SOME hundreds of years ago, there was a poor Carthusian friar, named Martin, to whom the Lord Jesus revealed Himself by His Spirit.
The friar being shut up in the lonely cell of his convent, had no opportunity of testifying before men of the Saviour he loved. But he longed to utter the praises of Jesus, so he wrote out the following confession, which he placed in a wooden box with its precious contents in a hole within the wall of his cell:
“O most merciful God! I know that I cannot be saved, and satisfy Thy righteousness, otherwise than by the merits, by the innocent passion, and by the death of Thy dearly beloved Son... Holy Jesus! all my salvation is in Thy hands! Thou canst not turn away from me the hands of Thy love, for they have created me, and redeemed me.
Thou hast written my name with an iron pen in great mercy and in an indelible manner, on Thy side, on Thy hands, and on Thy feet.
.. And if I cannot confess these things with my mouth, I confess them at least with my pen, and with MY HEART.”
Some hundreds of years rolled by, and the old convent at Basle went to decay. Part of the building was formed into a dwelling of another kind. All this time the confession of the friar remained unseen by mortal eye.
At length, in the year 1776, some workmen began to pull down the old building which had absorbed the remains of the convent, and in doing so they stumbled upon the box, and thus was brought to light the sweet confession to the preciousness of Jesus, which the friar so long before had hidden in the wall of his cell.
“He being dead yet speaketh." A voice, uttering the worth of Jesus, sounds from the crumbling wall of the old convent cell. Doubtless the writer of the confession prayed over his words. He longed to speak of Jesus, but the darkness of popery prevented him. Yet to-day he speaks to you, reader. With the privileges of an open Bible and of a gospel testimony before you, do you say to God from, your heart, "I know that I cannot be saved otherwise than by the death of Thy dearly beloved Son"?
Is your name written, as it were, in the very wounds of Jesus? His wounds tell of LOVE, His love, God's love; but they also tell of SIN, our sins; yet those wounds of Jesus speak too of RIGHTEOUSNESS, God's righteousness. Love! Sin! Righteousness! God's love, God's righteousness, our sins.
The friar had no fear; the confession of his name being written in the hands and side of his Redeemer, is full proof of this. Nor is there other proof for your salvation, save the precious death of the now living and ascended Jesus. God's righteousness is satisfied by the work of Jesus, and now “by Him all who believe are justified from all things" (Acts 13:3939And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. (Acts 13:39)).
May you confess Jesus boldly in the world which has rejected Him; and the more so, since already the midnight gloom of the dark ages threatens once more to eclipse the gospel's light; and instead of the wounds of Jesus, works, prayers, penances, again clamor for glory. “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord " (1 Cor. 1:3131That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:31)).
Faith is the outward look at CHRIST; not the inward look at SELF.