IT is deeply interesting and touching to the heart to witness from time to time the wondrous ways of a Saviour-God in doing His own blessed work in saving poor lost sinners. Ah! it is His work, the work of God, the work of divine power and love, and it ever bears all the blessed marks of His wonder-working hand.
God does not use angels to set the gospel bore poor sinners; it is saved and pardoned sinners that God uses to do this, for they can speak that which they know, and testify that which they have seen of the Saviour’s love and power to save with an everlasting salvation all that come unto God by Him. He may use an angel to direct the anxious sinner to send for a servant, as in Acts 10:5,5And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: (Acts 10:5) or to direct a servant to go to an anxious soul, as in Acts 8:2626And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. (Acts 8:26); but it is not theirs to prove, as these, the cleansing virtue of that blood.
The writer was privileged some time ago to witness God’s blessed work in the conversion of his landlady. Being often brought through this connection into contact with her, there sprang up in his heart a deep desire for her soul’s eternal welfare. Naturally she was kind, amiable, and very right in her ways and dealings, but always kept a perfect silence and marked refusal when anything as to the soul and God, and a hereafter, and our need of Jesus the Saviour and Friend of sinners, was alluded to. She would always close and draw tightly in her lips, and assume an impenetrable silence.
She had been brought up amongst Unitarians, and had evidently fallen under the influence of their awful and darkening errors. “O God! work in her soul. O God! come in and deliver from the blinding darkness of soul-destroying error,” we prayed and cried to God. He did, blessed be His name, all at once. A grave internal malady came suddenly upon her, and the doctors said a major operation must be performed without the least possible delay. It could not be done at her home, it must be done at an institution. It was of so serious a nature that but three cases only out of every hundred survived, and not to undergo it was certain death.
She went at once into the Bristol Royal Infirmary, and on that bed God used the few preparatory days before the operation, with death so near in view, to give her to see her ruined state. She trembled to die. She could not die with Unitarianism. She needed a Saviour, and, blessed be God, He at once revealed to her His remedy for her need.
Exactly opposite her bed, hung on the wall, was a large wall text — “THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST HIS SON CLEANSETH US FROM ALL SIN.” “Bless God,” she said, “that is what I need. I have often heard of it before. I now put all my trust in it and in the blessed One who shed it.” She found peace. God also brought her safely through the operation, and she came out of that abode of suffering a new creature in Christ Jesus, magnifying and praising God — and had a little meeting at her house in the country for the gospel to be preached, in the hope that her husband, who was a hay farmer, but a godless and drinking man, might hear the glad tidings, and himself and others might be saved.
Oh that the writer could raise a warning voice by this little paper, to Unitarians and all who are being influenced by their soul-destroying doctrines. It is much laid upon him to do so. Oh! listen, he beseeches you, for unbelievers in the Son of God are in soul-peril! If salvation is on the ground of faith in Him, as stated in the Word of God — the Bible — both Old and New Testaments, AND IT IS, you are lost to all certainty!!! If salvation is only and entirely by Gon THE SON — the Son of God — the Son Jesus Christ, and His atoning death and blood-shedding upon the cross for sinners, AND IT IS, again I ask — “What think ye of Christ?” If you deny and reject all this, you are infidel and antichrist as to HIM, WHO IS GOD THE SON, and if you remain so, I repeat you will be lost forever and forever. May God in mercy deliver you.
W. F.