TWO men stood side by side in a trench in Flanders, waiting for the signal to go “over the top.” As they stood there, amidst the intense excitement of the last seconds, the younger of the two, a lad of eighteen, turned to his comrade; and said, half wistfully: “We may be done in any minute, and I wish I knew what will hap to me if I am?”
The elder looked scornfully at the lad, and replied: “You should have thought of that before!”
Eagerly the boy turned upon him. “Have you thought of it? Are you ready to die?”
“No; I am not,” was the rejoinder, cut short by the signal’ and the rush which followed it. A few moments, and the lad had fallen, shot through the heart; but the elder man escaped., without even a scratch. As he sat, some months’ later, in a soldiers’ home, and told me this tale, he added uneasily:
“I often wish now I could have said something different to the poor lad.”
“You would now, I hope,” said I. “Are you ready to die?”
“Yes,” he said, “thank God I am. I could not get rid of that question: ‘Are you ready?’ It kept worrying me as I thought of poor Jim, and I felt as how I’d been spared and he hadn’t, and it seemed like a warning. So I got a Testament, and I began to read it, to try and find out how to get ready. One day I came upon the words, ‘Whosoever shall, call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,’ and I thought that that needn’t take long to do. Something then seemed to say in me: ‘Why not now?’ So I just, looked up, and I said, ‘Lord, save me and get me ready, to die,’ and He did it, then and, there, and I knew it. And now am trying to follow HIM, and to help others; but that doesn’t bring, back times ‘that are gone, and it’s too late to help Jim.” Are our lips sealed when they should be open?
The battle was over, and the stretcher-bearers were busy at their work. A party of them came upon a soldier badly hurt, whose life was ebbing rapidly away. As they lifted him tenderly on to the stretcher they recognized him, for he was a man well known in his regiment as an infidel and a scoffer. What, then, was their surprise when he opened his lips and whispered faintly:
“Which is the way to God?”
One of the bearers was a true Christian, and he bent over the poor sufferer and said:
“Jesus Christ is the way to God.”
“Can I find Him?” murmured the dying man.
“He is not far to seek; He is here, by you,” was the reply. “He has been looking for you for many a day. Just say, to Him: ‘Lord Jesus, forgive all my sins, and take me to God,’ and He’ll do it.”
The hands were stiffly folded together, and the lips were seen to move, and bending over him the words could be faintly heard: “Lord Jesus, forgive all my sins, and take me to God.”
A hush fell over the little company, and they stood silent while the man lay exhausted, with eyes closed waiting for the end. Suddenly he opened his eyes, half-raised himself up, and said, in a loud, clear voice “Thank you, Lord Jesus,” and then fell back dead.
“Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out.”
In a little room adjoining one of the wards in a big military hospital, a man lay in great pain. He had been put there as a specially serious case. Terribly wounded, he had lain out in the open some hours before being rescued, and during that time memories of the past had come crowding in upon him. He had been a heavy drinker before he joined up, and the remembrances of his past, cruelty to his wife, and other sins rose before him. Then came a period of unconsciousness, followed by a dim realization of the removal from the battlefield and the subsequent journey back to England; but when he finally came to himself in the quiet of the little room in the hospital, the voice of conscience once more made itself heard, and he realized he was not fit to die. Yet death seemed drawing daily nearer, in spite of all the skill of doctors and nurses.
It was thus that I found him one day, with a look of distress in his eyes which told of a trouble deeper than the physical pain he was enduring, and. I spoke to him at once of the Saviour, our Substitute, Who had borne the punishment of all the sins which oppressed him. He hardly seemed to take in what I said; but I knelt by his bed and prayed that the blood shed for him might cleanse him, and that the Holy Spirit would make this blessed cleansing real to his soul.
When I rose from my knees, I saw a look of peace on his face which told me the prayer had been answered. Just as I was about to speak, the door opened, and in came another visitor. I told her briefly of his need, and she turned to him and said:
“You have no need to worry over your sins; anyone who gives his life for his country, as you have, is all right.”
The man smiled faintly, but he shook his head, and said: “Ah lady, that is a mistake! When I lay out there in the open, I knew I had done my bit. I hadn’t failed king and country; but that didn’t help me to face God. I wasn’t fit to die, and I knew it, and it has been an awful trouble to me every day since. But just now, as I heard that lady’s prayer, I saw that Jesus had been punished for all my sins and I might go free, and such a peace has come into my heart! How wonderful of Him to die for the likes of me! No, I’ll not be afraid to die now, because He has forgiven me.”
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can give me peace within?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
M. W. J.