THE Lord was blessing in K—. For years the place had been slumbering in the cradle of death. Regular as their town clock, the people had filled their pews and joined in the various religious exercises from week to week, and as regularly had returned home in the full satisfaction of “duty” performed.
It was that Sunday Christianity which, beyond the limits of that day, is quite unrecognizable from the world itself, enjoying the same pleasures with it, courting the same honors, seeking the same paths, using the same means.
Surely, none but God can shake people from such deadly slumbers. God did shake them. Dead professors became alarmed at their deadness, and lost sinners fled to Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
While the blessing was quietly going on, despite the difficulties the great enemy of souls ever seeks to throw in the way, a young woman sent me word, through an elderly lady friend of hers, expressing a wish to see me.
Already I had been pointed to that young woman, who for several weeks had been coming to the meetings, and appeared very much exercised in her soul, but various reasons had led me to wait till persons thus exercised themselves expressed a wish to be visited, and I had left her to herself and the Lord.
As soon, however, as I knew her wish I called to see her.
“Why have you sent for me?” I asked, after I was seated.
“Oh, sir, I am so miserable!” was all the answer she could give.
“You have been attending the preaching several weeks, I said, and I am sure you have not failed to hear me speak of what Jesus, the Son of God, did on the cross. How that there ‘He bare our sins in His own body.’ (1 Peter 2:2424Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (1 Peter 2:24).) You know when He was there how He cried, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ and yet He was not delivered, because the Lord had laid on Him ‘the iniquity of us all’ (Isaiah 53:66All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)), and iniquity deserveth wrath.”
“O yes, I have heard all this,” she said, “but the more I hear it the more miserable I feel. I had never had an hour of trouble about my soul until I went to hear you the first time. My friend asked me to go with her, and I refused, saying I had heard many bad things about you; but she insisted the more, telling me I should not be led by prejudiced people’s talk, but go and hear for myself. I went, and that very night I came home with this unaccountable misery. I can’t explain it; I can’t analyse it. I hear people all around rejoicing and talking about the love of God and the cross of Christ, but the more I hear about that the more miserable I feel. My misery, sir, is very great. Can’t you do something for me?”
She had unburdened herself, and I now plainly saw that she was in that state where souls are in their last struggle against the grace of God, and try to cling to anything else.
“I can do nothing, nothing whatever for you,” I answered. You must perish in your misery unless you are willing to receive what Jesus did for you. Were I to baptize you in water this hour; were you to come and make remembrance of Jesus in the breaking of the bread with us next Lord’s day; were I to pray for you day and night; were you to fast till you are starved, all this would not, could not save you. Salvation is already finished, finished every jot. It is divinely complete. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. ‘Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things.’” (Acts 14:38, 39.)
I said much more to prove to her that salvation is by grace alone, through faith, but all I could say was only met by sighs; so I left her with the Lord, praying Him to turn her self-occupied eyes “unto Jesus,” that she might see that the same Jesus who once bare our iniquities is now risen and sitting at God’s right hand—without our sins, of course. He left them forever on the cross, to be remembered against us no more forever.
She continued coming as before, and for several weeks I could see but little change in her state. One Lord’s day afternoon she said to me, “I believe the light is dawning on me. I sometimes see something bright above. Could I see you again?”
I could not see her till the following Friday, when I had a blessed feast. Her very face beamed with delight.
“I found full peace at the meeting last evening,” she said, “while you were comparing the various foundations people try to rest on with the foundation of God. I saw plainly the foundation I had been trying to rest on ever since I first saw my sinful condition was just this: putting my earnest resolution to lead a godly life together with my feelings of deep sorrow, and bringing that to God as recommendation. I would not have owned that even to myself, but when I saw the foundation of God, the deepest and most secret recesses of my evil heart were made evident to myself. When I saw the foundation of God, that eternal redemption which Christ, on the cross, obtained for us, I scarcely knew what to do with myself for joy. All the way home, after meeting, I could but repeat to myself: Oh, what a fool, what a fool I have been! always trying to do or to feel some great thing, instead of just believing what Jesus has done, and what my sins made Him feel, on the cross.”
“Now,” I said, “I am going to urge you on to what I discouraged you from a few weeks ago. I feel convinced you are alive from the dead now; you are born again, a converted soul, a child of God, an heir of His, and a joint-heir with Christ. Your heart is right now, so I don’t care how much you do. You know Christ now. Live unto Him. Before you knew Christ, God looked for nothing but sin from you. It was all you could bring forth, and the end of that is death. But now God expects a holy life from you, a thorough separation from the world and the world’s ways; in a word, He expects you now to follow Christ, to walk in the world as He walked in it. If you are faithful in that path, you will have to suffer much shame, for the world is no better now than it was in His day, despite all its profession; but knowing and believing now what He has done for you, you cannot but love Him, and love can suffer anything: indeed, it not only can suffer, but it counts it a privilege to suffer for Christ and with Christ. May God by the Holy Ghost work in you now for His glory, as Christ on the cross worked for you for your redemption.”
“There is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3.)