I HAD been asked to visit an elderly man, who, it was supposed, had not many weeks to live.
He was a stranger to me, and I was anxious to find out whether he was ready to be called away into the presence of God.
I found it very difficult to say anything to him, as he had himself so much to say about his various ailments, and the affairs of his farm.
When at last I spoke to him of his soul, and of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Saviour of sinners, he replied, with indifference, that he had no doubt that it was all very good when people understood those things, but he did not, and, though he had often heard them, he had never been able to take them in. “There are some that can, and some that can’t,” he said; and again he returned to the subject of the farm.
As I left the house, the dull leaden sky, the November trees half stripped of their yellow leaves, which lay trodden in the wet road, all looked far less dreary than the house within, where the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ could find no entrance.
The following visits were much the same; and I then left the neighborhood, sorry to have found so little hearing for the message from God, though I had always been received with great civility and kindness.
It must have been six months later, when in London, that I received a message from Mr. J. It was, that he was sure I should be glad to hear that he was saved.
I was surprised at so decided a way of expressing it, and, as I was just then returning to the place where he lived, I went immediately to see him.
I found him looking well and strong, and his face beamed with. joy. “The Lord has taken me in hand,” he said. “He has healed my body, and He has saved my soul.”
I asked him to tell me how it happened. I will relate what he then told me, as far as I can remember it, in his own words.
“You remember,” he said, “how stupid I used to be when you came to talk to me last autumn. I couldn’t see what you meant, and it all seemed something far above me, that was out of the reach of my mind altogether. I went to bed one night just as stupid as ever, a poor, lost, dark sinner, as I was. Then I dreamt that I awoke; but, strange to say, I found that I was gore! I had no self left. There was the room; but I was not in it. Out of the window I saw nothing. All was one! There was only a barren wilderness. The crops were gone; the cows were gone; and more strange than all that, I was gone too. Then, I thought, what is there left? Is there nothing that is not gone? And it came before my mind, as clear as the sun in the sky, that there is One who could not be gone, and He seemed to me to fill heaven and earth; only Himself and no other! It was the Lord Jesus Christ that remained! ‘Yes,’ I said to myself, ‘I am gone; there is only Christ!’ And then I saw that was just what I needed; for the poor wretched sinner that was such a trouble to me was not there at all, and the One who was there was perfect, and God was looking at Him; not at me, but at Him. Yes, God put me out of sight, and Christ stood in my place before God, and God was satisfied. And my joy was so great, I awoke, and I called out aloud, ‘The Lord has shown me that I am gone, and there is Christ instead of me!’”
“Now,” he continued, “I see why I didn’t understand you before. All the time you talked to me I kept thinking, ‘Oh, yes, that’s all very nice, but somehow I must do something myself; I must pray, or repent, or do something or other on my part.’ And now the Lord had shown me that not only He didn’t want my doings, but He didn’t want me. He had put an end to me, and Christ was there instead. What more could He want? Christ stands before God for me, and God is satisfied with Him; perfectly satisfied; and I have nothing to do but to own that it is so, and to thank and praise Him. How simple it all is when you see it! But I might have gone on blundering till now in my own thoughts and was if the Lord hadn’t come to my help. There, now!” he said, correcting himself, “you see I can’t even speak of it right; I said that wrong. He didn’t come to my help at all, for He did it all Himself, and put me. clean out of sight, for I was not to have any hand in it. It’s a blessed, blessed thing, too, that I know not only I am nothing, but I have nothing. I used to think a deal about the farm, and say to myself, ‘These are my fields, and those are my cows, and so on.’ Well, now, when I go about I think to myself, if the Lord were to take me this minute, there’s not one of these things belongs to me; they would all be just nothing to me at all. But I have Christ, and nothing but Christ! What a thought! He is mine, and He is mine forever.”
It was indeed wonderful to hear these words from the lips of a man who had by power of mind learnt nothing; but now, by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, he knew the glorious truth we are so slow to learn (and perhaps the most intelligent are the slowest in learning it), that “I am gone, and Christ is there instead!”
From this time a year and a half ago, Christ indeed seemed to him to “ fill heaven and earth.”
A laborer remarked, not long afterwards, in speaking to his wife, “I’ve seen a wonderful thing today. There is a man I know well, and feel sure he’s the same man that I’ve known so long, and yet I’ve never seen one man so different from another as he is from what he used to be. He saw me in the field, and he came all across to me, and you should have heard how he talked about things I’m sure he never gave a thought to formerly; but he seemed to have nothing else to say.”
“You see,” Mr. J. said to me one day, “the Lord only gave back my health, and left me down here to witness for Christ; and I don’t see there’s much else to be done but that, and I’m thankful some seem to receive the word; but some who used to like my company now keep out of the way altogether. They’re like I was once, no heart for it.”
“I hear people asking God to save them,” he said another time; “but if I were to say that, I should be asking Him to do what He has done already. I couldn’t go on asking for what He has given me.”
Another time, referring to a sermon in which crossing the Jordan had been mentioned, he said, “That sermon struck me at the time, but yet I never saw the truth for years after.”
Wondering whether he would understand my question, I asked, “Do you know which side of the Jordan you are now? “
With a look of surprise that I could ask such a question, he answered, “Well, I can’t help knowing that. How can I?” Don’t I know that I’m in the land that flows with milk and honey?”
About four months since he told me he was going to visit some relations about a hundred miles distant. “It’s greatly on my mind to go there,” he said, “for I’ve no opportunity of speaking to them about the Lord, and I fear they’re all in the dark, as I was.”
Before he went he called to see a neighbor who was dying, having been lately converted.
“Good-bye,” he said, “we shall meet in the glory. You’re going now, and I’m soon coming after.”
He returned from his visit, and shortly afterwards we received a message that he was ill. I went to see him, and found that he was dying.
“Nothing but happiness,” he said. “Just think what it is to be going to Him! Any moment now I may go, and be with Him forever. There’s only one thing about it I mind, and that is, that I cannot speak loud enough to tell them all what the Lord is, as I should like; but I can praise Him myself, and soon shall praise Him much better. I’ve now no pain, and nothing but joy.”
A few hours later he was absent from the body and present with the Lord.
Do you know what it is to see Christ instead of you? and to own that God sees Him instead of you? “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” “He that is dead is freed from sin.” Not only the sin removed, but the sinner removed also. Sin put out of God’s sight for ever, and the sinner who did it gone too: Christ, who took our place on the seat of judgment, now living for us in the glory; His acceptance the measure of our acceptance. God well pleased in us, because He sees us in Him, and in Him only. This alone brings perfect peace, because it shows us the perfect satisfaction of God. We see that the full, unclouded love of the Father rests on us, because we are in Him in whom He delights. The sinner not improved or mended, but gone, and Christ alone left, the perfect man in the glory of God, with whom we are one. As God, we adore Him; as man we are one with Him, if Christians at all; for there is no lower place. F. B.