The Lord's Dealings With the Convict Daniel Mann
Paul Jacques Loizeaux
Table of Contents
Note
The following account of the Lord’s dealings (for His they surely were) with the convict Daniel Mann covers a remarkably wide range of Christian truth. In these days of a restricted and shallow preaching of the gospel, it is wonderful to have such a clear and thoroughly scriptural teaching of the gospel of the grace of God.
There are three ways in which the gospel presents Christ. We know Him as crucified and risen, delivering the believer from the penalty and power of sin. We then learn that when He was exalted to God’s right hand, He sent down the Holy Spirit of God to form the Church and to dwell in its midst, as well as in each individual believer. Then, lastly, we are taught by Scripture to look for His return, at any time, to call His own to be forever with Himself in heaven.
It is the teaching of these truths to Daniel Mann, and the response of his heart and conscience to them, that combine to give this published account such a large and extensive circulation as it has had in time past.
Daniel Mann’s prayers that this publication might be used of God “for the opening of many, many eyes, and the joy of many, many hearts . . . that God may glorify Himself by it” ( page 54) have been abundantly answered.
May God continue to use it for the blessing of every reader and the glory of Christ.
Preface
The subject of the following narrative was thirty-four years of age when executed. His life evidently had been a wild one. We spoke little about it. Our interviews were wholly taken up with the Word of God. One incident lifted the veil to me: I was turning the leaves of his Testament to find a passage for him, when I noticed two verses crossed out with pencil-mark — they were 1 Corinthians 6:9,10.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It is a part of my past life,” he replied, “but, by the blood of Jesus, all is crossed out, and here is where I stand now.” His finger pointed me to the verse just following, which was encircled with a pencil-mark also.
Five years before his execution, he was convicted of house-breaking, with attempt to rob, and sentenced to fourteen years at the penitentiary at Kingston, Canada. Here, after five years of his term had expired, he, with a fellow-convict, formed a plan to escape. They were both employed at a limekiln, a short distance from the penitentiary walls, under a guard. At an hour when no one was near, one was to attract the guard’s attention in some way, while the other was to strike a blow sufficient to overpower him. They were then to bind him hand and foot, and flee. For some time the heart failed them, but at last, growing desperate, while his fellow-prisoner was amusing the guard with some carved bones, Mann struck the blow which killed the guard. They fled, but were taken again a short time after. This was in July, at which time I came to Kingston with the gospel.
After the judgment which sent Mann to the scaffold and his fellow-prisoner back to the penitentiary, Mann was transmitted to the common jail, where I first met him. This was in November.
A few quotations from the Toronto Daily Globe, whose correspondent, with several other gentlemen, visited Mann the day before his execution, will give a fair idea of his person: “Mann’s cell was next visited. A single glance at him showed he was a different man altogether from his fellow-prisoner (one who was hanged at the same time with him for poisoning his wife). He has a light, keen, piercing eye, and intellectual-looking forehead, and, in his conversation, showed a clear head and an active mind. There is no doubt that, had he received proper training from his youth, he could have been a man above the ordinary stamp, but he told Mr. O’Reilly he had received no education, secular or religious, save some six months at a public school, and until he grew up, had not even an idea of God. . . . Mann’s visitors parted with him, when, with painful emotions, they felt that he, with an acute intellect, a courageous and energetic disposition, and a resolute spirit, might have been an honored member of society, but his associations from childhood were evil, and only evil, and he goes to the scaffold at the early age of thirty-four years.”
The reader will soon discover that the object of the narrative is not to satisfy curiosity. Christ has grown more real, and self more abhorred, since it was first published. With what gladness, therefore, every trace of self in it, as in every other service, would be expunged, that Christ might more fully appear! But Christ and, by Him, “the grace of God that bringeth salvation” were then, as now, the object, and God has been pleased to own it far beyond all expectations. P. J. L.
The Lord’s Dealings With the Convict Daniel Mann
The first time I visited him was on Friday, November 18. He appeared very cheerful, but his ways soon convinced me he was doing all in his power to excite himself into happy feelings to drown the thought of his impending execution.
Upon testing him a little as to the ground of the hope he expressed concerning the life to come, I soon found it to be his repentance, his comparative freedom from evil desires, his love to God, etc. He thought surely he had made his peace with God since he had so many good things to show.
His lips talked about Jesus and His love very nicely. He repeated some of God’s precious promises, but evidently his heart was so intensely occupied with self that he could grasp no meaning in those promises.
His earnest face, however, and the thoughtful attention he paid to what I said to him, attracted me at once. I remembered how, four years before, I was in the same state — occupied with my humility, my repentance, my faith, my love — and while putting on a cheerful face, to make myself believe I possessed that happiness which I had often heard belonged to a man at peace with God, what bitterness and anguish lay in the depth of my soul! I remembered the day when, at the climax of misery, someone had pointed me to Romans 3. It had opened heaven to me; it brought me unutterable deliverance, and I burned to have him get in the same place.
I told him nothing he could do could save him — neither repentance, nor his love, nor looking to the work of the Spirit in him, could give him peace with God. “You are lost,” I said; “you are dead in trespasses and sins —condemned already — and you might as well think that weeping and promising to do better could put away the sentence pronounced against you the other day, as to think your repentance, or your promises, or anything from you, can remove the curse of God’s eternal law which now hangs over you, as well as over every soul of man who is not saved.”
I told him the only thing that could meet a “lost” man’s need was salvation. A “dead” man needed life, and a “condemned” man needed mercy.
I declared to him that he was grievously mistaken if he thought he had made his peace with God. He could never do that.
“What, then, must I do?” he said, in a half-bewildered way.
“Read there,” I said, and my finger pointed to Colossians 1:20: “And, having made peace through the blood of His cross.” I pointed again to Galatians 3:13, and said, “Read again here.” “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.”
I then besought him to read, thoughtfully and prayerfully, Romans 3, 4 and 5, and commending him to the Lord, who alone, I knew, could open his blinded eyes, I left him in his lonely cell.
I did not call again until the following Tuesday, November 22. The turnkey at the entrance door told me that one of the criminals was anxious to see me. Without asking which of the two, I called first on the one occupying the cell nearest the entrance door, but found him much as before — more occupied with the actual consequences of his crime than with his lost condition before God — ready enough to pray and engage in devotional exercises, but completely blind as to what salvation is.
I left him, much downcast in my spirit, and full of that dejection which often makes one weary, when, after having set forth a finished salvation before a poor sinner, he answers you, “I will try to do better,” and I had well nigh forgotten the turnkey’s announcement, when, Daniel Mann’s cell being opened to me, I was soon reminded of it. Scarcely had I taken my seat on the wooden bench beside him when he said to me, “I longed to see you.”
“What for?” said I.
“Since daylight this morning,” said he, “I have not been able to pray; I can only find time and room for praise.”
“How is that?” said I. “What makes you so happy?”
“You remember,” said he, “your visit to me last Friday, and the three chapters you told me to read in Romans? Well, after pondering a good deal on what you had told me, and which sounded so different from anything I had ever heard, I read them over and over again, but I got more and more miserable. All day Sunday was dark and gloomy, and yesterday too. I felt as if I must surely perish. Last night, I could not close my eyes a single moment, but I lay on my couch in misery — oh, what misery! Suddenly, while in my despair, my mind was arrested by a part of Romans 5 — these verses: ‘For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ Oh, dear, dear sir, need I tell you the effect? I jumped to my feet. I praised God outright. I felt like a man who is already in heaven. I saw why Jesus was on the cross, crying out, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ I understood what is meant by ‘It is finished.’ I saw God’s love to me, and I praised, and praised, and praised again. I saw my salvation was not out of anything from me, but out of Christ’s finished work; so I cried out, ‘Oh, glorious thing!’ I am as sure of my salvation now as I am sure Christ’s work is finished; yea, was finished over eighteen hundred years ago. I have it, I have it, for I believe!”
As he spoke, his earnest face, wet with tears, looked to me like the face of an angel. Tears rolled down my face too. I took him in my arms, and could but exclaim, “My brother, my dearest brother, we shall sing together throughout eternity the value of the blood of Jesus.”
Again he said, “How blind I have been! I never saw till this morning! Till then, my eyes were altogether turned inward — looking within to see something that God could be pleased with, but since early this morning, my eyes are turned outward — to that which has been done for me. Till this morning I always thought, what I had heard many say, that ‘Christ had done His part, and we must do ours’ to be saved. What my part was, however, I never could get anyone to tell me with certainty, and still less could my own heart tell. I had the Bible, but I did not know where to begin. I was told I must repent, and earnestly and prayerfully I went at it, but never had the certainty I had fully satisfied God. I was told by many to be very earnest in prayer: and I agonized with God until I could but cry out, ‘Lord, if I must go to hell, I will go there praying.’ I tried every way, but there was no light. Sometimes I tried to make myself believe I was harder to please than God, and comforted myself with the thought that, when I got there, I should find Him much less severe than I thought, but, after all, all was darkness, and it seemed as if hell in the life to come could not be much worse than this life in such a state. Before, all was darkness, and I preferred hanging to being sent back to the penitentiary, but this morning as I saw my salvation all finished — yes, finished by the Lord Jesus — as I saw I was justified freely by God’s grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, an indescribable peace took hold of me — all was bright. I saw at once I now had the key to the Scriptures — the key of heaven itself. The face of God was now visible to me. I could see Him smiling on me, and I shouted to the top of my voice, ‘This is the true light that comes from heaven!’
“Ah! talk to me now about my doing my part, and I can answer, I have been doing that since I was born, and here is the sad end of it!”
Here I felt the pang which crossed his bosom and I said, “Yes, you have faithfully finished the work the devil gave you to do, but hear the word in John 17:4, ‘I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.’ Who said that? What work was that which the Father gave Him to do, and which He, in anticipation, says He has finished?”
The pang was gone. His dear face beamed again. The word “finished” was enough to soothe all his sorrows now. It made him laugh with delight every time it was pronounced. We knelt and praised God together for a long time, and I left the happiest of all places on earth — a converted criminal’s cell.
On Friday, November 25, I called again, but finding there was a visitor with him, I told the turnkey I would return the next day.
Upon returning the next day, I found him anxiously expecting me. The turnkey had told him I was coming, and he said he knew he would have another feast.
“What do you mean,” said I, “by ‘another feast’? Are you so lonely and fond of visitors that my coming should be a feast to you?”
“Oh, no, sir,” he replied, “of course, I love you very much. I cannot help that, for you are the one whom God has used to show me the way —His way of saving sinners. It is what you point me to that makes the feast. You know, when a man is as near his end as I am, he cannot be expected to take much comfort from anything but what God has said. That is the very thing which first drew me to you; you never said anything or answered anything without referring me at once to Scripture.”
“I feel exceedingly happy,” I said, “when I see a man whose confidence lies alone in what the Word of God teaches, for I know this is not the work of nature. Jesus says, ‘My sheep hear My voice,’ and His voice, dear brother, being heard only in the Scriptures, it is no wonder you care for nothing but that. Would to God I could get the whole city of Kingston — even if it were only those who profess — to try their foundation and their walk by the Word of God. But alas! when they find their position untenable in the light of Scripture, many flee behind the ramparts of their creeds or opinions, and think themselves safe there.”
“That is very sad,” he said. “Oh, how I wish they would all, with one accord, turn to the Word alone. I will not cease to pray for this now as long as I am here. . . . But tell me, why did I not see the truth sooner? for I have been in the same distressed state of mind nearly since I was retaken in July. I remember one night the sight of my sins became such that I cared neither for my narrow cell nor for the punishment I expected in this world. Appearing before God in such a condition so terrified me that I lay all night curled up on the floor, crying out, ‘Oh, God, I am surely doomed: there can be no hope for such a wretch as I!’ It was the first time in my life I knew what conviction of sin was. I had already before wished much to be a Christian, and, to attain my wish, had endeavored to lead a better life. For quite a while in the penitentiary I stopped stealing altogether and refused to join in the wickedness of my fellows, until, overcome again, I made up my mind it was of no use trying to be a Christian in such a place. But that night it was no more trying or wanting to reform, but it was a burning within — a tossing up and down — an unaccountable anguish, which made me think of hell, a place where a man craves for death and cannot get it. I was regularly visited, and portions of Scripture were read to me, but to no avail whatever. Why did I not see the truth sooner?”
“First of all,” I answered, “God’s time is the best time. He often allows circumstances which seem strange, but in the end they work out for His glory and for blessing. And remember that from the moment the question of salvation is settled in a soul, God expects him to have His glory at heart above all else. See 2 Corinthians 5:15, ‘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.’
“Secondly, the pride of heart which is in us all was probably not sufficiently broken in you to let you fall helpless at the feet of Jesus till last Tuesday morning.
“Thirdly, a man cannot tell another the way to a certain place unless he knows it himself, so before a man can preach Christ, he must know Christ — have Christ. Mark, I do not say, before he can preach, but before he can preach Christ. A man may preach all his life, and preach with such eloquence that not an eye could be dry, and yet not preach Christ. A well-informed mind, a sentimental imagination and a good flow of language is all a man needs to make a popular preacher, but to preach Christ, a man must know Him. You could tell of Christ now; you have been at God’s school. You were at that school that night you laid on the floor of your cell. At this school, again, you found that after trying to repent, to pray, to sing yourself to heaven, you were no nearer God, nor more sure of being accepted, like the poor sick woman of Luke 8 who had tried all sorts of physicians, and was no better, ‘but rather grew worse.’ And again, at His school you learned what you did last Tuesday morning. Now, the ‘best robe’ covers you. With the touch of faith, you touched the hem of His garment, and then and there you were, like her, ‘healed immediately.’ Could you not tell others now the way to be saved?”
“Why, sir, that is all I can talk about to the turnkey, and to poor, dear Deacon, when we get together for change of cells. I cannot think about anything else now, and though some may look upon it as presumption, from the abundance of the heart the mouth must speak.”
“There is also another thing I must tell you, to answer your question fully: dear, earnest souls, really converted men, may be very zealous in advising and trying to teach others, without helping them at all, and the reason is this: They have never learned the difference which God’s Word makes concerning the relative position of believers and unbelievers, and therefore they will apply to a believer what belongs to an unbeliever, and vice versa, so that confusion must ever prevail in the advised person’s mind. God’s Word calls believers ‘saints’ and all the rest ‘sinners.’ Sinners are described in 1 Corinthians 6:9,10, ‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.’ Saints are described in the next verse, ‘And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.’ God’s Word speaks to these as to men who are saved, to those as to men who are lost, and unless that distinction is strictly adhered to, the state of things is seen which is mentioned in Ezekiel 13:22, ‘With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life.’ ”
A flood of light was pouring into his precious soul. “Then,” said he, “I can confidently take my place among God’s children now, for I do believe, and the Spirit of God bears witness with my own spirit that I am a child of God. I know I have eternal life. It is the gift of God through Jesus Christ, and I have it by faith.”
“Yes,” I said, “having seen, by faith, the eternal redemption which Christ has obtained for us (Hebrews 9:12), having seen, by faith, that He has ‘by Himself purged our sins’ (Hebrews 1:3), you may be as sure of your salvation as if you were already in heaven. God’s Word is as good as His deed. ‘Ye are complete in Him’ is His declaration (Colossians 2:10) to every believer, only your assurance now must be by faith, while in heaven it will be by sight.”
He said he had been in trouble in reading 1 Corinthians 3. He could not comprehend about the works of a man being burned and himself saved as by fire, but now he saw through it. The man who was on the foundation was a saved man, and if he worked for God, he would receive a reward for his faithfulness, but if he did not work for God, he would get no reward, but only be saved as a man out of a fire — just with his life.
“Ah!” he said, “would it not be sweet if life were mine again, to live for God now in everything!”
I felt glad to see he had been enabled to perceive that the eternal security and the responsibility of every true believer are two distinct and very different things in Scripture. But freshly brought to the knowledge of grace, the young Christian is apt to stumble at various passages in the Word which clearly place him under responsibility. He shrinks from them because, in his mind, responsibility is still associated with condemnation. But not so in the Word of God. The responsibility of the child of God is as forcibly taught there as his security. Neither do they interfere with each other any more than requiring something from my child interferes with his continuing to be my child, however miserably he may perform the task. The question with the sinner is, What will become of me — with the saint, What will become of my works? “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 3:11. If I am not on this foundation, I am lost. But once truly on this foundation, I am saved — eternally saved, and now the question is, What am I building on it? Is it gold, silver and precious stones, or is it wood, hay and stubble? One thing is sure, “Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.” 1 Corinthians 3:1315. What could be plainer? And what, when truly apprehended, can more effectually settle the soul in the unbroken rest of the Father’s bosom, while it leaves the conscience in incessant exercise before Him who will give to every man, not as his work has appeared to be, but as it has been? Gold shall stand the test of fire, but wood will be consumed.
Thus, in the full assurance of salvation, Paul could speak of “having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better,” while, at the thought of his responsibility to God as to his service, he could say, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”
This result I at once perceived in Daniel Mann, by his peaceful expression, “Ah, would it not be sweet, if life were mine again, to live for God now in everything!”
“Would you like to have life given to you again?” I said.
“I really could not choose,” said he. “The only thing that could now bind me to earth is what I have just said, but on the other hand, I have often wished, since you were here last, that I might not have so long to wait till I see Jesus face to face. The evening and night after your visit, I was specially happy. I had caught new views of the face of God, and I felt so happy that I wished they might have allowed me to go to the scaffold then.”
On Lord’s Day, November 27, he pressed the turnkey to go to the preaching of the gospel at the City Hall, saying that if he were free, that was where he should go. The turnkey said he would go if he could, but something preventing him, he did not go in the afternoon. When time for evening meeting came, he pressed him again. So he came, and as he walked home with me after the meeting, he said nothing was more affecting than to see Daniel Mann preaching to his fellow criminals in the morning. “If anybody can do Deacon any good,” he said, “it is Mann; he talks like a man who knows what he is about, and where to put confidence, and he preaches to me also in such a way that it stirs me all up.”
I heard afterward that on one occasion the turnkey had spoken to the effect that he was not as great a sinner as some others, upon which Mann answered, “ ‘He that believeth not is condemned already.’ ”
On Monday, November 28, I found him — to use his own words — “resting in the finished work of my Lord.” He was exceedingly occupied with Ephesians 2:3, especially the last clause: “And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
“I see plainly,” he said, “that without one single crime I was lost. By nature a child of wrath, unfit, by my very natural condition, to dwell with God, and surely, if on account of my very nature I was lost, what was I with all my sins and my crimes! But oh, the blood, the blood of Jesus, it cleanses from all sin! I see now what that means in Romans 3, ‘There is no difference.’ I see the whole world is lost — the most moral as the most immoral — all alike lost, and no better off than I am before God, unless they, too, rest in the finished work of Christ. Oh, I am afraid there are thousands who pity me this day, while they are really objects of my deep pity, for I fear they think that they are not as needy of Christ as I am, not having run to such excesses.”
After a good while of sweet fellowship together, during which I could see the wonderful progress he was making in the knowledge of Christ, he said, hesitatingly, “I beg your pardon for taking such freedom, but please tell me how you live, since you belong to no sect, you say. There was a good deal of talk among the men at the penitentiary about you and those who came before you in the same way, and some said you were all the sons of noblemen, or very wealthy men, who provided you with all you needed, so that you did not need to put yourselves into the hands of a society.”
“We are all the sons of the King of kings and the servants of the Lord of lords,” I said, “and He is not to us a God afar off, but a Father who knows we have need of food and clothing for our bodies, as we have need of salvation for our souls. If we served a society, we should rely on that society’s pledge to provide for our need, and surely God’s pledge to provide for those who serve Him is no less trustworthy. Surely no society has ever yet counted the hairs of one of its laborers, but our Father has counted every one of ours, and proves His care of us by His care of the sparrows and the lilies.
“Have the sparrows and the lilies any care? Do they lay up for the future? Do they make provision for their life? Well, it is the blessed privilege of every man who knows he is serving the Lord, to be as free from care as they are, and to go about everywhere in the full assurance that they who preach the gospel shall live of the gospel!
“On this ground, they who have wealth of their own refuse to receive anything, and they who have nothing simply trust God, as the husbandman trusts God for rain when he sows his seed. God moved the heart of whom He will to give us what we need. At times we are short and then again we abound, so in our measure we prove the path with the Apostle, of which he wrote thus in Philippians 4:11-13, ‘I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ ”
“My purpose is served,” he said. “The reason why I made bold to ask you this question is that I have seen lately, in reading the Scriptures, how the promises for the life which now is abound among those for the life which is to come, and it struck me as being only consistent in a man who believes the latter, to believe also the former.”
“Exactly so,” I said. “Want of faith in God necessitates lumbering machinery for getting money. It dishonors God, while it magnifies man and human means. The man who trusts God is free from man, and can, without fear, go from the east to the west, from the north to the south, among friends and strangers, building up the body of Christ — the Church of the living God — not a sect!”
“Of a truth, that is serving God and enjoying God,” said he, as delight fairly flashed from his eyes. “You are already, in this life, in the suburbs of the city of God. If life were mine again, would it not be sweet to spend it that way!”
“You would find it unspeakably sweet to the spirit,” I replied, “but often very bitter to the flesh. A man, to follow Christ, must renounce himself, and self clings to us with great tenacity.”
On Thursday, December 1, as I came into his cell, he said he was just thinking of me —wishing I might come. The sweet calm of his face was the same, but his heart often swelled unaccountably, as if it would break.
“Does Satan assail you with doubts?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he replied; “I have not had a shadow of a doubt since I saw the finished work of Christ. I know that is as well finished as mine. I know my redemption is as sure and everlasting by His work, as my damnation was sure and everlasting by my work. The fruit of my work was death to Him, and the fruit of His death is salvation to me, thanks be to God forevermore! How can I ever sink resting upon such a Rock? But I suppose my sorrow is the harvest one must inevitably reap from what he has sown. To die is gain — great gain to me now, but I cannot sing like Paul and Silas: they were reaping the fruit of faithful service to God, while I am reaping the fruit of faithful service to the devil.”
He asked me for some explanation of Romans 7, which he had been reading.
I said, “From verse 5, it is the experience of a man who, being quickened through faith in Christ Jesus, is learning what the flesh is. An unrenewed man struggles mightily to make compensation to God for the sins he has done, until, finding no peace in anything he can do, he falls on what Christ has done and finds peace. It is very humiliating to be saved by what another has done for you, especially by the One who is despised in the world, but humiliation is better than damnation, and the poor, weary, proud sinner yields. This part you know. But the man has not yet reached the end of his humiliation. When the intensity of his delight in having found forgiveness of sins is past a little, he finds that, in spite of forgiveness, in spite of his craving desire to please God, of his love to the Lord Jesus, of his fasting and praying, there is something in him which he hates bitterly, and which he cannot get rid of. He is in prayer, having a sweet time with God, when suddenly this thing which he hates brings to his thoughts something so sinful or so foreign to communion with God, that the sweetness is broken. If he is singing some precious hymn and making melody in his heart to God, in a twinkling he catches himself making music with his lips, while his heart is busy with anything but the praise found in the words he sings. If he walks alone, now and then he awakes to the sad thought that, instead of feeding on the manna, he has been thinking about the ‘cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic’ of Egypt. If he is among men, he finds the same annoyance in his dealings with them — the wrong is suggested even when he is doing the right. In a word, he is harassed by this so much, that until he knows what it is, and what God has done with it, he cannot feel free.
“This thing, then, which he hates, is what God calls ‘the flesh.’ Read verse 5. The annoyances I have mentioned, He calls ‘the motions of sins.’ Read verse 5 again. The law thunders out from Sinai, with its divine, cursing power, ‘Thou shalt not covet [lust],’ and the man, knowing the law is holy, just and good, struggles to obey it, but, in his vain endeavors to conquer the flesh, he is at last compelled to cry out, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ Ah, says God, at this juncture, you have got just where I wanted you to get. Your struggles to make the flesh better have been as vain as your efforts to make compensation for your sins. You have found out your weakness; I can now deliver you and cause you to cry out, ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
“Here again, ‘Ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead.’ Romans 7:4. Here again, oh, hear this! ‘Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.’ Romans 8:9. So that now it is the glorious privilege of every true believer to ‘reckon [himself] dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Romans 6:11. And now hear the climax, ‘For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.’ ” Colossians 3:3,4.
“Thank God! thank God!” he exclaimed, “to have sent a man to Kingston to point me to such amazing love and grace. These passages have shown me more of what my soul already apprehended. It appears to me as if I were no more in existence, but, as it were, living in another, and continually repeating to Him what, on the cross, He did for me.
“Oh!” he added, as he squeezed the book against his bosom, “I feel sometimes like eating it, such is my craving to get hold of its blessed contents.”
The intense affection which was settling in my bosom for that man cannot be told. I had been preaching in Kingston five months, five times a week, and teaching, seeking souls from house to house besides, and yet but few did I know who, in all that time, had made the progress he had made since he had found peace in believing.
I saw in him what I already believed, that the reason why people who know Christ are so slow in growing and walking in Him is because they are not free from “seeking honor one of another.” He cared for man no more; his ear was open to God alone, and the strides he made were wonderful.
He asked me if I would be with him at his execution — it would be the last kindness I could do him on earth. I said yes, though I felt doubtful of my ability to bear it.
On Saturday, December 3, I called again. That cell inside those dark walls was now the most attractive place on earth to me.
His mother was with him when I came, so I sent word asking him if I should go away and return after a while. He answered that he was the more anxious to have me come in, as he longed to have his mother see what he saw, and I might be able to set the gospel before her more clearly than he could. I gladly went in, and while I was setting before her redemption through Christ Jesus, he broke out, unable any longer to hold the “rivers of living water” which filled him, and said, “Yes, Mother, it is all finished — all done, and the veil of heaven has been rent in twain, and such sinners as we are, believing, can have boldness to enter in by the blood of Jesus. When I came to this prison, three weeks ago, Mother, I only knew one passage in the whole book which could give me any hope at all — that was in Timothy — ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.’ I would repeat that passage to myself and say, Then there is hope for me; I need not despair. But I thought I stood a chance only at death, if, during the time I had yet to live, I, in some way — I could not tell how — became good. But, oh, Mother, it is finished — all finished! ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ And Jesus since then has been sitting at God’s right hand, enjoying the sight of believing sinners. Mother, as sure as Christ sits at God’s right hand, so sure am I that I am saved, and that I shall be with Him in a few days.”
His mother wept bitterly, especially when she left him; she could not control her sobs, but he comforted her to the last, saying, “Mother, I never was any comfort to you, but now you may have this comfort the rest of your days. The law demands my body, but it is all it can do. I am now redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus, and you may be sure that in a few days you will have a son in heaven.”
His composed, smiling face was beautiful as long as he could thus comfort his poor mother, but as soon as the sound of her steps were lost in the corridors and we were locked in alone again, his heart began to swell, and his sobs, breaking out in a loud wail, manifested such distress that I could only look at him and weep. Soon, however, he looked up to heaven and, lifting up his clasped hands, unburdened himself in beseeching God to comfort his poor mother, and all those he had grieved by his sad life.
Soon he was calm again as usual, and turning to me he said, “I wish I had not to wait so long to be with Jesus.” I said, “Let us speak to our Lord a little.” We knelt, and he commenced at once to pray, or rather, indeed, to speak to the Lord. It was a child asking his Father for what he needs. He especially requested that wherever the Lord should send me to preach the gospel, the hearts of the people might be opened to hear it. He praised God a long while that He had sent His dear Son into the world to do the work by which such a poor, wretched sinner as he could be saved. He praised Christ for having finished the work which His Father had given Him to do. He praised God for having revealed His Son to him, in whom he had eternal life, and he finished by asking that I might not grow weary in the work I was in, that I might be comforted in all my difficulties, and that I and my family might never want anything, and that the Holy Spirit might lead me wherever there were such needy souls as he was.
After we had risen, I noticed he was very pale. I asked him if he felt faint. “Oh, no,” he said, “but the thought that ‘our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ’ quite carries me beyond this world. I wish the time was not so far away for me to be out of this body, and to enjoy Him without distraction of any kind. The thought of bodily pain is nothing. I am learning every day more to hate myself, and the denial of what we hate is not very hard.”
“I see in you,” I said, “the same thing that is seen in every man who is getting acquainted with Christ: he finds such beauty in Christ that he cannot but loathe himself, and the nearer the Christian lives to the Lord, the more he loathes himself. There are some Christians who talk much about their own perfection — their great love and holiness — and by so doing, magnify themselves, but a man who knows himself can magnify only Christ. I have a sister who was always a kind sister and a faithful daughter, and yet, when she came to the knowledge of Christ, she hated the very garments she had worn in the ‘innocent pleasures’ of the world. A brother also of mine, after he had found Christ, would often speak of himself very disparagingly, so much so, that they who knew him well, said he exaggerated. ‘Ah!’ he would answer, ‘if you saw my heart as I see it, you would tell me I am yet far short of telling the whole truth.’ Thus, while one has the full assurance of salvation, which you now possess, he is humbled down to the dust. He glories in the Lord who has bought him, but he remembers also that in himself he is only ‘wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores.’ When he sees this, he is done serving self. Jesus alone is worthy to be praised, adored and served.”
“You make me glad,” he said. “It is joy to my soul to hear man made nothing of, and Jesus made everything. Oh, what a love I feel kindling in my bosom for all on the face of the earth who make nothing of man and everything of Jesus.”
He told me he had read the first epistle to the Thessalonians, and he had plainly seen that the same Jesus who had gone up to heaven on a cloud, in the view of His disciples, would come again in person, and it seemed to be a subject set before the children of God for their hope and their comfort.
“I remember hearing Millerites preaching it,” he said, “and setting a time. Do you believe in that?”
“I believe what you have found in Thessalonians,” I answered; “it is also explained in many other places in Scripture. But as to setting a time, it is either man’s presumption or his ignorance. As to the Lord’s return, it is what Scripture declares every child of God ought to be waiting for incessantly. Various things show clearly that we are in the ‘last days,’ but a child of God ought not even to be looking at those things. The Word says his Lord is to come at any hour — at any moment — and he should be in a waiting attitude both in heart and practice.”
“How sweet that is!” he said. “Even if I am executed before He comes, you may not have to wait long. Oh, be very earnest, my brother!”
This was like a voice coming to me from the other world. I have been waiting for our dear Lord, and endeavoring to act on it these four years, but that voice in a cell, telling me with such emphasis, “Be earnest,” has wrought a still more burning desire to be “steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.”
After a time of silence, he said, “Oh, I forgot —I forgot to tell Mother.”
“What?” I asked. “If it is something you can tell me, I can go to see her, and tell her.”
“I should be glad,” he said, “if you would. It is this: I leave this world belonging to no sect. I belong to Christ, who has redeemed me with His own blood, and made me His own property. I belong to no sect, no man, no creed of any kind, and I would impress her with the dishonor done to Christ in belonging to anything of that kind — that when God has made her to see what I now see, she may glorify Him in it. I belong to Christ, and to Him alone. I love God’s people — I wish I could see them all, serve them all, and enjoy communion with them all, but I belong to Christ. I am a Christian, holding now the relationship to all my brethren which I shall hold through all eternity.”
His faith, his quick insight into the ways of God, and the holy boldness of his speech were binding me to him exceedingly. The thought of our speedy separation was almost more than I could bear. I had already spoken to some of my brethren about the propriety of having special prayer meetings for his reprieve, but they had pointed me to 1 John 5:16, “There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it,” and as this seemed to me a correct application of the passage, although the man was not a Christian when he committed the crime, I saw that seeking after a reprieve for him would be improper, both in the sight of God, who has ordained the powers that be, and given them the sword “for the punishment of evildoers,” and in the sight of the world, before whom the Christian should be first in giving “the ordinance of God” due honor in the exercise of its functions. (Romans 13:17.) The Word of God had convinced and satisfied me, but my love for him was such that I would gladly have gone to beseech the governor for him. As it was, “Thy will be done” was the only comfort.
On Monday, December 5, I found him brighter and more cheerful than at any other time before. He delighted to lie quietly and think of the love of God. “And oh, such rapturous hours!” he added; “what will it be when I get there! All this is no sentimental religion, whose seat is in one’s imagination or feelings. It is a solid rock the believer’s feet are on, and founded on that, he may well feel happy.”
He got much blessing from John 17:4, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” So far, he had only seen Christ satisfying the justice of God in dying for poor sinners, but on this occasion he saw Christ glorifying God in that work He had been sent to do — two very different aspects of the work of Christ. One has the sinner’s need in view, the other, the glory of God in connection with a state of things which dishonors Him. As by it the sinner’s need is met, so also the holiness of God and His unflinching justice and His amazing love are manifested. He is holy, and therefore the sin of the sinner must be put away before the sinner can approach Him. He is just, and therefore Christ must be “made a curse for us,” before we can be “redeemed . . . from the curse of the law.” He is love, and therefore He comes down in man, “reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.”
This, of course, carried him far beyond the thought of his own eternal safety. The glory of God was a new field for his delighted soul.
One thing surprised me more than anything before: he had seen the difference, in reading the Scriptures, between “the coming of the Lord” and “the day of Christ,” the former referring to the coming of Christ for His saints, the latter to His coming with His saints to execute judgment on the nations of the world. “Surely,” I thought, “if the Holy Spirit so thoroughly instructs a child of God, who has but nine days more to live, in the things concerning the return of our Lord, He must be wonderfully occupied with it, compared with the time when the Church almost wholly ignored the subject.”
He asked me if I had been happy in preaching the day before. I told him, as was truly the case, I had never had more power from on high in preaching before. He said, “I thank God, for, during the hours of preaching, I besought God to help you, and cause the good seed to fall on good ground.”
He said it was very sweet to him to see the change that peace with God wrought in a man’s mind. Before he had peace, occupied with himself incessantly, he cared for nothing and nobody; but now, occupied with Christ, his heart went after everybody, longing that all might get what he had. He was not insensible to their temporal things, but it was their spiritual things which occupied him most. He seemed especially anxious for the souls of his fellow-convicts in the penitentiary, and several times expressed the wish that I should be allowed, if it were but once or twice, to preach Christ to them.
On Wednesday morning, December 7, after returning from the country, where I had gone the day before to preach, I heard that something had come out in the morning daily paper as a production from Daniel Mann which did not become a child of God. On procuring a paper, I found it to be truly what it was represented to be. And even supposing the things he said to be just, and ascribing the way in which he said them to his ignorance, the spirit manifested was anything but a spirit of love, especially toward certain officials of the penitentiary.
I had, from the moment he had found peace, been so confident of his being a converted man that I could scarcely believe the article was his own, and, to avoid troubling him unnecessarily with what was going on outside, I went to the publishing office to ascertain. The original article was shown to me, and I could doubt no longer; it was his own handwriting. A keener pang had never crossed my bosom, and I felt discouraged.
In a moment, however, I was reminded how often I had failed since I had found Christ, also how much more grievously than this Peter, an apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ, and others had failed, though children of God, so I took courage and went to the prison, feeling sure the opportunity had come for the admonition in Galatians 6:1, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”
As soon as I had entered his cell, he said he had been longing all the morning to see me come in; he felt very much dejected, but could not tell why.
“Since when?” I asked.
“Since yesterday morning,” he replied, “and oh, how I did wish to see you all day yesterday.”
“Have you lost your peace?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “I can rest in God’s love, because I see there is no other ground where a sinner can rest, but rest is not enough for me, I want to rejoice in the Lord, and I cannot.”
I said, “Perhaps you have not heeded the admonition in Ephesians 4, ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.’ The article from you in the morning paper surely did not breathe that tender-hearted, forgiving spirit spoken of in the above passage. Therefore the Holy Spirit, who now dwells in you, has been grieved, and if you grieve your Comforter, how do you expect to be comforted?”
As soon as I had spoken these words, his expression became one of indescribable grief, and his heart began to swell again as after his parting with his mother. “Oh!” he exclaimed, looking up to heaven and squeezing my hands in his, “thanks be unto God! I shall soon be out of a wretched world where I never did but rebel against God and man, and where I can now but grieve Him who has bought me with His own blood.”
I could truly weep with him, for I knew by experience the powerful union of the Christian’s three bitter foes — the world, the flesh and the devil.
Fearing now lest Satan should take advantage of his fault, and remembering he was a child only two weeks old, I proceeded to establish him in what he already perceived plainly, that is, that a fault could in no wise affect his sonship, though it could and did affect his communion. His sonship rested on the finished work of Christ, through faith in Him. His sonship, therefore, could not be touched except by overthrowing Christ. Peace had been made by the blood of His cross, and He, risen from the dead and seated at God’s right hand, “is our peace.” I pointed him to 1 Corinthians 1:30, and other passages of the same character, and in a little while I saw the desired effect. Seeing that nothing, not even his failures, could rob him of his salvation, since that was in Christ in whom he believed, he said with more and more grief, “Oh, blessed Saviour, to think that I could thus grieve Thee! Thou whose blood has secured me an eternal inheritance in heaven! I am ashamed — so ashamed of myself, Lord, that I can but lie down in confusion before Thee!”
Turning to me he said, “And I have grieved you too, my brother. Ah! you are strong and able to resist the evil, therefore God has called you to face it, but I am weak — so weak, that God saw I was not fit to live, even as a child of His. I shall soon be where I can praise Him as I wish.”
“Well,” said I, “the same God who provided salvation for the sinner has also provided restoration for the believer. In restoration, as in salvation, the way is His own, and that is Christ. Salvation for the sinner is through His blood; restoration for the believer is through His intercession.” We read together the first ten verses of John 13, and then I said to him, “Do you see how that Jesus, in anticipation of the work He was going to do on the cross for the salvation of sinners, girds Himself with a towel, and with water washes His disciples’ feet? Peter, not yet knowing the wondrous work his Master is to do, cannot understand such humiliation, and therefore refuses to have Him humble Himself down to such work, but Jesus insists, telling him he will know after a while what this means. In a moment, Peter changes his mind and wants to be washed all over. Oh, no, says Christ. ‘He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.’ ”
All this is very simple now. The “hereafter” is now, and every child of God should see what it means, for after Christ had obtained an eternal redemption for us and gone back home, He sent down the Holy Spirit who now dwells in every converted man and enables him to search and comprehend the deep things of God. Every converted man is a “new creature,” and as such “is clean every whit.” As to his guilt, he is by one sacrifice “perfected for ever,” and never again needs the application of the blood. Those who think they need to be washed in the blood constantly make the blood of Jesus, as far as they are concerned, no better than that of bulls and goats, besides annulling the need of His intercession. But while he is a man every whit cleansed, he is a man who has the flesh dwelling in him, evil all around him, and the devil watching him. He has to walk in the midst of all these difficulties, and his feet are very apt to get soiled. 1 John 2:1 expresses it: “If any man sin, we [who are saved] have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,” and again in Romans 8:34, “Who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us [believers].” Jesus died, and therefore the believer lives; Jesus intercedes, and therefore the offending but confessing believer is restored to communion with God.
His cup was full and running over. We knelt together, and in a quiet, subdued prayer, such as I never had heard before, he poured out his heart to God, especially beseeching Him to keep him from ever again grieving His Holy Spirit and dishonoring His blessed name.
For a long while we sat together on his bench, he weeping like a child, and only interrupting the silence from time to time by saying, “How sweet to lie down on the mercy of God!” or, “What a vile thing I am! Lord, what a vile thing I am!” or, “How kind of you, dear brother, to tell me!”
“I am no better than you,” I said; “the flesh in me is the same as in you. My spirit is as willing as yours, and my flesh is as weak also; tomorrow I may need to be admonished in my turn. I have only done what my hand would do for another member of my body if in need. Believing you to belong to the body of Christ, to which I also belong, I have only followed that which the Lord wishes to see, and which He expresses in 1 Corinthians 12. Read it when I am gone.”
I had come to the prison grieved at what had happened. I left it happier than ever, and I felt sure that the Lord would draw His praise out of this.
On Friday, December 9, he was quite taken up with something he had found on Wednesday night after I left him. It was the same thing with which he had been occupied for some days, of which he had tasted the bitter fruit a little while before, and which God was showing him with power — namely, the flesh.
Until a late hour at night he said he was, as it were, swallowed up in this passage of Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” “I saw myself,” he said, “a mere mass of corruption, and such corruption that I cannot describe my feelings. It was such a strange thing. You know it is natural for every man to have some pride about himself, and even when in the penitentiary, if any man had said injurious things to me, I should have resented it, supposing my honor as a man was touched. Someone who called at the penitentiary made a cutting remark on my family and, upon hearing it, I made up my mind that my first duty after my release would be to avenge the offense, but since the other night, it is all changed. The very essence of me is evil. All from me can be but evil. Oh, what a sight! And yet, do you know, I never was so happy in my life. I can hardly tell why I should be so happy with such a sight, except that it made the grace of God more manifest to me, but I was so happy that I could not sleep. I felt as if I must get out of my cell, gather the whole world around me, and tell them they were all shapen in iniquity —conceived, born and brought up in sin, and all rotten to the heart as well as myself, and the only way, of course, for such creatures to stand before a holy God is by what Jesus has done, for the very best things such creatures could do must be only filthy rags. I praised God again and again, and, when I saw it was no use thinking about preaching to the world, I thought I must preach to the night guard. I have thought since that he may have imagined, from the way I spoke to him, that I was not quite right in my mind.”
“I see you have got where every child of God ought to be,” I said, “and you make me think about a much-hated servant of the Lord Jesus. As he was going quietly on his way once, someone tried to anger him by heaping insults upon him, but he soon put out the fire by saying, ‘If you knew me as I know myself, you would say far worse things than this.’ Well, this is the only state of mind in which the Christian can glorify God. It is this very thing which makes him a pilgrim and a stranger in the midst of the world, for the world sees nothing but its rights, while he glories only in the cross — only in the grace of God.”
“All this seems very plain to me now,” he said, “but I suppose very few in the world see this. As I said to the guard the other night when I was so happy, I have no doubt the world would laugh at me if I told them that there is not in man enough good to lay the end of a needle on. Ah! I am afraid only few will be saved, for even among the preachers I never heard anyone talk in this way. The idea seems to be to get people to do better, to reform, and such nonsense, yes, such nonsense, for in the sight of what man is, to talk to him about doing better is absurd, and it leads to hell.”
As he spoke, I thought in my own heart, would to God every pulpit in the land were occupied by such a preacher! Yes, cold, worldly children of God, if you had such preaching, your consciences would burn until you walked worthy of your calling. You, vain, good, moral professors of Christianity, you could not boast long in your outward goodness, but would soon flee from the midst of God’s people, unable to bear the searching power of the truth! And you, preachers of the truth, you would soon cease to be the popular, applauded, courted men of the world!
Amazed to see how fast the Lord was leading this dear soul in His ways, I felt happier than ever in opening my Bible to read with him such portions as seemed to me needful to him. He had entered fully into the forgiveness of sins, but he had evidently never yet fully grasped the blessed truth of deliverance from sin and from law by identification with the death of Christ. I pointed him to Romans 6:6-11, and to Galatians 2:20, and endeavored to show him this “old man” he now hated so much, and which he had learned to hate from God — who hates it far more than any of us can hate it — that this “old man,” or “first man Adam,” had been “crucified with Christ,” who in grace was made “sin for us.” It was therefore put away from God’s sight. He calls it “dead,” since it was “crucified with Christ,” therefore He says to us who believe, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
But he seemed unable to grasp the depth of this glorious truth, for he kept repeating that he wished it were more dead, he wished he could crucify it more. As he looked at himself and saw he was only sin, and could be nothing else, his only hope, of course, could be in what Jesus had done, but he wished he could get rid of this hateful thing.
Again I commended him to God and left him, realizing how helpless man is in imparting the truth to others. He can only lay it before them; the Holy Spirit must apply it.
The next morning, Saturday, December 10, he was the first object of my thoughts as I awoke, and after asking the Lord to guide me through the day, I felt I could not even wait for breakfast, but must go to the prison.
I found him pondering over Galatians 2:20, trying to get the meaning of it. As usual, I sat beside him, opened my own Bible, and referred him to Scripture for every question he asked, or which seemed “meat in due season.” I had just pointed him to 1 Corinthians 1:30, “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption,” and was endeavoring to show him the divine perfection a man stands in when he has Christ, who is made unto him, of God, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, when he suddenly ceased paying attention to anything I said, and exclaimed, “Oh, what a wonderful thing I see! Christ Himself my righteousness! Yes, Christ Jesus Himself — not what He has done, but His own self — as He is, there at God’s right hand — He is my righteousness! Oh, my brother, do you see it?”
He had caught the blessed truth, and the state of happiness it threw him into took such hold of me also that I could scarcely keep quiet, and kept on talking to him; but he said, “That is enough; let me enjoy what I never dreamed man could enjoy on earth.”
The silence we were in for a while was not what some might imagine — that of a dark, gloomy, felon’s cell; it was the silence of intense, divine happiness and deep adoration.
He broke the silence by saying, “Why, this sets me aside, does it not? Since Christ Himself is my righteousness, it is a righteousness that is divine, complete, independent of me, of my feelings, of my thoughts; a righteousness which Satan himself cannot affect, no matter how much he may try me. Now I see that before I can perish Christ Himself must perish, for He is my righteousness. Oh, my brother, if He, my righteousness, has not appeared on the clouds of heaven before next Wednesday morning, I shall go to Him!”
“Now,” I said, “you can take up Simeon’s strain, ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation!’ The Holy Spirit has taught you a wondrous truth; for Christ, now your righteousness through faith, is God’s righteousness; therefore we (who believe) are ‘made the righteousness of God in Him.’ ” 2 Corinthians 5:21.
“I see,” he continued, “how it is that I am a dead man before God. Christ was crucified, and I was crucified with Him. Christ died, and I am a dead man. But Christ is risen, and He is my righteousness. God looks on me in Him, and He loves me even as He loves Christ Himself. How sweet these two lines are to me now!
I am a poor sinner, and nothing at all,
But Jesus Christ is my all in all.
“I see how it is, too, that I am a ‘new creature’ in Christ Jesus. All that I have done, all that I am, is blotted out: I am a new man. Now I can go right on in perfect peace and joy to meet God, for when I arrive before Him, I can point to Jesus at His right hand, and say, ‘There, my God, is my righteousness!’ ” And so saying, he walked the cell, his folded arms pressed hard against his chest, as one who has found a treasure to hug to his bosom.
After a while he turned to me and said, “How dear to me are all who in any place have Christ for their righteousness! How I love them in Christ!”
“Do you believe,” I said, “such a thing as this is not enough to bind people together?”
“If this is not enough,” he replied, “what can be?”
“I only ask you this,” I said, “because I see in you what many are awaking to, that is, that if anything but the Christ of God be upheld to bind Christians together, their union is not of God, and therefore cannot please Him.”
A long while we remained together worshipping our God. In prayer, he besought God to lead many precious souls to find what he had just found, and especially asked it for his poor fellow-criminal. He prayed in particular for everyone of his family. Of one whom he had loved much, he said, “Lord, he is a good, upright, affectionate man, but still he is lost, and he knows it not. Oh, do Thou tell him he is lost!”
Praying for me, he said, “Thou knowest, Lord, how much I love my dear brother, and what I would do for him for Thy sake if I could, but I know that Thou lovest him far more than I do, and I commend him to Thee.” He spoke evidently face to face with God. There was no excitement, no familiarity, but the sweet liberty of a submissive son before a loving Father. There lay a book of prayers on his table, which someone had sent him, but he had no need any man should teach him, for he had the anointing which teaches all things, even the Holy Spirit. (1 John 2:27.) How wonderful the difference between the man who performs a religious duty in “saying his prayers,” and the one who, full of the Holy Spirit, pours out his needs to his Father!
As I left the prison, I thought to myself, this was the brightest case I had yet seen, showing the difference between peace with God and deliverance. Peace with God is what the soul needs who fears the coming judgment. It is gotten through apprehending by faith Jesus as our Substitute on the cross, the One “who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.” Romans 4:25. The passover in Egypt is a figure ordained of God to show this: judgment was about to take place, but there was a way of escape — one place of shelter from the awful doom of that midnight hour. A lamb — a spotless one — had been slain, and the blood applied on the lintel and side posts of the door. The angel of death could not pass that. His work was to slay in justice, but the blood on the door declared justice had already been done, and everyone behind that door was safe, and sure of it, for Jehovah Himself had said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
Deliverance is what the soul needs who is still under law, and there, naturally enough, is busy with the flesh, excusing it if he is away from God, but if in His presence, trying hard to mend it. This latter case can only be misery, for law is inflexible and flesh is incorrigible. What is wanted here is the apprehension of the believer’s identification with Christ in death as taught in Romans 6:111 and 7:16. Fully conscious of what law requires, and — though loving it — of the impossibility of fulfilling it, he is compelled to cry out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” God answers in substance: Man in nature is so utterly bad that he cannot be mended, so when Christ was crucified, I concluded you with Him, when He was buried, you were buried with Him, and therefore you live no longer in My sight as connected with that order of things. As such, you are dead. I now see you only as connected with Christ, one with Him in resurrection and in glory, where He is now, as you were one with Him in His death and burial.
Oh that God’s dear children might know what is theirs in Christ risen and glorified! They would then talk less about their feelings, their frames of mind, their weakness, their victories, their faith and works of faith, anything good or bad about themselves: the theme and substance of all their talk would be Christ, “who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” —Christ, in whom we are more than conquerors.
On Monday, December 12, I spent the morning again with him. He was in a deeply quiet state of mind.
“The hour is fast approaching,” he said, “but I know in whom I have believed. God, who says that by the blood of Jesus my sins are all washed away, and that He remembers them no more, has so enabled me to believe Him, that I have almost forgotten them too, and am wholly taken up with Christ my righteousness. Sometimes I wonder if it can be possible that such grace should be true, but when such thoughts come, I quickly open my Testament, and reassure myself that I am not mistaken. Ah! my brother, God’s Word alone can satisfy the soul with which God is at work. It is only what God says that is worth anything. O how I wish men would see this, and let everything go but the Word of God!”
“And how does God say we are His children?” I asked.
“By faith in Jesus Christ,” he replied, pointing to the verse.
“And what does God say His children are?” I asked again.
He did not catch my thought, so I referred him to Romans 8:17. “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”
After a little while of new delight from this passage, he said, “O that my mother, and my brothers and sisters, and everybody might see the things that I see!”
In a little while we were led to the subject of the resurrection from the dead. The chief scriptures we used were 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4.
“You know,” I said, “what ‘firstfruits’ means. Well, it says there that Christ is the firstfruits of all the brethren. Their turn will be ‘at His coming.’ The spirits of believers washed in His blood are at rest in God’s bosom the moment they leave the body, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5:8, ‘Absent from the body, and . . . present with the Lord.’ There they wait for their bodies to be raised immortal, as we wait here for ours to be changed. And all this, the Scripture declares, will take place ‘at His coming.’ At that grand hour, the crowning of all our waiting, the bodies of the dead saints shall all be raised again, only now in glory, and the bodies of all of us, His living saints, shall be changed in ‘the twinkling of an eye,’ and ‘caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air’! This is the first resurrection, also called ‘the resurrection of the just,’ which may occur today, while we are talking together, at any moment of the day or night. The world will very likely know nothing about it, except as the few who are waiting for Him will be found missing here and there. It may go on just the same with its religious ordinances and boasted progress for a little while, until He, with power and great glory, appears on the clouds of heaven with the myriads of His glorified saints, to execute judgment upon it. As it happened to Sodom, so to the world then. Lot was first taken out, and Sodom had not long to riot after. It is then ‘the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?’
“Those who are not saved belong to another resurrection, which occurs later, as you may see in Revelation 20. And thus, if you die before the Lord comes, you will be waiting for His coming, and, of course, for the resurrection, up there, in God’s bosom, while I shall be waiting down here, endeavoring to lead others in the same precious things you now see, and often getting for reward the sneers of those men described in 2 Peter 3:3,4, ‘Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.’ You will be at rest, able to adore Him without distraction of any kind, while I shall be at war, constantly struggling against everything which would rob me of an adoring spirit, defending the blessed truth which has made us free, and praying for grace to be ‘steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.’ ”
“How sweet, how sweet all this is!” he exclaimed. “It is wonderful how the Word sets a man clear on everything.”
“Yes,” I said, “if he is submissive to it.”
“But tell me,” he said, “how is this, that some people speak of death as if that were the same thing as the Lord’s coming? I see the Scripture shows them to be very different things.”
“It is either unbelief or ignorance,” I replied. “And then, you see, many are nicely settled in this world, or they want to do some great thing in it, therefore they hate the idea of Christ’s coming, because that would interfere with their plans. They prefer the idea of death, because that gives them at least the chance of so many years. My own wicked heart went through it all before I was willing to bow to the Word, so I know all this. But now, submissive to the Word, all is clear and simple as day; the heavy, oppressive feeling which follows this — what is to come hereafter — is gone, and ‘we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’ ”
On Tuesday morning, December 13, his countenance was calm. He seemed even more free than before from the deep sobs which he could not restrain through all our former interviews. “I am living,” he said, “in the first four verses of Colossians 3, and in Ephesians 2.”
“You are living in pastures which only sheep know,” I said, “and they are sweet.”
“Yes, very, very sweet,” he replied. “They are so sweet, that I have nothing whatever to wish for myself save that my Father may give me grace and strength to deport myself in everything as it becomes a poor sinner saved by grace. Since I can glorify God in nothing else now, may I glorify Him in the full peace and confidence which becomes one whose righteousness is Christ.”
“God may glorify Himself through you more than in this which you desire,” I said. “As soon as I saw that the Holy Spirit had opened your eyes to see the grace of God, a voice kept repeating in my ears, ‘Here is an instrument by which God will display what He is,’ so I have carefully, and as accurately as possible, penned the substance of every one of our interviews, which I intend to publish as soon as I can, in the full assurance the Lord will use it for His glory in the building up of His Church. Have you any objections to this?”
“May the Spirit of our God go with it!” he answered. “Oh, may He use it for the opening of many, many eyes, and the joy of many, many hearts! I will now pray for this to my end, that God may glorify Himself by it.”
“There is something else yet,” I said, “in which God may be glorified. Indeed, it is the greatest thing: turn to Luke 17.”
We read from verse 11 to 19, and I said, “There are, in figure, ten sinners saved by grace, through faith, but Jesus Himself declares that only one of them — and he a poor outcast like you, a Samaritan — has glorified God. And the way in which he gave glory to God was by returning and falling at his Lord’s feet in heartfelt adoration. Ah! this is something we are all too apt to forget. Our idea is that the only way to glorify God is by doing some great thing, while God’s greatest delight is in seeing the saved sinner fall down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks! Mary is another such case. She cares more for her dear Lord than for all the poor in the land. Lookers-on, even disciples, find fault with ‘this waste,’ but the Lord orders it to be published ‘wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world.’ So the alabaster boxes of true worship you may pour on Jesus to your end may be far more to the glory of God than the three hundred pence of money.”
I was kindly allowed — what we both wished much — to spend the last night together, as the hour of the execution was eight o’clock in the morning, and so I arranged to return in the evening.
No words can describe the strange, sweet hours of that night. Its sweetness, deepened by its sadness, cannot be told. It was my share of God’s grace displayed in him. It was my harvest for my three weeks’ teaching. It is another oasis in the wilderness I have been traveling in these four years. I shall be glad when it ends, but until then, this is sweet. It was no more teaching and learning as before. We were feasting together on what he had learned during the past three weeks. We worshipped our God; we adored our Lord Jesus. There was no noise, no excitement. Ours was a quiet cell that night, but oh, the solemnity of it! Jesus was there.
Ah! my brethren, do you know what it is to worship God? Do you know what it is to possess eternal life, to know that that life is in Jesus —Jesus Himself, who sits at God’s right hand now, in the very same body in which He bore our sins on the tree? Do you know what it is to ignore creed, name and title, to know only Christ, and own and love one another only in Him? Do you know what it is to keep His Word and let go everything else, to not deny His name and deny every other name? Then you know what Jesus meant when He said, “This is My commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12), and you may form some idea of what we both enjoyed that night. I wept sore many a time at the thought that that man, whom I now loved as my own soul, was about to be torn away from me in such a violent manner, but he would say, “Do not weep, my brother; you know I am a son of God, redeemed by the blood of Jesus.” But this, while it forbade all bitterness, only grieved me the more, for that was the very ground and bond of my love to him.
His favorite expression through the whole night was, “A son of God! a part, yes, a very part of Thee, Lord Jesus! Oh why should I not rejoice?”
He never remained long without returning to his Testament, which lay open on the table, with many leaves turned and many portions underlined. It was not to seek anything new, but to read and reread the passages which referred most clearly to the grace of God. The special portions he used were Galatians 2:20, Romans 6 and 8, Ephesians 2, Colossians 3:14, and John 14:14. An expression in a passage of Galatians 2 especially filled him: “And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” “It is nothing of mine,” he would say; “it is all of God. I am a man in Christ — in the Son of God; one spirit with Him: flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone; a very part of Him, and this for all eternity.” “O Jesus, Jesus,” he would often exclaim, “how I love Thee! In a few hours I shall feast on Thee, O Lord Jesus, to my heart’s content. Then I shall be filled. But, O my Father, until then, give me to remember that I walk by faith, not by sight, by simple faith in what Thou hast written in Thy blessed book.”
Often we prayed. He never asked anything for himself, save that he might have strength from the Lord to act to the last moment as it becomes one who has all things in Christ.
“Thou knowest, my Father,” he would say, “how natural it is to the flesh to shrink from death, and especially a death like this, but Jesus has borne my sins in His own body on the tree; He is risen; He sits at Thy right hand, and He is my life. I, therefore (Thou knowest it, my Father), have no fear of any kind concerning eternity; there is no sting in death for me. But the world will be looking at me, Lord, and I would shame Thee and Thy Word were I to show weakness. Help me in that hour!”
The burden of his prayers was chiefly for all his “brethren in Christ Jesus.” He would tell the Lord what a wicked world they were in, and how much they needed His help to go through it to His glory. He also besought the Lord much for all his family, especially for his mother and a grown-up sister. He prayed much that God would stir up the people everywhere to hear the truth as it is in Jesus. He asked often that the publication of our interviews might be blessed to everyone who would read it, and on my telling him of a special work for the Lord in the United States, which weighed somewhat on my mind, several times before morning he besought the Lord for it.
At one time as he lay resting on the bench, his coat rolled up under his head for a pillow, his happiness became so intense that he said to me, “I do not believe I can live till morning.” His eyes closed, his hands lifted toward heaven; he only gave signs of life by repeating in a low voice, “Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, one with Thee! I long for Thee, Lord Jesus!” After this, he slept a little while. When he awoke, he asked me what time it was. “It is just three o’clock,” I said.
“Five hours more, my blessed Jesus, and I shall be with Thee,” he said. “Oh, how sweet that is! I never knew what real, unbroken, unclouded happiness was even until last Saturday, when I saw Christ in heaven as my righteousness. I know what peace is since that morning when I saw the finished work of Christ for my salvation, but since I have known Christ Himself as my righteousness, I know what joy means. Several gentlemen called in yesterday, and seemed to pity me in my condition, but, oh, how I do wish they might be as I am, save the hanging!”
Again he said, “Morning is coming, and I wish to forget nothing. This Testament was given me by Mr. G., and I leave it for him to carry to my mother. It is the best gift I ever had. May my dear mother find in it what I have found! This packet of tracts I leave for you to carry to my mother. It will be a kindness to me if you visit her as often as you can. Tell her I am at home, a sinner saved by grace, through faith. I have made a dying request that she may be released, for she is not guilty, and is there through my fault alone. I trust my Father will move the heart of the governor to do so, but tell her that peace with God makes a palace of a prison. She must not think it is easier to believe outside a prison than inside. Christ has done it all, and it is believing that makes everything ours. If she will only believe, she will meet me again when Jesus comes.
“Tell my sister she is lost, as lost as I was, and therefore she must be saved in the same way in which I am saved. Please write to her and tell her I never knew what happiness was till I saw the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Tell her she may think she is happy in the pleasures of the world, but I know they are death, eternal woe at the end.
“When you have published our interviews, send a copy to each of my relatives, whose address you have.
“Tell everybody that I recognize no church but the Church of God, the body of Christ, of which, through faith in Jesus Christ, I am a happy, happy member. I love — yes, I dearly love — all whose confidence is where mine is, and who love my blessed Jesus. Moreover, I affectionately and solemnly warn those who seem to place much confidence in the church or in ordinances. I have received several books and other matters since I came here, which talk in that way, but I am sure there is nothing so dangerous, because it hides Christ, in whom alone is salvation, and grace and strength. These things, I know, are very good in their place, but I feel sure that many are putting them before Christ, for if they saw in Christ what I now see, they would set Him up so high that the other things would not be noticed much.
“Insist that forgiveness of sins is not when a man dies, but when he believes, because the debt was all paid over eighteen hundred years ago. Tell the world that it is lost, but that God sent His Son to save it, that the work for our salvation was finished when Jesus died. O that they would believe! If they could only see in Jesus what I see, they could not stay away another moment.”
He called the night guard and said, “Oh, Mr. R., I love you: I do love you much, and I wish I could see you resting in Christ before I die!”
“I have determined now to try to be a Christian,” answered the guard.
“Oh, no, that will not do! That will not do!” he replied. “God wants none of your determination. It is His Son, eternal life, a finished redemption, He offers you. Will you not have it? Look at me. Three hours more and I shall hang, and yet I am the happiest man living. What do you think of that? Is there not reality in Christ? Is it not a reality worth having? Look at that man! [He pointed to me.] The love of Christ has enabled him to leave the world and be happy in such a place as this. Is there not reality in Christ?”
Thus he pleaded, and after a while he said to me, “Let us pray for Mr. R. Maybe the Lord will show him what we see.”
At seven o’clock he said, “Now, Lord, one more glance at Thy Word, then I will tie up the book for my dear mother, and I go to Thee.”
After he had arranged everything on the table, he said to me, “Now Satan is assailing me.”
I felt afraid of this, for I well knew that Satan could see that soon he would be out of his reach, so I could but silently pray for him. In about four or five minutes he said, “It is all over. I am one with Christ, and Christ is one with God. God is my Father, and Satan is at my feet.”
As the noise of feet and voices were beginning to be heard all around, he said, “Soon we shall be surrounded by people, so let me bid you good-bye as I wish,” and so saying, he took me in his arms as a child, kissed me over and over again, then let me go, and said, “You have taught me the truth of God, and He has plucked me as a brand from the burning. May God bless you and everything you do. May God make you strong to preach the same things to many more till Jesus comes!”
While he spoke, the cell door had been opened, and we were asked to go into another cell where several persons were assembled with the other criminal.
A few minutes before eight, the arms of both were tied to ascend to the gallows, and the procession moved on.
A few minutes after, he was “absent from the body, and . . . present with the Lord,” and I returned home with my sorrow and my joy.