HE was a man well known in the quiet country town in which he lived for his kind and obliging ways, as well as for the uprightness of his character. His work, which was confined to some acres of farm land and garden work, was carried on with admirable method and order; and everything under his hand was a model of propriety and neatness, anything like confusion or disorder being perfectly unbearable to him. I had often watched the exactness and tidiness of his ways in all their details, and how quickly everything was reduced to order as changing seasons came round, all litter and unsightly things being speedily removed out of the way.
One fine spring morning I saw him on a ladder, with his hammer and nails fixing the trees to the garden wall, and as I passed by I said to him—
“You are getting the trees in beautiful order on the wall, hoping someday to see the fruit that will be hanging there. I will tell you something that God tells us. He is going to hang every precious and glorious thing on the Lord Jesus Christ. He will fasten Him as a nail in a sure place, — all the glory of His Father’s house will hang upon Him, and every precious vessel. Oh! how blessed to be fastened on to the Lord Jesus Christ, to see by faith His glory and beauty, and to be amongst the precious things that are hanging upon Him.”
His nailing was suspended for a moment or two as he listened to what was said, and he looked wistful and thoughtful enough, as these words spoke to him of things he knew not as yet. Moral and upright in character as he was, he knew he had not Christ; and nothing we are in ourselves can avail for permanent happiness, or give us a link with the things which are not seen and eternal, if Christ be unknown — the Saviour — Redeemer — Shepherd — Friend whose loving heart has spanned our case and need, and who has given Himself for sinful man: the Holy, spotless Lamb of God.
He was in the way at this time of hearing constantly God’s way of salvation through the preaching of the Word, and he could be noted as always an attentive and earnest listener; and though, too, many conversations with others took place, as to God’s grace and man’s need, he never said much, being naturally a quiet man, who liked better to listen and ponder than to make any profession. Still, one felt sure the blessing would come, and that the Saviour would be known; and truly it did come in God’s own peculiar way, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working, and “whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men.”
He stopped me one day as I was going along, and, after some hesitation, said, “I have something I wish to say.” Seeing there was what appeared rather unusual about him, I waited quietly to hear. It was to this effect: — “I have heard so much about the Saviour of late, and have seemed so unable to lay hold of anything, that I knew I was all wrong somewhere, and one night lately, before going to bed, I asked the Lord to show me my own heart, that I might know how it stood with me.”
Was he hoping to find something there on which to rest? Anything meritorious to encourage him? or anything on which he could with confidence build himself up, and so be satisfied? It may be, vain as such a hope would be; but at all events he wished for reality and to know it.
He continued: “I had a dream that night, and thought I was in a very foul and loathsome place, full of every abominable and unclean thing — so filled with filth and corruption, that it was impossible to cleanse it, or set it in order. It was perfectly indescribable, and I stood amazed. There was not a single thing that the eye could see that gave me any relief, and it was all so abhorrent to me. — I awoke, and I knew that it was a picture of my own heart, which God had given to me.”
He stopped; deep penitence was evident there, and brokenness before God, at the discovery of what he was. “Behold, I am vile, what shall I answer Thee?” was now his thought, and he abhorred himself. It was difficult, impossible indeed, for him to express what he felt; but he had taken his true place, like one of whom we read, when in the presence of a thrice-holy God: “Woe is me! for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips.”
The strong man was bowed, and subject, and at the feet of Jesus, where grace had brought him, though he hardly knew it. Oh, blessed place! where the soul is without guile, where the withering silence is broken, where what we are is made manifest, known, and spread out to Him. It is the place where Christ is found.
I hardly know what passed or what more was spoken, but I knew God was doing His own work in His own wonderful way,
“Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,”
and God would finish it in His own time. I feared to intrude words of mine at so solemn a moment, lest I should hinder rather than help. God and the soul had met, and the end in blessing I knew was sure. He had used this remarkable dream — in which such a state and condition of things were displayed to him, that with all his love of order and natural ability, he felt he was perfectly unable to amend or set straight — to show him his own heart, of which, before, he had neither measure nor idea. Thus it is with the natural heart, “it is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.” We cannot fit ourselves for God. We are strengthless to help ourselves. “The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots.” But the grace of God has acted on our behalf, “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
A few days afterwards I saw him again, now radiant and smiling, and it was easy to see that the work was done. He joyed to tell, in his own quiet way, that he now knew Jesus as his Saviour, and that he was washed in His precious blood, which alone could cleanse from what he had discovered himself to be. A soft and chastened smile overspread his face as he told out his newly found joy and peace, and one could see the deep emotion that filled him as he spoke of his Saviour’s love. The live coal from off the altar had touched his lips, — the value and efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ, in all its cleansing power, had been applied to his soul, — and his iniquity was taken away, and his sin purged (Isa. 6). Years of a well filled up life for Christ, on whose side he at once ranged himself, passed on. A few days’ illness during the influenza epidemic, and he was gone to be with Him whose preciousness he proved in death, as he had in life. When he felt nature to be fast sinking, — and he knew this better than those around him did, — he said to one near him, “What would I do without Christ now?”
He was calmly resting on His well-known love, and passed quietly out of this life to be with Him above.
Reader, would it be so with you? Do you so know Christ and His blessed work, that whether it be in life, or in death, you know His sufficiency? The Lord Jesus is the center of the eternal glory above, where all His redeemed will surround Him, reflecting His glory, and where all will be, according to the mind of God, in purity and love, and “He shall be for a glorious throne to His Father’s house.” “And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Reader, will you be there? Will you be one of those, washed in His precious blood, and cleansed from all defilement, who surround the Lord Jesus in the day of coming glory, and who are sharers in it, made “clean every whit”? Do you desire to be made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light? “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin,” — it glorifies God, and saves the soul.
“We know there’s a bright and a glorious home,
Away in the heavens high,
Where all the redeemed shall with Jesus dwell, —
But will you be there, and I?”
M. V.