him.
May the Lord keep this young man in all humble dependence upon Himself! His case is certainly a rare one. It is not often we meet with an instance of a garroter and thief becoming an earnest and a successful evangelist. The Lord’s Name be praised!