I HAVE already said that my fellow clerks were Jews, with whom I was on the best of terms until I refused to join them in their blaspheming against Jesus. More than once I felt it my duty to tell them of Jesus who came into the world to save sinners; but whenever I tried to do so I failed in the attempt for want of resolution, and many times I wept bitter tears over my sense of ingratitude to the loving Saviour who so loved me as to die for me. I thought of my fellow countryman, the apostle Paul, whose character I so greatly admired and studied—how bold he was for the gospel when he made Felix “tremble” as he reasoned with him of “righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” Then I thought of the Jews who were ashamed of the Lord Jesus, whom they rejected as their Messiah, and of their being confounded and scattered to the present day. But those who believed in Him I considered had received all the blessings predicted by Moses and the prophets. Paul, as a Jew, believed in Christ, and enjoyed an abundance of grace, so that, being filled with that happiness which the gospel produces, he could say that he was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. How could I be ashamed of Him who gave His own life-blood for my soul? No, no; I was resolved, cost what it might, never to be disloyal to my Saviour any more.
On the morrow, a conversation arose about the Day of Atonement, which was to be solemnized in a few days by humiliation, repentance, fasting and prayer. I asked the Lord to help me to say something to them, and He graciously did so. I drew near to them and said, “Pardon me, the law of God, demands perfect obedience, and pronounces death upon the least deviation from its injunctions. Now where is the man that can lay claim to a sinless nature, to a soul unsullied by the slightest offence? You might traverse the whole universe, and everywhere you will find the traces of our fall, and the blighting effects of sin. No, there is no merit, as the prophet says, in fasting, and no release from guilt through the sacrifice of the lips; the exigencies of our nature require a worthier atonement, and the justice of God an ampler satisfaction. Not even the sacrifice of the offspring of our affection can bring us back to the lost favor of a just God, and to the heaven we have forfeited by our sins. An atonement commensurate with divine justice alone could silence the rigor of the broken law. This sacrifice the believers in the Messiah have, for we read that ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.’ The Messiah has thus offered up Himself as a spotless sacrifice for sin, and in consequence of this sacrifice those who receive Him into their hearts by faith have all their sins forgiven. I firmly believe that Jesus is that Messiah of whom Moses and the prophets wrote.”
Here I was interrupted by one of them, who said, “We have a sacrifice, we offer a cock on the Day of Atonement for our sins.”
I told him I was aware of that fact, and asked him to show me a single passage in the Bible where it says that a cock should be offered on the Day of Atonement. The practice, I told them, was a mere Rabbinical invention, and utterly unavailing for the great and important end for which it was designed.
“He is mad,” said one.
“Na, he has turned a Methodist preacher,” said another.
“Let us kick him out of the place, as we did that other apostate,” said a third.
And at last one came towards me, saying, “This blaspheming Meshumad must have a blessing for this” —and putting his two hands on my head, said— “May his days be few, and his children soon be fatherless, and his wife a widow!”
“That is right, Joel,” they all shouted, “give him no mercy; he does not deserve anything better.”
Notwithstanding this, I could, from the bottom of my heart, bless them who thus cursed me, and pray for them who thus despitefully used me.
Nothing more was said to me that day, and no one spoke to me afterwards except when anything went wrong in the office. I always was the guilty one; indeed, I was the scapegoat of the place. Now and then I had it whispered into my ear, “Meshumad, eh,” and once or twice I found bits of bacon in my overcoat pocket. Although I was quite left to myself I could see that their hatred to me increased daily, and I told my wife so more than once. One morning, as I came into the office, I heard a general muttering among the clerks, but nothing was said or done to me until I had an occasion to fetch one of the ledgers, which was as much as I could carry in my arms, and as I was passing one of them, as he stood by his desk, he put out his foot and tripped me, and I fell heavily to the ground. For a moment, as I lay bruised and helpless, I really thought that both my arms were broken. The noise of my fall and the roar of laughter which it occasioned, brought Mr. Smith from his room, who kindly came to my assistance. When I arose I turned to Moss, and told him that I thought it was very unkind to behave in such an ungentlemanly manner; he might have broken my arms.
Addressing himself to Mr. Smith most angrily, he said, “I have not touched him, sir; he did it to quarrel with us.”
Mr. Smith looked at my arms, and as he saw the right one swelling very rapidly, told me to wash my face, which was covered with blood, and go home. At the same time he advised me to call at the first chemist’s shop to have my arm attended to, which I did. The chemist, on looking at it, said that it was a very bad sprained wrist, which was worse than a broken arm, and added, “You have something that will cripple you for a few months.”
On arriving home, my wife was greatly alarmed on seeing my arm in a sling and marks of blood on the front of my shirt. I told her what had happened, and to comfort me she said that I ought to rejoice that the Lord Jesus counted me worthy to suffer a little for His sake.
I felt convinced that she was quite right. My arm was so very painful during the night that I had but little rest, and I remained in bed all the next day. The day after I called at the office merely to show myself, and Mr. Smith, on seeing me, asked me into his room. After expressing his sorrow to see my arm in that condition, he told me that he had that morning received a paper signed by all the clerks, to say that I must leave the office or they would. “I am told that you believe in Christ,” he said, “and as all the gentlemen belonging to the firm are Jews, and you know how that poor man fared who only said that he thought that Jesus was as great as Moses, I think you had better leave quietly, and if you are sincere God will open a way for you.” He handed me a cheque for the amount due to me, with the additional sum of a month’s salary, and on leaving he put two pounds into my hand from his own pocket as a mark of his sympathy, and said, “Whenever you want a reference—apply to me.”
I was rather sorry to leave the place where I had been employed for the last twelve years; at the same time I felt, with my present views of Christ, it would have been impossible for me to remain there much longer, and I could only say, “Lord, Thy will be done.”
On coming home, whether my wife saw anything in my countenance or not, I do not know, but on meeting me she said, “So they have sent you away! have they?” and before I could reply she said, “I thought they would. Never mind, dear; He who has given His dear Son has promised to give us with Him all things. After you left this morning I felt you would not remain there much longer; and in reading Matthew 6 I was much comforted with the last few verses, where it says, ‘I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,’ and so on to the end of the chapter. God will care for us, I am sure of that.”
I blessed God for having given me such a ministering angel in my dear wife; she always had the right word for the right place. I had changed the cheque on my way home, so I gave her all the money, and as I did so she observed, “I must make the most of this,” and indeed she did, and how she did it I really did not know, and I sometimes said, “Sarah, the money I gave you is like the widow’s cruse of oil.”
We were greatly blessed with an evangelical ministry, for the Reverend T. B., our pastor, was truly a converted man. His only aim was to preach Christ, and Him crucified, to perishing sinners, as their only hope of refuge. As a preacher he had a remarkable influence over his congregation; and what he said in the pulpit was so evidently his own conviction and what he believed to be the truth, that you could not help feeling he had the good of souls at heart. He was a great lover of the Jews, and spoke, in the pulpit and out of it, of the immense debt Christians owed to that people. He used to say, “When we see a Jew let us never forget that all the prophets and all the apostles were Jews, ‘and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.’” He loved to dwell on the fact that through the fall of the Jews salvation came to the Gentiles, but there was a day of blessing still in reserve for them, when they as a nation shall look upon Jesus whom they pierced. He often said he never could understand how people calling themselves Christians, and professing to read their Bibles, should so rob the poor Jews as to take from them all the promises of mercy and blessings, and apply them to themselves as the “spiritual” Israel! while all the predictions of wrath were left to the real Israel, the Jews. He thought that this one-sided way of expounding the Holy Scriptures must tend to perplex the Jews and to shut them out from the sympathy of their Christian neighbors, to place obstacles in their way, and to drive them from Christ instead of drawing them to Him.
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