IN the course of his duty a carman entered a grocer’s shop with a heavy load on his back, and inquired, “Where shall I put these goods, sir?” “Down in the cellar,” replied the grocer, and down the stairs went the carman. Coming, however, from the bright sunshine outside, the cellar seemed darker to him than it really was, as he peered anxiously round to find something on which to let down the two hundredweight he was carrying. “Just the thing,” he thought, as he saw, or imagined he saw, several sides of bacon piled one on another to a convenient height, and he proceeded to gently let down the load on them. Crack! crack! went something, and bending down he discovered that instead of bacon he had let it down on a box of eggs!
“What have you done?” cried the horrified assistant who had followed him down, to which the carman honestly replied, “Had an accident, and broken these eggs. Gather up the cracked ones as quickly as you can, and I will pay for them.” Instead of doing so, the youth told the grocer who, much to the carman’s annoyance, at once telephoned to his employer. Instead, however, of finding fault, quick as a lightning flash the latter sent back word, “Tell him not to trouble; I will pay for them all.” Very relieved, the carman went his way with the resolve to look more carefully another time when entering a dark cellar.
A week later he again reined up his horses outside the grocer’s shop; again queried as he entered with a load, “Where shall I put these?” and again, was told, “In the cellar—but mind the eggs,” added the shopkeeper.
The following week the same thing was repeated, and again a third time the grocer bade him “mind the eggs” as he went down to the cellar. By this time the carman was troubled. He was a Christian, and he knew the grocer professed to be one too. Long years before, the carman had rested on the word of God which says, “Through this man (the Lord Jesus Christ) is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:38, 39). He knew that that precious Saviour, when “He had by himself purged” his “sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb.1:3), and that the blood of Christ had purged his conscience front dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:14). And he knew, too, by blessed experience, that the worshipper once purged had no more conscience of sins (Heb. 10:2), because God has declared, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. 10:17). And since that glad day he could say, with one of old, “Herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men” (Acts 24:16).
Hence it was that the fact troubled him that the grocer should so often remind him of this mischance. He had himself owned the fault, his master had, unasked, paid the price, the matter was settled; why should it be constantly flung in his teeth again? So as he left the cellar that third week the carman approached the counter, and looking the shopkeeper steadily in the face he said, “Sir, when God forgives a man He never brings up the past!” Very astonished was the grocer, and much profitable conversation ensued, as the carman sought to show him how God can only forgive on a righteous basis. How that basis being laid, His holiness and righteousness satisfied—yea, more, Himself glorified—through the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross, God’s grace and mercy can go out to the vilest. His righteousness is “unto, all” (Rom. 3:22), though it is only “upon all them that believe.” But that the moment a poor sinner does believe God’s record concerning His Son, and, owning his lost condition, trusts only to Him and His finished work, that moment God is “just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”
Well then may such an one joyfully sing, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” (Who shall remind them of broken eggs?). “It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:33, 34).
T.