SOME years ago, there lived in Russia a young man, who had an ambition which is certainly less common than most ambitions. He had a passionate desire to be a saint. There may have been several reasons for this desire. No doubt he had anxious and troubled thoughts about the great eternity which lay before him. He believed that God is a righteous Judge, and he knew that he had been guilty from time to time of sins in thought, word, and deed. This is a very different thing from knowing that one is a lost sinner. A careful gardener may remark here and there a bad, worm-eaten apple upon a healthy tree, but he does not consider for that reason that the tree is a bad one. Most people regard sin just in this way. They condemn themselves for this act or that word, but they have never truly believed that the whole tree is bad, root and branch, and that it cannot, therefore, bring forth good fruit. “Those that are in the flesh cannot please God.” Is it common to believe this?
The young man had other reasons, too, for wishing to become a saint besides the desire to escape the just judgment of God by good works, and long prayers, and heavy penances. It has been said a man would rather be a great criminal than be nobody. In any case this young man thought it would be better to be a great saint than to be nobody. He read over and over again the lives of the great saints of the Eastern Church, and he looked with awe and reverence at their pictures in the churches, and in the old illuminated books of prayers and services. Yes, it would be a great thing to be remembered as they were, whilst years and centuries passed away, and to have prayers said to one, and a day dedicated to one, and to be spoken of as the holy Saint Basil or Saint Gregory, and to have one’s bones, or hair, or a bit of one’s coat, or a fragment of one’s hair shirt kept in a jeweled golden case, and shown to crowds who would kneel before it, perhaps, a thousand years hence. But how could one become a saint? was the important question. The answer was to be found in the great volumes of the lives of the saints, and it was in those books, not in the Bible, that young Smirnoff searched for it. Had he looked in the Bible he would have found a very different answer. There it is written that Jesus sanctifies His people (that is, makes them saints) by His own blood — that we are washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
In the old books of legends the answer was that which the proud heart of man will always give, whether in the Greek Church or the Roman, or amongst those who are called Protestants, but who have never known that they are lost sinners. It may be your own heart has often given this answer when you have thought “What shall I do to become at last a saint in heaven?” Yes, your heart and mine have said it. “I must do my best; I must pray, and work, and make myself worthy to have all the pardon and all the blessedness which the blood of Christ has gained.”
And so Smirnoff read in the old books that the saints really did set to work most diligently to gain for themselves eternal life. They fasted and prayed; they wore hair shirts and iron belts; they gave all their goods to feed the poor or to adorn churches; they slept on the bare floor; they scourged themselves; they licked the dust from the holy pavement; they washed the feet of beggars, and kissed their sores.
No wonder that, when Smirnoff began to follow their example, he found it a very weary labor, and, worst of all, he felt no more saintly than before. His thoughts were not holier, his heart was not purer, and his temper was not sweeter than before he began. He thought that he had deceived himself by imagining that he could become holy whilst living in this world amongst common men and women. He determined, therefore, to be a monk, and he betook himself to a strict convent near Moscow. Here he had prayers and penances to his heart’s content, or rather, alas! to his heart’s discontent, for he found, to his dismay, that he became no holier in the convent than in the world. He stood for hours on the cold stone pavement repeating prayers, he denied himself in sleep and food, and he beat and tortured himself all in vain. And by degrees he made another terrible discovery: not only was he himself as far as ever from being a saint, but he observed that the other monks were just as selfish, and ill-tempered, and cunning, and proud, and altogether ungodly as his old companions in St. Petersburg.
It certainly seemed a very hopeless task to become a saint. At last he came to the conclusion that to leave the convent and live by himself would be the best plan. He would then have no one to hinder or stumble him, and he could go on “doing his best” in his own way. He therefore returned to St. Petersburg, and as he was badly off, and obliged to maintain himself in some way, he opened a small shop in a back street for the sale of tobacco and cigars. So time went on, and his hopes of being a saint became very faint. He had besides to think of his business, which was not a flourishing one, and he was often in great need.
One day a little boy of ten or eleven years old came to his shop and asked for some cigarettes. When he took out his purse to pay for them, Smirnoff remarked to his surprise that he had paper money in his purse to the value of ₤4 or ₤5.
In a moment, like a flash of lightning, came a thought which took possession of Smirnoff as if it were the devil himself who had entered into him — “Take that money.” Smirnoff felt himself utterly powerless to resist it. More than that, he felt a wild, irresistible determination to take the money, and a craving for it which was like a frenzy. He dared not take it in the little shop, where passers-by might see him. He therefore asked the boy to take a walk with him about the town. All that afternoon they walked together up the narrow streets and in the lanes and alleys where fewest passengers went by. But no nook or corner could be seen where it seemed safe to carry out his plan, and they came back to the little shop just as they started.
Then Smirnoff asked the boy to stay and have tea with him in the back shop. When he had carefully shut the door, he sprang upon the boy, and held him down while he searched his pockets. The boy, however, had no intention of losing his money without a fight for it. He kicked, and screamed, and shouted for help. It was quite clear to Smirnoff that he was on the point of being found out, for the neighbors would hear, and would all rush in to see what was happening. In this desperate moment he seized a knife that was on the table, and plunged it into the boy’s throat. He had killed him!
But in his wild passion he could be glad that he had the money at last. He carried out the dead boy by the back door of the room, and hid him in a corner, waiting for the night to get rid of the body. He then washed his hands and his coat, and returned into his shop. As he opened the door from the back shop, the front door from the street was opened also, and two policemen came in.
“Where is the boy who came into the shop with you half an hour ago?” one asked.
“There is no boy here,” replied Smirnoff; “I live here quite alone.”
“The boy was walking about the town with you,” said the policeman. “He was seen to go into the shop with you, and he has not come out since. The neighbors across the street observed this. We must search your house.”
Smirnoff now saw that it was all up with him. He rushed before the policemen into the back shop, seized a loaded pistol which he had there, and shot himself through the body. He had aimed at his heart. He fell on the floor senseless. But when the policeman lifted him they found that he was still breathing, and after some moments he was conscious.
They carried him to the prison, and there explained that having been in search of a boy who had stolen a purse, they had probably found his murderer; for the purse that was missing was in the pocket of Smirnoff. The body of the boy was meanwhile discovered. The prison doctor examined the wounds of the dying man. He said it was not impossible he should live, for the bullet had just missed his heart. But Smirnoff, with the little strength that was left him, tore off his bandages, and pushed from him the food and medicine which the doctor would have put into his mouth. “No,” he said; “I will die.”
It was just then that some one remembered the kind gentleman who lived not far from the prison, and had often come to talk with the prisoners, and to read to them the Word of God. It was not long since that this gentleman, Colonel Paschkoff, had himself come as a lost sinner to the Saviour, and had received the living water, which will most surely flow forth as a stream of life from every heart that has received it.
Colonel Paschkoff was sent for. In a few minutes he was standing in a gloomy little cell, looking with eyes of love and pity on the dying man. As he lay there, pale and livid, he seemed almost beyond the sound of God’s blessed message. Colonel Paschkoff saw that no time was to be lost. He opened his Testament at the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, and he read slowly and diinctly the wonderful story which so many call “the lost sheep,” but which they should rather call the story of “the Good Shepherd,” for it is a story not of man but of God.
“Jesus,” said Colonel Paschkoff, “is that Shepherd. He came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Suddenly Smim off looked up, with a strange expression of joy. “I can be saved then” he said, “for I am lost.”
In that one moment had the soul that was dead heard the voice of the Son of God, and “behold, he lived!”
“I see it now,” he said; “I wanted to be saved as a saint, but it is because I am a sinner — a lost, lost sinner — that I can come to Jesus, for He saves that which is lost.”
And together did the Lord’s messenger and the sheep that was found praise the Shepperd, and there was joy in the presence of the angels of God over him who had but just before been a thief, a murderer, and a suicide.
“You may do what you like to me now,” Smirnoff said to the doctor. “I am willing to live if God wills it.”
Then the doctor bound up his wounds, and he lay quiet and peaceful. In the midst of his deep repentance, and shame, and sorrow he had that wonderful joy and peace, which is brightest and deepest when most we see the depth of our sinfulness; for it is then we know the most, what must be the love that could save and welcome such as we are, and what was the weight of sin which the Lord Himself bore on the cross for us. We know then something of the love that passeth knowledge. No doubt this joy and peace helped in the healing of his body, for after some weeks he was well again, and his joy remained, even when he heard the sentence that was passed upon him. He was banished for life to a convict settlement at the farthest east of Siberia.
There for eight years has he been a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ, by word and by work. In that distant spot, far away from lands of gospel light, Smirnoff ceases not to teach and preach, as he has opportunity, Jesus Christ, his Saviour: he is supplied with Bibles and Testaments from christian friends, and from his hands every fresh convict who arrives there receives a copy of the word of God, and he tells to lost sinners how it was that he at last became a saint. “Not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost” — “Washed, sanctified, and justified.”
Truly, God has given him the desire of his heart — how far beyond all that he could ask or think? — even according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus, who speaks now from heaven in this true story to lost, lost sinners.
And now that I have told you the tale as it was told to me, does it offend you to hear of the joy and peace of one who had been so great a sinner “How could anyone dare to rejoice who had been the murderer of a poor little boy?” said some who heard the story. “Such a wretch as Smirnoff ought to have felt anything but joy, even if he could dare to hope that God had forgiven his awful wickedness.” Dear friends, when once you have yourselves been in the place of her who washed the Lord’s feet with tears, because much had been forgiven her, you will understand this — not till then — for the deepest sorrow and the deepest joy met together in the heart of that woman who was a sinner. Do you think that there is any deeper joy than the love of Christ made known to the lost, and to the vile? “She loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” Was her sin more black, or less black to her, when the love of Christ was shed abroad in her sad and weary heart? But will she ever know a deeper joy than she knew in that blessed moment when His lips said to her, “Go in peace”? Believe me, if you have not come to Him, knowing yourself as lost, as dead, as the poor murderer, of whom you have heard the story, you have never come to Him at all, or you have come as the rich, and have been sent empty away — empty of the joy which Paul knew when the Lord whom he had persecuted shone into his dark soul. Was it nothing to him, then, that he had murdered and persecuted the saints of God? Yet by his hand did God write the words I will now write afresh for you — “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Dear friends, may you know by the Spirit shed abroad in your hearts — know in your own experience to-day, that which the thief knew on the evening of the day upon which he had reviled his dying Saviour. Was he more forgiven, more loved, more saved when he was in paradise with Christ than was Smirnoff in his prison cell, when the love of God was shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost that was given to him?
But if you know none of these things, let me tell you with all the authority of God’s blessed word, that Smirnoff the convict has that which you never had. When the elder son in that same fifteenth chapter of Luke was angry, and would not go in, why was it? It was because he heard the music and the dancing, and he said, “Thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends.” No, the feast has never been yours, because you never came to the Father as one who was dead and lost. When you do so, the depth of your joy will answer to the depth of your deep and bitter repentance— joy, not in yourself, nor even in that which God gives you in exchange for damnation, but in Christ who has loved you, with a love so wonderful, so passing knowledge. It is in Him, not in ourselves, that we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, owning ourselves to be as dead and lost in our own natural state as was Smirnoff the murderer, and therefore as being able to take our place with those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, and to whom the Lord has said, “Be glad and rejoice, and shout for joy.” In that psalm — the thirty-second, you read Smirnoff’s history; may you read your own!