Stephen Holcombe was a notorious “riverboat gambler” on the Mississippi. One night at the gambling table a man accused him of cheating. Quick as thought, Holcombe whipped his gun from its holster and fired. The bullet went straight to the mark, and in a few minutes Holcombe’s accuser was dead. The murderer was arrested and tried, but was acquitted on the ground that he had shot the man in “self-defense.”
Though acquitted by the court, Stephen Holcombe knew he was condemned before the bar of God and equally so in his own conscience. He tried in every way to find peace of mind, but there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.
Two years after that night he was in his room alone, miserable, his face buried in his hands. The memory of the murder haunted him. Throwing himself upon his knees he cried, “O God, can anything blot out the awful memory of what I have done?”
Immediately the words of the old familiar hymn, learned long ago in the days of his childhood, came ringing through his mind:
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Kneeling there, Stephen Holcombe staked his confidence upon that precious blood. That was not a gamble! He trusted in the sacrifice offered on the cross for his sin. He believed that all his sins, the gambling, the murder and all its consequences, had been laid on Christ who was punished in his place. Accepting this he found peace, and from that day he was a faithful follower of the One who died to save him.
This is all my hope and peace;
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
This is all my righteousness.
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
Oh, precious is the flow,
That makes me white as snow!
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!