I WAS asked to visit a poor man who was lying ill and unsaved; and, “My daughter here, sir, will show you where he lives,” said the person who asked me to go.
I soon found myself in a poor-looking room, by the bedside of a man who had evidently known hard times, and was now suffering very much from chronic bronchitis, with a terrible cough that had quite prostrated him for over nine years, and confined him to bed the greater-part of that time.
As a consequence, deep poverty was marked on everything within the walls of the house, for he was past work these many years; and instead of his providing for his family, his wife and two-daughters had to provide for themselves and him, out of the scanty wages they earned at the factory.
Still, notwithstanding this, there was an air of respectability in the house, and an evident desire to make the best of things, that brought with it a certain measure of relief, as the heart well nigh sickened at the thought of the abounding sorrow and misery, the fruit of folly, disobedience, and of sin, of the manifold forms of which but one class was typified here.
After a little introductory conversation, we soon turned to the question of his soul’s eternal salvation. He was free to speak about it, poor fellow, shut up there in suffering and want, with few to visit or speak to him, a stranger’s face and a word of sympathy was like an angel’s visit to him. He had not much fear of death: not that he saw the way exactly through it, but he was religious, and he had good thoughts of God.
“But if you were to die tonight, where would you go to?” said I to him.
“To heaven, I hope?” was his reply.
“But why do you hope to go there? Many won’t. In what do you differ from others, that entitles you to that hope?”
“Well, I do all I can that’s good, and I try to live the best way that I can; and I believe in God, and I hope I’ll go to heaven when I die.”
“Yes, all very good; but you know ‘the devils-also believe, and tremble,’ and they are none the better for it.” (James 2:19.)
“True,” he said, rather staggered at the idea, and struck with the possibility of his ground not being altogether so firm as he had thought it was. “But,” he added, after a little pause, “the devils believe, and tremble; they do not believe and serve.”
“Well, and do you believe and serve?”
“I do.”
“You serve God? How long have you served God?”
“Oh, this long time!”
“How long?”
“These many years now.”
“How many?”
“Oh! a good many, perhaps a dozen or thirteen.”
“But have you ever been converted?”
“Well, I can’t say as to that, exactly, but I have served God these many years; that I’m sure of.”
“But Judas Iscariot served also. The Lord Jesus chose him as an apostle; and sent him out to preach the gospel, and to cure diseases, and do many similar things along with the other apostles; and we know that he was a traitor after all, and has gone to hell.”
“Oh! I hope not. I hope no person has gone there. That’s an awful place; and it’s an awful thing to say of anyone. I would not say that of anyone. I hope God is too good to send anyone there. Oh! no; I wouldn’t say that of anyone.”
“But do you believe there is such a place as ‘everlasting burnings’?”
After a pause, he replied, very thoughtfully, “Yes, I do; for the Book says it; and if I did not believe in ‘everlasting fire,’ I could not believe in everlasting life,’ for it is, the ‘same Book that tells me of the one that tells me of the other also. I must believe it.”
“Well, and if you had your deserts, which would be your proper portion, eternal life or eternal judgment?”
“Eternal judgment. I know that, if I had my deserts, for there’s not a wickeder living man in the town than I have been.”
“And how then are you to escape it, if you deserve it? How do you expect to get to heaven?”
“Well, I just do the best I can, and pray to God, and I believe, and hope He will have mercy an me when I die, and overlook my sins.”
“That He won’t. He couldn’t do it,” I replied.
Looking at me with a mixture of amazement, curiosity, and contempt at my ignorance, he replied in a most cynical tone, “Then there’s no salvation for me.”
“No,” I calmly said, “not in that way.”
“Then how am I to get it? Let me hear your way.”
“Now,” I said, “look here. Suppose you owed a bill, say £10, at a place of business, and: could not pay it. And suppose there were different partners in the firm; we’ll call them, for example, Mr. William, and Mr. Henry. Now, if you went in one day to make known your poverty, and found Mr. William making up the books, and he said to you, ‘Well, Joe, I know you are a poor man, and cannot pay the money; I will overlook your account in the book, and not charge you with it,’ would that not make you very happy? and you would come away in great peace, and tell the wife that it was all right now that Mr. William had overlooked your account, and you need not pay the money?”
“I would to be sure.”
“Now, suppose next day you met one of the other partners, Mr. Henry, say, and he said, ‘Joe, you owe us £10’; you would say, ‘Yes, but Mr. William has overlooked the account, and I havn’t to pay it.’ ‘Oh, but,’ says Mr. Henry, ‘Mr. William has no power to do any such thing, He is but one of the firm, and the firm demands it, so get ready to pay or go to prison,’ where would your peace be then?”
“I confess it would be gone in a moment.”
“To be sure it would. But suppose, instead of that, Mr. William had said, ‘Joe, you are poor and cannot pay; I will pay for you,’ and: put his hand into his pocket, and pulled out £10, and popped it into the till for you, and said.
‘There, Joe, the money is paid; I will give you a receipt, and put “paid” to your name in the book’; would you then be afraid to meet the rest of the firm, with the receipt in your pocket?”
“No; that I would not.”
“Well now, Joe, God could not overlook your sin. His righteousness demanded the payment of the debt; but what justice demands grace prides; and in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, God has shown how ‘He can be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.’ (Rom. 3:26). The cross is not the overlooking but the settlement of sin. The debt is paid, and “being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5:1.)
“‘Bold shall I stand at that great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay;
While by Thy blood absolved I am
From sin’s tremendous curse and shame?’”
Thus I went on to tell him the story of the cross, and as I looked up, I saw his hand stealing over the bed to get his handkerchief to wipe away the big tear-drops that were rolling down his cheeks, as he was trying to stifle his emotion. But perceiving that I had noticed him, he said in a broken voice, “You must really excuse me, sir, for I cannot help it; but there’s something in that that touches me. I havn’t grit any this many a long year, for my heart is as hard as a stone, but somehow that touches me, and I cannot help it.” And then he fairly broke out. “I see it all,” he presently added; “well, I was blind; but the cross settled it; and it is not overlooked, but settled. I thank God; I thank Christ; I thank you, sir. Oh! but there are many blind that do not see the way, and those that teach them are as blind themselves. No one ever told me that before, and I never heard it. Oh! I am thankful that I lived till today, for if I died yesterday I would have been lost, for I was on the wrong road, and many hundreds besides me, but now I see that the cross has settled it all. Thank God! Thank God! I’m not afeerd to die now.” And he sobbed right out.
The long-continued burst of very intelligent praise in which he now gave expression to the feelings of his emancipated soul was most touching and blessed to listen to.
Not long since one of my children went with her mother to visit him, and found him in great distress, as one of his daughters was very ill, and both father and mother thought her dying. Yet he was so full of praise and joy in God that my little girl was quite struck with it, and on leaving the house said, “Oh, I never, never saw anyone so happy as that man. I shall call him Joyful Joe.” And on visiting him again on another occasion she said, “Every time I see him I feel inclined to add another Joyful to his name: so now I must call him Joyful, Joyful, Joyful, Joe.”
On speaking subsequently to the person who first asked me to visit him, she said, “Joe is converted anyway, and all the house know it of him; his temper is quite changed.”
He is still struggling on with pain and poverty, poor fellow, but his account with the Firm is settled, and his one desire while awaiting the Lord’s time in patience, is that it may not bong till He takes him home to be with Himself forever, where “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.” (Rev. 21:4.)
Reader, are you, like Joe was, hoping that God will have mercy on you, and overlook your sins in the day of judgment? No; He could not, for it would really leave you still in your sins, and you and He could never thus be happy together. He has something far, far better for you than that. Infinite love has provided for the requirements of infinite righteousness in the cross of God’s beloved Son, and the truth of this must reach your conscience and your heart through faith, if you are to have eternal life, peace with God, and boldness in the day of judgment.
Every other hope is a delusion.
E. C.