THE bay which we reached had a peculiar beauty in the brilliant sunshine. High and dry on the beach lay a fishing vessel, and leaning against it stood a weather-beaten sailor. The deck of the vessel against which he was leaning rose high above his head, and going over to him across the sandy shore, he told me he was engaged in the herring fishing, and was waiting for the returning tide to float her off.
Speaking to him of his calling, and the interest attaching to it, I said, “The Lord Jesus called many of His disciples from among fishermen.”
“Yes,” he replied, “I know that.”
“And how true it is,” I continued, “that from heaven where He now is, He is calling sinners like you and me to Himself, to come to Him that we might be saved. He is the Saviour, and we all need a Saviour.”
He knew that too, he said; and when I asked him if he had found the Saviour; who in His wondrous love was seeking the lost, he professed no certainty as to this, and added, “But I never just hear like what I want, and though I listen to all that is said, it does not take hold of me.”
I did not know how to reply to this, for what he listened to might not be what made God’s way of salvation clear to him. There is so much afloat nowadays, and schools of doctrine which can never meet the need of anxious souls or lead them to God. They are wide apart from what is plainly laid down in His Word, as to His free grace flowing out to all, founded on the atonement which Christ has made, and they carry souls away from God. The heart of man craves after something better, something to trust to, something to rest in, to satisfy it; it may have been so with him.
“You want to get to heaven, and you know the way, don’t you?” I now asked.
“Believe,” was his brief reply.
“True, but believe what? We must have someone and something to believe in. ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’ And Jesus Himself said, ‘I am the way.’ Besides, we are all sinners, and have committed many sins, heaps upon heaps, and God knows them every one—all the sins of the past of our life, and how are we to get rid of them, for we cannot take them to heaven?”
His answer now was the simple word, “Forgiveness.”
“Yes, but this can only be by the blood of Christ. There is nothing that can wash out a single stain or remove a blot from the conscience but the precious blood of Christ. You say ‘believe’ and you say ‘forgiveness,’ knowing that you must have faith in Christ as your Saviour, and the forgiveness of all your sins; how is it, then, that you have not found the Saviour who is seeking you and ready to receive you, and give you all you need?”
His answer was open and candid enough, and expressive of the condition of many: “I just think, wait a wee.”
The sad hindrance, from whatever cause, to the present salvation of his soul was, “I just think, wait a wee,” for he knew he was a sinner and needed forgiveness, and that he must believe to be saved. The poor man knew his need, but he was putting off the question to an indefinite time that might never come.
“Have you a lease of life, then, as you might have of your cottage or your vessel?” I now asked.
No, he hadn’t.
Why linger, then? Why put off for a single day the question of your soul before God, and put on one side the salvation full and free which God has provided? It is there for you, offered you at this moment. A future time you may not see, for we know not what shall be on the morrow. He is calling you today. Say no longer in your inward thought, “Wait a wee.” “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” Be in earnest now, and look to the Saviour who stood in the gap for us, and who from heaven now is speaking peace to every anxious soul.
Reading was afterward put in his way that might help to make what was but dimly apprehended clear to him; and I am in hopes that the salvation wrought out at the cross may in its fullness and divine simplicity find, through the grace of God, an entrance into his heart, “God’s easy, artless, unencumbered plan.”
Who amongst us, when the need of our perishing souls was pressed upon us, has not said, “Wait a little”? God tells us in His Word of one who, though he trembled under the convicting power of the apostle’s reasoning of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, yet pushed it aside because it told on his conscience too really, saying, “When I have a more convenient season I will call for thee.” Did it ever come? We cannot tell; but the record of it is come to us with a solemn warning from God. There are many hindrances to the reception of the glad tidings which God proclaims—not on God’s side, but on man’s; and many pleas are brought forward to still the voice of the uneasy conscience. Youth is pleaded, and—it is time enough. Anything and everything is pleaded that fills up the daily life in its varied pursuits; and the wealth and honor of the world are so absorbing as not to admit of a halt! While what concerns us most and what conscience tells us ought to be first and foremost, and what is of all importance—of eternal importance―is too often closed with this expression, “Wait a little.”
Why leave till tomorrow what ought to be attended to today, that your eternal welfare may be secured? It was lately said, “Oh, it is awful to think of the endlessness of eternity.” Yes! for the unsaved it is awful to think of; and this lies before each one of us, for happiness or misery—for heaven or hell.
Let us think of a salvation vast and unending, secure and stable as the throne of God, which He in love has provided, and that it lies open to all. All may come to Him now, just as they are, not waiting to be better, or for a supposed more fitting time, but today, to find the wondrous blessing of peace with God, and to be able to stand in His presence “whiter than snow.”
“Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.”
M. V.