PASSING near an encampment of gipsies, I went in amongst them. Whilst buying some of the skewers they were making, I learned that one of their number was ill, and begged to be allowed to see him.
The father asked, “Did you want to talk religion to him?” “No,” I said. “What then?” “About Christ.”
“Oh, then you may go in: only if you talk religion to him, I’ll set my dog on you.”
In the large gipsy tent I found a lad alone, and in bed, evidently at the far end of the last stage of consumption. His eyes were closed, and he looked as one almost dead. Very slowly in his ear I repeated the scripture, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). I repeated it five times without any apparent response, and I thought he did not seem to hear. On my repeating it for the sixth time, he opened his eyes slowly and smiled. To my delight he whispered: “And I never thanked Him! but nobody never told me! I ‘turn Him many thanks: only a poor gipsy chap! I see! I see! I thank Him kindly!” He closed his eyes with an expression of intense satisfaction. And as I knelt beside him I thanked God. The lips moved again. I caught, “That’s it.” There were more words, but I could not hear them.
On going the next day, I found the lad had died (or rather had fallen asleep in Christ) eleven hours after I had left. His father said he had been very “peaceable,” and had a “tidy death.” There was no Bible or Testament in the encampment: I left one of each. The poor men wished me “good luck,” and gave me a little bundle of skewers the “boy Jemmy” had made.
It was apparently the first time this boy ever heard of God’s salvation, and with unquestioning faith he took God at His word, and with his dying lips thanked Him, that He “so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” God is satisfied with the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ: this dying lad was also satisfied, and this mutual satisfaction was instant and everlasting salvation. And eleven short hours afterward he exchanged that forlorn, cheerless tent for the paradise of God, where he is tasting that God is as good as His word. If you, reader, have not with your heart yet “accepted” God’s way of saving lost sinners, you are on the verge of that death which God calls “eternal.” But “the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” Will you walk past it, to the “great white throne of judgment” lying ahead of you, and thence to the fire that “never shall be quenched”? or will you pause and take it―take salvation now―and “return Him many thanks,” as that poor lad did?
“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Can you say, “He loved me and gave himself for me”? See Him as your substitute, for there is life in a look.
“You say that a man can know that his sins are forgiven! No, never. If a man were pure as the running stream, or white as the driven snow, he might; but for mortal man to know that his sins are forgiven is presumption.” So said a man to one who had been urging that sin was forgiven once and forever through the Blood of the Atonement. But is it so?
Hear what God’s book says:— “There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions” (Ise. 44:22). “Justified freely by his grace” (Rom. 3:24). “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. 10:17).
“Weary, weary, who can give me rest?
Weary, weary, who can give me rest?
Hark! it is thy Saviour calling?
Sweet and low His voice is falling,
Anxious and distrest,
Christ can give Thee rest!
Sinful, sinful, who’can make me clean?
Sinful, sinful, who can make me clean?
Hark! it is thy Saviour pleading,
Wilt thou pass Him by unheeding?
Sinful though thy past has been,
Christ can make thee clean!”
ANON.