I FORGET how many hands a pin passes through before it is complete, but I remember as a child how astonished I was when I was told the number; and all of us who by God’s grace are Christians, would be still more astonished were we able to count the number of special and particular agencies which God, in his great goodness and mercy, has used on our behalf to bring us to Christ, before we can say we are complete in Him.
In so-called Christian England this is especially the case, the gospel generally being heard, in part at least, again and again; and the Word of God constantly reed in our hearing publicly, if not privately, in our churches, chapels, and elsewhere from childhood to old age; not to speak of books, essays, periodicals, tracts, and a thousand and one other influences. And yet how hard is the human heart, how insensible to divine grace, how averse to the love of God, how full of unbelief? Every fiber of our constitution seems rank with this curse, so skeptical is it of divine goodness and love; and so inherent is this skepticism in our very being, that we instantly query every statement that meets us of this love, no matter in what form.
Thus it is a wonder any soul is ever saved; and it were indeed impossible had not God undertaken for us. All other powers, either heavenly or earthly, were plainly impotent and useless.
What a thought for a lost British soul, that it has withstood all these agencies, this continual calling of God, this constant refusal! It seems a soul born in any other European country has not nearly such a weight of responsibility; for the most part an Italian, or French, man or woman seldom hears the good news, and though they will be without excuse, how much more a lost Englishman! If he lifts up his eyes, being in torment, he cannot even plead he had only Moses and the prophets―he had Christ the Son of God, and the Saviour God also, and refused Him. He will have ample time to reflect on it in hell; the story of the cross, of redeeming love refused and rejected, will add indescribable remorse to those terrible reflections.
The earliest links in the chain of my remembrances of things eternal are the following verses, which I said every night as a small child: ―
“Almighty God, Thy piercing eye
Strikes through the shades of night,
And our most secret actions lie
All open to Thy sight.
There’s not a sin that we commit,
Or wicked word we say,
But in Thy dreadful book ‘tis writ
Against the judgment day.”
Now, strange to say, I did not dread that “piercing eye” so very much, though I did not like it, and used to dream about it, but that “dreadful book” I did fear, and feared greatly. To have all my most secret actions entered up regularly, certainly did awe me, because the hymn went on to say they were all to be read out, ―that was awful.
My parents were Christians, my mother manifestly so, and she used to take me into her bedroom and kneel down and pray beside me; I used to hate it, and yet I felt awed by it.
At that time we went to a chapel; but a temporary church being put up within walking distance from my home, and the clergyman appointed being a child of God, my parents were induced “to take sittings” in this building, and thus, as is often said, “sat under” a godly minister; and there, for the first time I remember in my life, I heard some of the mysteries of the gospel. This clergyman was what is sometimes called a hyper-Calvinist, or very near it, and used to preach so much about God’s sovereignty, and so little of man’s responsibility, that at times I regarded him as a sort of fatalist; but one Sunday he made a memorable statement in his sermon, which I never forgot, and never shall.
He said, “My hearers, have you ever had a real desire toward God, toward Jesus Christ, ―just one real desire, just one? If you have, that is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit; and He who has begun a good work in you, will continue it unto the end; and I pledge my soul for yours at the great judgment day for the truth of what I say.”
It was the latter part that particularly arrested and interested me. Ah! I thought, I have had a desire, a real desire, toward Jesus; I know I have, and therefore that is a bargain between us, if I am lost I will plead for your soul against mine. I entered into a solemn contract in my mind, and kept that good man’s soul in pawn for my own.
Thus things went on for years until I was quite grown up, but I always kept that bargain in my mind as a last resource. I felt somehow there is truth in what he said, and it will all come right; meantime I had his soul in pawn for mine.
I used to read philosophical books, and religious books of various kinds, and puzzled my head over the origin of sin, predestination, and a hundred other things, all to no purpose; then for a time I tried “ritualism,” but it was unsatisfying, all artificial, too human altogether, a thing I could set up and do myself any time I liked. I felt I had the shell of things and no reality, nothing my wretched soul could rest satisfied in, or could as it were feed on and be at peace.
So time went on, and a few more valuable years were wasted. At last, through my brother, I heard of a lady who spoke of a present known salvation, and peace with God for all who would have it. I was led to seek an interview with this lady, on the condition I should see her alone. I had a great dread of getting to know a lot of funny religious people, with long faces and solemn manners, and being taken possession of by them. So I made a strict covenant I was only to see this lady.
I went to the house, and was shown into the drawing-room. Soon the lady came in, with a bright smiling sympathizing face. I felt at ease at once, and soon began to tell her my difficulties. She listened, and then asked me to listen to her for a short time. I consented. She first explained to me very clearly my condition as an utterly lost sinner, without God, and without hope in the world, and with the wrath of God abiding on me. She then took up two card-cases which were lying on a table, one a beautiful white mother-of-pearl case, and the other a dark, deeply-marked, and veined tortoise-shell case; she then placed the white one on the dark one, and held them up close together, the dark one facing me, the white one herself. “Now,” she said, “for the sake of making it clear to you, will you allow me by way of illustration to suppose that you are this dark case, deeply veined and marked by sin, and this pure and beautiful pearl case is the Lord Jesus. Now the Lord Jesus, though man, was the Son of God, and was crucified for sinners, ―for you; if you will take your place as such. God has accepted the death of His Son, and for His sake accepts those that trust in Him. Thus if you are sheltered by Christ, covered as it were by Him, As this white case covers this dark one, then are you as Christ is in God’s sight,—clean, washed whiter than snow; but take the white case away, and leave you before God in your own colors, there you are vile, and stained with sin, and exposed to the full wrath and judgment of God against it and you.”
Then she urged me, in solemn and affectionate words, to take refuge in “The Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” to cast away my doubts and disputing’s, and to trust wholly, solely, to the love and mercy of God, as shown in the work and person of Jesus.
I went home much impressed, and went to bed and tried to throw it off and think of it again in a little while, and not to decide just then, but I could not. As I lay awake the idea came to me, You must decide it now for good and all, or leave it alone. One way or the other, I felt the crisis had come, and something must be decided. I dreaded to throw it all overboard, and yet I could not bring myself to naked trust, just simply to trust. I revolted at the idea, and yet I felt I dared not let that night pass; I must come to some terms with God and my soul.
I wished to solve twenty questions, but there was no time now; and there seemed nothing for it but to throw myself unreservedly on God, and just trust His love and mercy for forgiveness on account of the work of Christ. But then I thought, Suppose I don’t feel anything when I have done it, it will be terrible; suppose I find it all a fiction, a sort of mental trick performed by my will, and no results or reality in it! I quite shuddered at the idea; I felt I should have committed a sort of moral bankruptcy, and I should ever after be a hardened skeptical wretch, who not only did not believe in God, but did not even believe in goodness; and I could plainly see my life would be a wreck, full of wickedness, and end in some early or dreadful death.
This brought me back again to the question of trusting God and being at peace with Him; but it seemed so terribly difficult just to trust, to give up all my reason, and sense, and reading, and just to say, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.”
At last, after going over it again and again, and ever coming back to the same point of simple trust, I was enabled, by a huge effort, to turn resolutely from myself, to shut out all questionings, and turn to the Lord and say, in very desperation, I do trust Thee Lord, help Thou my unbelief. The deed was done. I lay on my bed quite exhausted. I felt quite faint and ill; in a little time I was sick, and then lay down again quite prostrated. For an hour or two I lay like this quite helpless, and in a sort of state of vacuity of mind. I had no power to think; I simply lay and did nothing, and felt nothing except a sense of calm after a storm.
Presently a sweet sense came over me that after all I had only trusted God, and who better could I trust? What a fool I had been to doubt Him, and to be so dreadfully upset about so simple a thing! and then the conviction came that I was forgiven, and that all Christ’s work was for me. I was covered with the white card-case; joy of course followed: ―I felt, Well, I don’t care what happens now, joy or sorrow, success or disappointment, it is all one to me, and none of it can last long.
I was very fond of riding, and I remember thinking I had got over a big ugly fence, and there was nothing now but green sward for the rest of my galloping. My subsequent Christian experience has modified this opinion, and I have found plenty inside and out to check such easygoing. Still, my new first love was bright, and I was serenely and quietly happy; and He whom I have trusted I have never had cause to doubt, and never shall, and neither will my reader, if he is led to make the same blessed experiment.
“Naught can stay our steady progress,
More than conquerors we shall be,
If our eye, whate’er the danger,
Looks to Thee, and none but Thee.”
F. F. R.