READER! Has it ever been your experience to have to be on guard over a prisoner sentenced to death? Can you picture the anguish of heart and sorrow to know that at any moment you may see your prisoner taken out to die. What of the prisoner? What can be his state? Comrades! as sinners we are all under the death penalty — “the soul that sinneth it shall die” — until we accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour, the One who died for us, who on Calvary’s cross bore our punishment, so that by believing in Him we shall prove how true the words are, “He gave Himself for us.”
I had last year, while corporal of the guard, charge of a prisoner. He had, by a F.G.C.M., been condemned to be shot for being asleep on duty — facing the enemy, yet asleep. I remember I spoke to my comrade about Jesus Christ, and asked him if he had been asleep to his eternal destiny as well. I shall never forget his answer, “I wish I could blot it out.” Ah! many a sinner, thinking of his sins, has said, “I wish I could blot it out,” but there is a Saviour-God who says, “Come now, and let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isa. 1:1818Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)). He only can blot out your guilty past, and He does it, the very moment you believe that Jesus died for you.
“He took the guilty culprit’s place,
And suffered in his stead.
For man―O miracle of grace
For man the Saviour bled.”
In one of my spare hours, after praying with him, I asked him to accept Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and to let his future be in God’s hands. I shall always remember his cry, “To be shot like a coward, how can God save me?” But God could and did, and in that guard-room we got down on our knees, and he asked God to forgive him, and if it was His will to intervene in the sentence that had been passed over him. Afterward I heard him tell one of the guard that whatever the issue was, he would trust God, and he believed that Jesus Christ was his Saviour. I continued to pray for him, and the next day had the joy of escorting him to the orderly room, there to hear the news read out to him — that he was reprieved from death and sentenced to three years’ hard labor. When we got back, we prayed that he might do it with his own regiment. Again God intervened, and the sentence was deferred for three months, and during one of our attacks last year, 1915, he proved his worth as a good soldier of the King, and a worthy soldier of the King of kings, for before he died he had done all he could to carry one of his wounded comrades to the trench over a bullet-strewn area. When dying he knew he had received the two pardons — one for being asleep on duty, the other for the sins of his life.
Reader! do you know Jesus Christ as Saviour? Have you taken Him as the only way by which you can get pardon for all your offenses? Jesus died to save you. Jesus loves to help you in His name, I ask you to be reconciled to God. “For now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation.” Would you do as my comrade did, trust Jesus and let the issue be with Him? You may not be waiting to be taken out to be shot, but you are under condemnation, “for he that believeth not is condemned already,” but to as many as received Him, to them He gave eternal life. May you trust Him now.
LANCE-CORPORAL J. ROBERTS.
P.S. — My comrade is dead, and I have never told his story until the other night at our last billet, but I may have no other chance to write it, and it was a wonderful answer to prayer. “He was only a salt seller in the streets,” he said, “of what use am I to God?” but I’m glad that though he only lived two months after his trial, he was a brave soldier.