“Well, Edward, how are you getting on down in the country?” asked a wealthy banker’s son, of his old school-fellow and father’s customer—a young landowner who had come on business up to the city.
He was handsome, tall, athletic a favorite everywhere, of a happy, pleasant disposition that made him acceptable in every society, and gained him ready admission to all the amusements and gaities of country life.
He was just at the age when in his position, a man’s life receives the final bent. He was “coming out.”
His early training had been excellent surrounded by Christian influence, and guarded by prayerful watchfulness. As he grew older and saw the freedom other young men enjoyed, such a sober life grew irksome, and he was gradually shaking off its restraints—untying the apron strings, as young men call it.
There were hands in plenty, stretched out in the name of folly and fashion, to lead this young man into sin and destruction.
O, at these times, for a hand put out in the name of Christ, to draw such from “the paths of the destroyer” into “the way that leadeth unto life!” The God of praying mothers will as surely reward these, as He will repay the former.
In the ignorance and buoyance of his heart, he had fallen an easy prey into the hands of the spoiler, but for the circumstances this history relates.
It was just at this juncture that he called on the banker, and had the above question put to him.
“We’re having a jolly time of it, old fellow,” responded Edward, enthusiastically, his whole face aglow with health and vivacity. “There’s some excitement on continually; we’re never dull. What with county and military balls, dinners, parties of all kinds, the club and hunting, with a visit to the racecourse by way of variety, we contrive to kill time so pleasantly that we don’t notice his decease.”
His friend regarded him very earnestly while he was speaking, and a feeling of compassion and yearning for his old school-fellow filled his heart. He thought,
“If he only knew how to estimate these things aright, how he would despise them, and flee from them as destructive to his soul’s eternal happiness.” Yet he was wiser than to say this. He simply said, cheerfully,
“Indeed, Edward, you seem to be enjoying yourself, at any rate. What you tell me, reminds me of the words of a wise man I read lately, ‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes:’” (to all this Edward’s heart assented, saying mentally, “That’s it, that’s just what I mean to do!” “‘But know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.’” Eccles. 11:9.
He repeated the last part very solemnly. It was not what Edward expected, so, hurriedly and confusedly, he said good-bye, and ran off, as if to run away from those last words. But no, he could not get them out of his mind.
He took the morning bus, and returned to the country, laughing uneasily to himself, that when he got down among the fellows, he would soon forget the unpleasant feeling produced by those words. But it was more than a feeling. The Spirit of God had begun to work with that young man, and would not let him forget.
How terrible it is, and yet so coveted by young men, to be let alone of God! To be allowed to pursue their own way of pleasure and sin, without a sting of conscience, a pang of remorse; while the thought of a holy God, and an unending eternity, is put far away.
God loves you too well, reader, not to trouble you—even now—with this very history, that through it you may be warned to flee from the wrath to come.
Edward returned to his friends and amusements; he essayed to go out as at other times before, but he was shorn of his strength to enjoy them. They had lost their charm; they could no longer satisfy him. For at the hunt, in the rush of the horses, and the loud yelp of the dogs, he heard that solemn word re-echoed—
“For all these things God will bring thee into judgment.” In all the different amusements he tried to enter into, it was there.
He could stand it no longer—it was unendurable. It burned down into his heart, so that sleeping and waking, he read it as in letters of fire.
He longed for rest; yet could find none in the things around him. He was disappointed with them all, and not less with himself. What should he do?
“I’ll go up to D— and see my friend,” he thought. “He it was who spoke these words that have taken the glamor from the empty, passing scenes, and shown me that the glitter of this world not only is not all gold, but is base metal indeed.”
He presented himself at the bank where he was cordially welcomed—the more so truly when he told his errand:
“I am perfectly miserable! I had no thought of the end of these things. I lived but for the present. I thought them perfectly harmless, as they may be in themselves; but, I see, it is the evil they induce—the absence of God—the waste of time—their uselessness—their selfishness—all these, and many more besides, inseparably connected with such a life. How they blinded my eyes to the claims of God—to His sentence concerning sin—to my hell-deserving condition to coming judgment! How they filled my heart, that I could be happy without the pardon of my sins; and my mind, that I did not think of my need of a Savior! But now I am in despair. Naught but judgment before me. Eternity looms like a cloud over my onward horizon, and I cannot pierce its darkness, nor catch one ray of light to give me hope. An awful doom, deserved and just, overhangs my soul. Tell me, my friend, how can I escape?”
His friend, seeing the real and deep concern he was under, that the Holy Spirit had convinced of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come, and that he repented toward God, produced his pocket-Bible. Turning over its pages, he pointed him to the Word of God; and showed him how Christ took the guilty sinner’s place by dying on Calvary, thus enduring the judgment of death deserved by us:
“God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Rom. 5:8.
“Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” 1 Peter 3:18.
Jesus “hath delivered us from the wrath to come.” 1 Thess. 1:10.
And now He can say, “He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” John 5:24.
Edward read, and believed—took God at His word—believed that, deserving of judgment and wrath himself, the Lord Jesus had taken his place nineteen hundred years ago; so that, on this ground, he was free, and could go on his way rejoicing. So he did—rejoicing! And he had need of resource of joy in the Lord, for severe trials awaited him on his new path.
When he returned home, he did not at first tell his old companions of the change wrought in him, and Satan tempted him to conceal it from them, that as he was now all right himself, he need not obtrude his opinion on others.
For some time he tried this plan, but he was not happy in so doing. It was dishonest—cowardly— though some would fain conceal their shame under the name of humility.
One day, as he was returning from a meeting held in a private house, he was going up to the hotel with his Bible in his hand, when he saw a number of his former worldly companions, and some of the officers from the garrison, standing on the steps.
“They will laugh at you,” suggested the tempter. “Besides, it looks so ostentatious to keep your Bible in your hand so. Put it into your coat pocket.”
Hastily he yielded to the temptation, and walked as unconcernedly as he could assume up the steps. But one of the men at once spied the unusual bulkiness of his pocket, and, poking at it, said,
“Hallo! S— what have you got there?”
At once he felt that he had not been acting consistently; so setting his foot on the neck of his temptation, he fearlessly drew out his Bible and confessed before them all that he was now converted to God, and desired, henceforth, to be a follower of Christ.
He had relieved his conscience in thus obeying God’s Word by confessing his Lord before men. He was again happy; the cloud which disobedience had collected was in this manner dispersed.
But it was the signal for a succession of attacks, in the many most approved forms “society”—that modern inquisition—knows only too well how to perpetrate on any who have the temerity to say,
“For me to live is Christ.”
From this time his unflinching boldness in preaching the gospel, and speaking to all rich or poor—of Jesus and His love, is known far and near. This so enraged the servants of sin and Satan, that more than one attempt was made even on his life!
One night he was summoned from his house “to speak to a dying man”—so the messenger stated.
‘Twas but a ruse! On the way he was fired at. The bullet, aimed with deadly accuracy at his heart, entered his coat. His cowardly assailants fled, leaving him for dead. But he rode on unharmed: his pocket-Bible had been his life preserver!
Often has he shown me this tenderly preserved memento of his Father’s care. And reverently, as a child, has one gazed, as the course of the bullet was pointed out. There through Moses, and the Psalms, and the Prophets, through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and well-nigh John, it had plowed its way, until arrested by this verse:
“Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me.” John 17:11.
Well and safely He kept dear old Uncle Edward, as he would have us call him, to a green old age. And so He ever keeps those who put their trust in Him.
You will never rue the day, dear young reader, when you turn from this false world to God.