As our train was passing Walton station, a young man entered. As he sat down beside me, I took out my ticket and showed it to him. I said: "Young man, I have my ticket.”
"Yes, sir," he replied; "I see you have.”
Continuing, I said: "I do not hope to have it sometime. I don't have to ask for one now, nor wish later that I had a ticket. I have it—that is a certain fact. And just so, also, I have salvation!”
The young man looked at me in astonishment. "Well," he exclaimed; "this is very strange! I could have gone to Barton for about half the fare by another route; but somehow I could not make up my mind to go that way. I felt impelled to come by this train, and I felt I must get into this coach.
"Now I'll tell you: there is a man who works in the same shop with me, and he says the same thing you say. He says he has eternal life; and, mind you, he not only says so, but everything he does bears him out. Bless you! He has no fear of death at all. And if he has any sorrow or trouble, this having 'eternal life' gives him such quiet and peace that I cannot help feeling that he has something that I lack. Do you see? And no matter how we razz him about it in the shop, we can't rile him. He is happy in claiming he has eternal life. He tells us he found eternal life by reading what God says about it in the Bible.
"For myself, I must confess to you, I used to read Tom Paine and Voltaire; but once when I was reading at night, I said, 'Tom Paine, you can't give me eternal life!' Then I felt so miserable I just banged the book on the floor.”
As he said this, he suited the word by action. Then with great earnestness he put his hand in his side pocket and brought out a beautiful edition of a pocket Bible. Holding it reverently, he said, "I now have the Book that makes known to me eternal life, but I still don't feel that I have it!”
I answered him: "When the clerk laid your ticket on the window ledge this morning, did you say, 'I must first feel that I have it, before I take it'? Or did you first take it, and then feel that you had it?”
"Oh," he said, "how simple that is! I must first receive salvation, and then I shall feel that I have it.”
Friend, let me ask you: Are you still standing at the window, waiting to feel that God is offering you salvation, and all the time you are refusing the grace of God? What do you want to feel?
Perhaps you say: "I must feel very sorry for my sins, and I must feel that I have forsaken them, and I must feel that now I love God. I have often tried to feel all this, but I have always failed. And yet I must feel all this before I can be saved-must I not?”
No, my friend! If feelings were God's conditions of salvation, not one soul would be saved. Nowhere in Scripture do I find one place where it says: "If you feel sorry for your sins you shall be saved.”
Paul's answer to the Philippian jailor's question, "What must I do to be saved?" was not "Be, or feel, sorry for thy sins, and thou shalt be saved." Nothing of the kind. He pointed the trembling sinner to a very different object from himself or his feelings-even to Jesus. The positive answer is: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." And that same hour "He rejoiced believing in God with all his house." Acts 16:30,3430And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? (Acts 16:30)
34And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. (Acts 16:34).