A Word to Backsliders.
THERE had been a work of grace in a quiet country district several-years ago in one of our Scotch counties. A good many confessed the saving power of Jesus’ name, and owned Him as the God of their salvation.
God wrought in mercy in the Laird’s house, and several there took the part of the rejected Jesus, and this gave great joy to the housekeeper, who was a fervent Christ-lover and a diligent soul-winner. A new dairymaid came to the Hall. She was a bright-eyed, wild, Scotch maiden, who had left her father’s house, not only to be a servant to earn her living, but to be more free to follow the vain pleasures of this poor world.
The keen eye of the soul-loving housekeeper soon detected that she was unconverted and very careless, but the opportunity was watched, and the housekeeper took her aside, and warned her plainly and lovingly of the lost sinner’s doom, and clearly pointed the girl to the lost sinner’s Saviour, who in mercy and love came down to seek and save the lost. The effect was wonderful. The maid confessed the Lord, and the housekeeper rejoiced that another witness to God’s grace was raised up in the scene of worldliness and sin where they both dwelt.
No sooner did the housekeeper get the girl to own Jesus as her Lord, than she at once wrote to her father, who was a godly man. Both he and his wife rejoiced that their child was now one of God’s family, ―she who had cost them many a pang, and evoked many a prayer from their pious hearts. They rejoiced that God answers prayer. Time wore on, and brought a great trial to the young convert. There was great rejoicing in the mansion, for the son and heir was coming of age, and a great ball was to take place, at which all the servants and tenants were to dance in honor of the young laird.
It was the constant subject of conversation, and the question was asked the young converted maid, “Are you going to dance at the ball?” The housekeeper decided at once. “I shall not be there,” she said; “I shall fill my place at the supper-table, but into the ballroom I shall not enter.” But the young converted dairymaid began to look at man; and, to distract her still more, there were several who had not made a clean cut with the world, and she said, “I shall see how the L―s do.” These were lukewarm souls, who had professed conversion, but about whom the faithful housekeeper had her doubts. So the ball came on. The supper was over. The housekeeper discharged her duties as a servant cheerfully and courteously, and when the others made their way to the dance she said “No,” and, with one or two more, betook herself to her own room, and knelt down in fervent prayer for the gay worldlings in their passing pleasure.
The L―s went with the unconverted over to the ballroom, and the dairymaid, with her eye on these professors, and not on the Master, nor listening to His word, entered into temptation, where she was sought out by the young men of the company, and hence soon found herself joining in the merry dance-Christ forgotten, conscience asleep, and all the old tastes of her past life revived again. Thus the night passed. A Satanic victory was gained. The girl was praised for her yieldingness. While the faithful housekeeper kept a good conscience and the fellowship of the Lord, the poor dairymaid gained the praise of men, but lost her good conscience, her sense of salvation, and for the whole next week avoided her faithful friend, and sought in song and worldly mirth to drown the reproaches of an uneasy conscience. The housekeeper then reasoned with her, but her entreaties were answered rudely. However, she was a woman who knew “God is God,” and so she prayed, and said little to the poor backslider, but felt it keenly, as jeers and smiles were on the face of the ungodly. They had reconquered a lost companion.
The week was ended, and the blessed Lord’s Day came, so long the day of blessing to Scotland. The dairymaid dressed herself ‘that day, and with others in that rural district, wended her way to the parish church. Over that congregation a godly, converted minister presided, and ceased not to warn the ungodly in the congregation about the wrath to come. He believed the testimony of God’s Word about the great white throne, and the lost sinner’s final doom; while he pointed to the living Saviour, as a Saviour waiting and willing to save the play and lost. The dairymaid took her seat; the people assembled; the minister prayed, gave out the psalm, and took for his text the warning words of the Lord Jesus, ― “Remember Lot’s wife!” (Luke 17:32.) It was a powerful sermon, especially to the dairymaid. Everyone around her was forgotten, as the godly man enlarged, with thrilling words, on the world’s doom. Sodom’s apparent safety ended in sudden and overwhelming ruin, ―in one brief day. The world is saying now peace and safety, while the Judge stands before the door ready to pour down more awful and eternal judgment than that which befell that city of pride and plenty and unparalleled wickedness. Then stood the holy angels, come down from glory to warn and drag a man and his family from the city of Sodom. Now the Son of God has come down and died on the cross, and God warns of judgment to come, and waits, in long-suffering grace, to rescue men from the devouring fire and the everlasting burning (Isa. 33:14).
The minister pictured a soul awakened and aroused like Lot’s wife, urged by earnest friends to flee to Jesus, the “refuge from the storm, and the covert from the tempest, the river of waters in the dry place, and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land” (Isa. 32:2). Then he described a heart that was in the world, how the heart followed the eye, and the home of the soul was in the place where its affections were set.
In words of intense warmth he depicted the final end of a soul so nearly saved, and yet eternally lost. “She looked back” (Gen. 19:26), disobeyed God, and was finally damned.
The poor backslider sat, spell-bound; every word seemed to be for her, and her alone. She was the awakened sinner; she was the lost soul; the history of Lot’s wife was the history of her base denial of her Lord. The world, she felt, had filled her heart; she had loved it, gone back to its misnamed pleasures, and now she was lost forever. So she felt, and so she thought.
The minister gave out the parting psalm; she sang not one single note. How could a lost soul sing the praises of God? The minister prayed; he was fervent and real, but not a word was for her. He could not express the awful feeling of that soul’s thoughts, or cries, in the sense of its conviction by the Divine Spirit.
The parting blessing was given, and the congregation dispersed. Of them I can say nothing. But the dairymaid passed through the crowd of loiterers and talkers; she noticed none; she spoke to none. It was a bright day of summer beauty, and the glorious sun shone brightly on mountain and meadow. But there was no sunlight in hex darkened spirit. The calm of nature was all around, and the fields and forests were dressed is their beautiful summer robes of pleasing green.
In her soul there was nothing but storm and misery―utter hopeless despairing misery. The birds might sing their mingled melodies of innocent song. In the silent depths of a broken spirit she wailed, “I am lost! I am lost! I am Lot’s wife!” Without speaking a word she sped home. Ah, there was only one she could speak to in the lordly mansion. So without doing a bit of work, not even waiting to take of her bonnet, she hastened to the housekeeper’s room, where she found that faithful friend. Then the long pent-up agony of a convicted soul burst out in the words―
“I am lost! I am lost! I am Lot’s wife!”
“What is the matter with you now?” said the Christian woman, glad indeed to see the penitent soul bowed before her, for she knew “that godly sorrow worketh repentance that needeth not to be repented of” (2 Cor. 7:10).
But the only answer that the girl gave to her query, was the woeful wail, accompanied now with tears, “I am lost! I am lost! I am Lot’s wife!”
However, she waited patiently until the paroxysm of sorrow was quieted, and then she learned what the dairymaid heard from the minister, and like a wise and faithful servant she put before the girl the God of pardoning mercy. He who pardoned a David so guilty, or a Peter who denied his Lord, could pardon the vilest man and woman who turned to Him in God’s day of grace, and trusted the living Lord, whose blood cleanseth from all sin. She showed her that He had not changed in His love for her, that the blood of God’s Son had not lost its efficacy, that His words were still the same― “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.”
It was a wonderful hour; peace founded on the work of Christ, and based on the sure word of God,—now filled the convicted backsliding soul. She learned her weakness and wickedness, the pardoning pity and rich full grace of her Saviour―God, and oh, what a change! The world and its vanities she fled from with utter loathing. From that day the housekeeper was her chief and best friend; but above all, if there was a ball or a dance, or anything that would cloud her soul, she avoided it as a moral pest. Those who watched her for years affirm she walked in the fear and presence of the Lord, a devoted separate soul giving a simple testimony to the grace of her Lord and Saviour, and to His faithful pardoning love.
And now, reader, a parting word with thee. Perhaps thou too hast been awakened, and gone back to that doomed world, or may be thou art a wanderer from a godly father’s home. It is time to bethink thyself and return.
Remember the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation. For had He not suffered long with thee, thou wouldst ere now have been in the company of the rich but lost sinner in hell (Luke 16). He too had that awful word “Remember,” but it was the “Remember” of damnation. The text that recovered the dairymaid is the “Remember” of a waiting and warning Saviour. Wilt thou yield to this loving call? Return, ye backsliding children.
Listen to the sweet earnest words of the Christian poet―
“It may not linger long,
Salvation’s blissful day;
Now Is the time to seek the Lord,
“Tis madness to delay.”
J. M’C.