THE speaker had been an avowed infidel, but his infidel notions were now scattered to the winds. His favorite author had died saying “I am taking a leap in the dark.” This had aroused him to think of eternity. If that was all infidelity could afford at the last, it was not good enough for him. Going to his bookcase one day, his Christian wife had the joy of receiving and consigning to the flames all the infidel books in which he had previously reveled, and cared not just at that moment whether the chimney took fire or not.
But he was not yet clear as to how a sinner can be justified in the sight of God. His eyes were opened to the terrible fact that all who die in their sins pass into a lost eternity; and realizing his danger, he was anxious to exchange the road to hell for the road to heaven. Are your eyes open, my reader, to the appalling fact that you are traveling along a road that leads to perpetual night? “They shall be silent in darkness.” Such is the testimony of Scripture!
The shaft of conviction had been driven further home at the preaching, and the preacher had called to see him a few days later. “I want to go to heaven,” said he, “but I don’t want to creep into heaven at the last moment; it seems to me a miserable thing to spend all one’s life for Satan, sin, and self, and then turn to God for heaven when one can’t have the earth any longer. I want to spend a few years for God here before I go.” When the Lord was here, perceiving that one answered wisely, He said, “Thou art not far from the kingdom.” The subject of our narrative was only forty-eight hours from it. The Sunday following this conversation found him again under the preaching.
The “Ethiopian eunuch” shamed him, taking that long journey to Jerusalem, and here the gospel was brought to his very door. “He preached unto him Jesus.”
JUST WHAT HE WANTED.
“I thought,” said the hitherto infidel to the preacher, “you were holding Jesus out to me, and all I had to do was to take Him for my own. I needed His work to put away my sins, and I wanted Him. I went straight from the meeting to my bedroom, and falling down upon my knees, I told God what a sinner I was, and pleaded the merits of the work of the Lord Jesus who had given Himself to die in my stead. There and then
MY BURDEN WAS ROLLED AWAY,
and if I had died then I should have gone straight to heaven.”
A FEW DAYS LATER HE WAS BAPTIZED.
Before going into the water he said: “Mr. C―, I have wasted thirty-nine years. I ought to have come to this years ago.”
Before leaving the water, how earnestly he did pray that the rest of his days might be spent for God! “Make me an example to the world,” he cried, “and enable me to bring up my children in Thy fear!”
His wife’s brother called to see him a few days later. “Jack,” said he, “Lizzie and I have only now begun to live: we used to exist before, but we live now.”
You have not yet begun to live my reader if unsaved, for no one lives morally until God has His right place with him, and he has his right place with God. The “Second Death” will be eternal banishment from God. “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God”(Isa. 59:22But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. (Isaiah 59:2)) even now, and” your sins have hid his face from you.”
Still He calls you to repentance, desiring to bless you with the choicest blessings of heaven.
Christ has taken the sinner’s place, and God’s face was turned from Him when “he bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” How the holiness and righteousness of God shine out here! But, oh! what love is also displayed, for “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)).
“Repent ye, and believe the gospel,” fell from the lips of Him who is now “ordained of God to be the judge of quick and dead” (Acts 10). Claim Him as Saviour who now says, “Come unto me... and I will give you rest.” Or you must, in that “great and terrible day of the Lord,” hear that withering word, “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.”
“Are you weary and sad ‘neath the burden of sin?
Does it fill all your soul with dismay?
And to meet the just claims of a sin-hating God
Do you know you have nothing to pay?
Come! Come! Come unto Him!
If you own with repentance you’ve nothing to pay,
He will freely and frankly forgive.”
E. E. C.