In the morning, after breakfast, he brought out a map and showed us our way to a neighboring lake of great beauty, which we had arranged to reach by boat, and he bid us goodbye; but with a sad look at me that went to my heart, for I saw he pitied me.
I let my companion row while I steered. All at once, when about half way to the lake, the truth flashed upon me, and I saw I was the slave of self instead of being Christ’s freeman and His servant. I saw I was being dragged about, for its own pleasure, by the wretched self that God had condemned, and I felt it was not I. I had different tastes. I longed to serve Christ, and as the sense of His love to me, and His forbearance all the long years I had known Him, filled my heart, I felt I was in an intolerable bondage I would endure no longer.
I felt I had a right to be free. Christ had died to set me free, and yet here was I working like a galley slave to please myself. What made me see it so clearly was that I had just left a free man. He, at any rate, was not toiling at the old oar. He was under a new master, and was free from the tyranny of the old.
A slave will endure a great deal of bondage if he is not brought face to face with freedom; but if he is in the company of a free man, his soul must indeed be dead if he does not long to lose his fetters. My mind at any rate was made up. I would not endure it another day.
The time past of my life was indeed more than sufficient to have lived in the flesh, to have wrought my own will, and Christ having suffered for me in the flesh, I armed myself with the same mind, no longer to live in the flesh after the desires of men, but according to the will of God. It was from myself I now turned (that I had served so faithfully) to Christ; from doing my own will to a desire to do His.
I sat in the boat with all this passing in my mind, and said nothing; but I prayed to the Lord to make this conversion a very real one, and to enable me from that day to do His will, and not my own.
At last I began to think how to get out of my tour, as I longed to spend some days where I was, to see more of my friend, who, not by his words, but simply by the force of living for Him who died for him, had been the means of this my second conversion; and the Lord opened the way in a remarkable manner. My unconverted companion began talking about the tour, and how tired he was of walking. I proposed to stay a few days where we were, while he paid a visit to some friends he had near, to which he assented.
By this time we reached the lake, but I must confess its beauties are almost forgotten in the remembrance of the beauty I saw in the path of Christ.
On our return my companion went on his way, while we who were Christians went up to see my friend again. He was surprised at the sudden change in our plans, but on hearing we were staying in the town insisted on our making his house our home.
This we did, and what I saw in his life fully confirmed me in my discovery, that to please one’s self is slavery, and that the only liberty and happiness for a Christian is to do the will of God.
This then is the simple story of my second conversion from the principle of serving self to serving Christ; for although in many respects I did the same things, by God’s grace it was in measure through the influence of a new principle, and it is this that is of all importance in God’s sight. What we do is of course a serious question, but why we do it is a far deeper one, both to God and ourselves.
I have hesitated for many years to record these experiences, feeling how feebly they presented the great truth of deliverance from self, and knowing how still more feebly I have carried it out. But seeing in the Scriptures how often a personal testimony is given, I look to the Lord, that He may use this narrative to the full deliverance of any of my readers who may still be seeking to serve two masters.
“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14, 1514For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: 15And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. (2 Corinthians 5:14‑15)).
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