IN the battle of Zondorf, which took place between the Russians and Prussians in the summer of 1758, a young German soldier had both his legs shattered by grape shot. He had been a wild, reckless man; and now, as he lay in the hospital, tortured with pain, the sins of his youth set themselves in array before him, and far outweighed the pains of his body, grievous as these were.
The sin which above all others troubled his conscience, was one committed when a schoolboy against his master, which took place thus: ―
In one of the high schools of Germany, discipline had for a season been so much neglected, that the boys would rice from their beds in the light, and perform all manner of mischief.
One of the masters, who had become aware of this, was in the hab.it of rising in the night in order to go about to watch them. By this means many a boy was caught, and afterward duly punished.
One evening when it was late and dark this master was walking along the private path that led through the Barden to his bedroom. Happily for him he had a stick in his hand, with which he felt his way; for, on coming to his chamber-door, his stick was suddenly caught and bruised by the snapping of an iron trap, had been laid there in his way.
The master himself felt no other injury than that which resulted from fright. But as the motive with which the trap had been set was evidently no other than of laming his person, and thus preventing him from exercising his vigilant tare over the morals of his boys, a diligent inquiry was instituted to discover the author of this wicked design; but not the slightest clue to him could be obtained.
Some years afterward this same teacher received a letter from a young man who had been one of his pupils at the time of this event, and had afterward listed in a regiment of cavalry. After acknowledging that it was his hand that set the trap to catch his master, he proceeded thus: ―
“For a long time I was delighted that, in defiance of all your endeavors to discover the guilty person, I was able to conceal from you my wickedness in the master of the steel trap. I, a thoughtless youth, little imagined that the almighty power of Him from whom nothing is concealed, could call me to account in any place, and as soon as it should please Him. He has done it, and done it in a way as terrible to my conscience as it is just according to His righteous law. Instead of suffering me to break your legs as I had intended, God was able to preserve you, and has sent me that lot which I had prepared for you. He has righteously permitted both my legs to be shattered by a cannon shot; and while I lie here helpless and in pain, I cannot help admiring the justice of the Divine retribution.”
Reader, are there not sins on your conscience too?
Are there not deeds done by you, the remembrance of which ever and anon rises up and looks you full in the face? Are there not acts of unkindness, of untruth, of injustice, of uncleanness, of cruelty, of intemperance, which you have committed; some of them, probably, never known to any human soul but your own, and others forgotten long since by all save you? In the stillness of a sleepless night, in the compulsory inaction of sickness, in the feverish restlessness of pain, do not the sins of your youth sometimes recur to your memory with terrifying vividness, as if they had been committed but yesterday?
And if you do not remember, do you think God forgets? Has not He marked down, not only the acts, but the words, nay, the very thoughts of sin, that you have loved to cherish in secret, planning in imagination scenes and deeds of evil that you could not and dared not execute in reality? Was not God looking on, when you pursued those trains of thought with eager delight, and when you strove to make them realities to your imagination? Be sure He was. He neither slumbers nor sleeps; and nothing is or ever was present to your mind, of which He was not fully cognizant.
But perhaps you try to persuade yourself that as many of these things occurred a long while ago, they are past and gone, so as never to trouble you more. Many years have elapsed since the wicked youth laid the gin for his teacher, and he had seemed to escape with impunity; yet God found him at last, and made him to prove retributive justice. Even if in this life you escape the consequences of your sin, as many do, do not therefore flatter yourself that all is over. It is in eternity, in the endless future, that God chiefly deals with sin. Now and then He puts forth His hand in tris life just to show men that He sleeps not, and that He marks iniquity; but, it is after death that judgment comes. Then will be the true inquisition for blood; then will come the grand examination of the deeds done in the body, and then sin will meet its punishment in “the worm that dieth not, and the fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:43-49).
It may be, however, that you know very little of trouble on account of sin. You look back on your post life with considerable complacency, for you discern along its course no great blots, no foul deeds; your walk has been upright, moral, amiable; and you think that while God may and must deal in righteous anger with those gross, vile transgressors whom you read of in police reports and criminal trials, He can have nothing to say to you, except to reward you for your exemplary virtue.
Ah, but your confidence is a treacherous confidence; dangerously treacherous; more perilous than the terror which haunts the midnight bed of the openly profane and vicious. He knows something of his peril, but you do not. He is aware of his danger: you are in equal danger, and know it not. Conscience does not trouble you; but that is because conscience is dull. If you would but bring your thoughts, and affections, and motives, to the word of God, to His stern, unyielding law, you would find that you too come short, infinitely short of it; and therefore that its curses are launched against you as mercilessly as against the murderer and adulterer. God demands the whole heart, the whole life, to be given to Him: you have not rendered this, nor anything like it; you know you have not; and therefore the curse of the broken law lies heavy upon you.
But I can tell you of One who was made a curse for us; even Jesus the Son of God. He pitied poor, lost, self-ruined sinners, such as you, and came down to earth―God’s representative to man―to magnify the holy law by a perfect human obedience, and then to offer up His life as an atonement for sinners’ disobedience. He did this perfectly, spotlessly, unimpeachably. God declared himself well-pleased with what Jesus had done and suffered; and has decreed that any sinner, of whatever degree or kind of guilt, may have a free and full pardon, an entire and final acquittance from all the guilt of sin, by merely believing on Jesus.
Now, since God makes no limitation in this His free offer, you need make none. Accept it without scruple, without doubting. God looks at Christ, and sees in Him such wondrous preciousness, that for His sake He can accept and bless every soul that comes through. Him. There is no question about your own doings: the excellency and worthiness of Jesus is what God looks at. Do nothing; do not attempt to do anything, but simply this: ―Go to God, and tell Him that you are a lost sinner, but that you have heard that His dear Son has suffered for sin. Tell Him you will gladly accept salvation wholly on the ground of Christ’s merits. I say “wholly,” because if you think, even in the smallest measure, to mingle your own deserving’s with it, you will surely be sent empty away.
Whether the poor soldier thus fled to Jesus I know not; but this I know, that if you, do, you shall surely find acceptance with God and eternal life.
P. H. G.