LET us enter a low public-house in one of the most degraded districts of London. Leaving behind the sights and scenes belonging to bar and parlor, we will ascend the staircase, and gaze upon the proprietor of the house. There he is, tossing restlessly on the bed, the victim of vice and debauchery. His evil course of reckless godlessness is fast drawing to a close. With a high hand he has sinned against God and His Christ. He has lived for half a life-time amid corruption of the foulest kind; now he lies dying, at what men term the prime of life, his frame shattered and ruined by disease.
“Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment” seems terribly true of him. There is no question as to his being a sinner, and a black one too. He has served his master, Satan, well, and the hard-earned wages of his sin and folly are before him, in all their naked, reality—death, and after death the judgment.
Friends inquire anxiously, “Is there no hope of his recovery, doctor?”
“None whatever here; I can only hold out a faint hope, upon condition that he is removed to a hospital, as this noise and atmosphere are most prejudicial to his recovery.”
Acting upon this advice, in the course of a few days the removal is made, and the publican becomes the inmate of the Westminster Hospital, and there we will leave him for a little.
Meanwhile let us gaze upon another scene.
Look right up through the opened heavens, and seated on a throne of grace at the right hand of God, crowned with glory and honor, behold a Man—the risen Man—Christ Jesus, the Lord of life and glory. He is seated, having finished the work which His Father gave Him to do. Once He hung between earth and heaven, the lifted up Son of man, a spectacle to men and angels. Calvary’s cross displayed the sinless One made sin; on that tree He drank to the dregs the cup of God’s wrath against sin. There He bore death’s penalty and endured the righteous judgment of God. He was there as the propitiation for sin, not as the doer of the sins for which He suffered, so that now a message of pardon, peace, and forgiveness, can be sent from that bright glory in which Jesus is seated, to this lost, ruined world. God can make known the riches of His grace even to a poor sinner like the wretched beer shop-keeper.
Let us now return to him in the long ward in the Westminster Hospital. He is not alone. By his bedside sits a gray-headed soldier, once a life guardsman, but now, having on the helmet of salvation, armed with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, his delight is to tell others of the Saviour who has saved him. To the poor, sinful publican he is telling of pardon, of blood so precious that it avails even for him; telling how God has come down as a giver, not a claimer; as a Saviour-God to deliver, not to condemn.
Will the poor man, just upon the brink of eternal death, refuse such an offer, so suited to him as a lost sinner? Alas! the words of love do not charm him; with evident distaste he turns away his head. Thus repulsed, the old soldier leaves the bedside.
He has grown gray in serving his Lord, and has, often suffered even to personal injuries, whilst proclaiming the gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ. He leaves the ward, with its long row of narrow pallets, to wrestle in prayer for the poor man’s soul. That God can reach him is his comfort. Often and often during the last days of the sick man’s fast-ebbing life did the Lord Jesus send His messages of love and grace to him by the soldier’s lips, but apparently in vain. Again and again the word was committed to the Lord of the harvest, with earnest pleadings for the dying man’s soul.
One day there was another occupant of the chair by the bedside. He was clad in approved clerical garb, with a demeanor of great sanctity, though youthful in appearance. He thus addressed the dying man: “You are soon about to leave this world, my poor man. You have been a very bad man. Now, I am a priest. If you are contrite, and confess your sins to me, I will pray to God and read the absolution.”
With an almost superhuman effort, and horror depicted on his face, the poor sufferer raised himself up and said, “Go away from me! There is only one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, and I don’t want you.”
He sank back exhausted. Not long after the old soldier was at his bedside, listening with breathless interest as the marvels of the riches of God’s grace to one so utterly lost were recounted, He heard to his joy that as the dying man lay there, the Word had, in the power of the Holy Ghost, sunk down into conscience and heart, telling of his guilt, but making efficacious the blood that cleansed away that guilt. He had with his heart believed unto righteousness, now he confessed with his lips unto salvation, owning that there was only one Priest who could say, “I absolve thee.”
“By Him my soul is purified,
Once leprous and defiled;
Cleansed by the water from His side,
God sees me as a child.
No priest can heal or cleanse but He,
No other say, ‘Absolvo te.’”
During the remaining hours of the sick man’s life it was his delight to tell of the love and grace that had sought and found one so utterly lost as himself.
What gladness, too, filled the breast of his visitor—a faint reflex of that joy with which heaven rejoiced over the returned prodigal.
We will again visit the beerhouse. It is growing late, but the bar-parlor is filled with its usual complement of slaves of intemperance. Its wonted hubbub, coarse jests, and ribald songs are silent; instead, the deep tones of the old soldier’s voice tell of the departure of their once boon companion. He has just left the bedside of the dead man, and, with the events of his closing days and hours freshly before him, he narrates the marvelous riches of God’s grace to the poor drunkard. Instead of the jaws of the pit receiving him, he was in the presence of his Saviour God. He goes on to proclaim the same precious blood, the same living Lord in glory waiting to make known His heart of love even to them. Pipes were quietly put out, half-emptied glasses are pushed away, and astonished ears listen to the tale of God’s saving power and grace extended to such as they. The devil’s territory was invaded with the glad tidings of salvation. The day of Christ, when both sower and reaper will rejoice together, will declare the result of the message to those poor drunkards.
Not many months rolled away before a number of Christians were gathered together round an open grave in Abney Park Cemetery. Pointing to the coffin, in which lay the remains of the old soldier, G. V. W., an aged servant of Christ, said: “It was customary with the ancients to recount the virtues, the valor, and the victories of the departed; I am about to say of the man who lies there, that from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he was a mass of moral corruption, wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores. If he could speak he would be the first to own how true that was of himself, as a poor sinner, but, at the same time, he would tell you that the precious blood of Christ had cleansed him fully, and perfectly fitted him to stand in the presence of a holy God, nay, more, it had been his joy to proclaim with his lips that blessed One whom I seek to present to you, a living Saviour in the glory of God.”
We then laid his body in the grave, to await the victory of the resurrection morn, when that blessed Saviour, who loved and gave Himself for the beer-shop proprietor and the life-guardsman, will claim them for His own. At the Redeemer’s voice the grave will yield up the bodies of all believers, the living will be changed and all caught up together to be forever with the Lord.
“A little while, and He shall come
Forth from the inner shrine,
To call His ransomed people home:
O bliss supreme, divine!
When every blood-bought child shall see
The Priest who said, Absolvo te.’”
Will you, my reader, on that resurrection morn be among those whom Christ will claim as His own? You certainly will if your trust is in the “one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.”
H. N.
OUGHT I to mind being left down here in the wilderness, in the midst of all that tries me in every way, when I can taste His love here equally in it all? It would certainly be a much happier thing to be present with Him and absent from this poor body; but if it is the will of Him who loves me with a love that wills I should stay down here, the sweetness of doing His will is enough.
G. V. W.