I VISITED a dying brother a few months ago (a man I had known for twenty-five years), a laboring man in a factory. He spoke so much about Christ, that his sister apologized for him to another brother who came to see him, saying, “He is light-headed, sir.” The dying saint heard it, and, turning round, said, “No, I’m not light-headed; I’m light-hearted!”
Was it not lovely? We sang at the grave, by his request―
“We are by Christ redeemed.”
I received the above in a letter from an esteemed friend, and thought how it showed up the poor, hollow, Christless world on the one hand, and the reality and blessedness of Christianity on the other.
Reader, has Christ made you light-hearted? Can you join truthfully in that line of the hymn sung at the grave of the dear man whose words head this paper?
How many professing Christians, when they come to a death-bed, find that they have only believed in a Christ of history, and that their belief has had no more effect upon their lives than believing in a Julius Caesar of history. Is it so with you who are reading these lines? or do you believe in a living, loving Saviour at God’s right hand? “Ah!” said a dying saint to me the other day, “I have learned on this death-bed what I never knew before, that Christ is a real, living man up in heaven, with whom I can hold sweet communion all the time.” Is it so with you, dear reader? Do you know Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as your own Saviour? Can you say with the apostle Paul, “I know whom I have believed”? Unto all those who believe Him He is precious.
Are all your sins everlastingly forgiven you? Is your soul saved? and are you ready for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? For “Behold, He cometh,” It is the privilege of each beloved child of God to answer these questions in the affirmative; but if you are unable to do so because you are not a child of God, I entreat you at once to believe God, who delivered Christ for our offenses, and raised Him again for our justification, and you will be at peace with God; you will know what it is to be in His favor, which is better than life, and you will rejoice in hope of the glory of God; and then, though the poor, Christless, professing world may think and say you are light-headed, you will be able, to the glory of God’s grace, to reply, “No, I’m not light-headed; I’m light-hearted.”
H. M. H.
“IF there be nothing between God’s wrath and the sinner’s guilt, these may be kept apart during a time of long-suffering; but every moment they are mutually drawing nearer, this to that. The moment of collision will be―who can tell how? ―terrific!”
“IF the blood of Christ be between the sinner’s guilt and God’s wrath, these two will approach it, on this side and on that. The blood meeting on the one side the wrath, will extinguish it forever; the blood meeting on the other side with the guilt, washes it away, and makes the soul whiter than snow.”
“To have guilt between our conscience and the blood of Christ is misery; to have the blood of Christ between guilt and our conscience is perfect peace.”