THE lips that spoke these simple words in a few hours after were closed in death. For many years she had known the Lord Jesus Christ as her Saviour, and had trusted in His finished work on the cross as the only ground of peace with God, and the only title by which a sinner could enter heaven. How foolish to leave to a deathbed the settlement of the all-important matter of the soul’s relationship with God!
In her case death was not exactly unexpected, though it came with suddenness at the last. For two years she had been ill, though still able to get about, and indeed the Sunday before she was called home she had fully intended being present at a gospel service which was held in a tent some miles away from where she lived. A slight increase of her weakness on that day had alone hindered. What an interest she took in these gospel meetings, and how she longed for the conversion of those who attended them, and what a joy to herself to hear that sweet story of the love of God, and the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ!
And it must always be so. When the gospel has entered a heart, and when a real work of God has taken place in a soul, when a sinner is truly converted, there must be a desire for the spiritual and eternal blessing of others. There is much truth in the saying of another, “If you have never sought by act, word, or prayer, the salvation of another, you have much ground to doubt the fact of your own salvation,” for “we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:2020For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. (Acts 4:20)).
We are no advocates for the system of “looking within” which prevails so abundantly around us. We are fully convinced that saving faith is the soul’s upward and outward, and not its inward look. In other words, the anxious soul can never find peace through looking within, or seeking for happy feelings in the heart. Peace with God is alone to be found “through our Lord Jesus Christ,” and not through ourselves. It is to be found by faith, and not by feelings. It is based upon the finished work of Christ upon the cross, and not upon paltry works of ours. Yes, peace with God rests upon the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ; for He “was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification,” and “therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 4:25; 5:125Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25)
1Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1)).
Should any of our readers be anxious about the all-important question of the soul’s salvation, we invite their attention to these words of Holy Scripture. There is not a syllable here about our works, our prayers, our penances, our sacrament-taking, our good resolutions, our feelings. No, they are all excluded. To have mentioned these in the same breath as the infinite sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, offered up once for all on the cross, would have been an insult to His glorious work and Person. We say once for all, for the idea of a repeated or a renewed sacrifice, such as is claimed for the Romish Mass, or for the Ritualistic Eucharist, is alike a denial of the plainest statements of the Scriptures and a dishonor to the “one sacrifice for sins” offered to, and accepted by a holy God.
Ah, how well we can understand the Romish dread of the Bible! For where is there any room for the doctrine of the Mass or the Confessional in the light of Heb. 10? Let the reader open his Bible and read the glorious words, so clear and simple that a child may understand: ―
“But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God” (vss.,2). “For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (vs. 14). “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sins” (vv. 17, 18). In like manner as the infinite sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ shuts out all works of ours as a ground-work of salvation, so faith in that finished work shuts out all fear and doubt about salvation from the heart of the sinner who simply trusts in that precious Saviour, and His death and resurrection — “being justified by faith we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:11Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1)). Reader, there is no doubt nor fear here; there is no room for hoping to be saved, all is as sure and certain as Christ’s work and God’s word can make it.
It was truth like this that for nineteen years had been the stay and comfort of our dying friend; happily for her she had not left it to the last, nor, as people say, to “chance it in the end.” As we have said, she had hoped to have been present at the gospel service on Sunday night, but was hindered; so on the Wednesday evening, on my way to another similar service, I dropped in to inquire how she was. She was in bed, and a glance at her as I entered the room assured me that the end of her life here was near at hand.
Seating myself at her bedside, I remarked, “What a comfort at a time like this to know that all is peace and joy!”
“Yes,” she quickly responded, “it is peace, and — there is nothing that requires settling.”
These were her last words to me; in a few hours more she was with the Lord, but I left her bedside with the feeling, What a glorious testimony to the peace-giving power of the work of Christ from one on the very borderland of eternity! Reader, can you say the same now as you read these lines?
“On earth the song begins;
In heaven more sweet and loud, —
‘To Him that cleansed our sins
By His atoning blood;
To Him,’ we sing in joyful strain,
‘Be honor, power, and praise, Amen.’
Alone He bare the cross,
Alone its grief sustained;
His was the shame and loss,
And He the victory gained;
The mighty work was all His own,
Though we shall share His glorious throne.”
A. H. B.