One evening as a minister of the Gospel was passing along a street, he heard three soldiers who were walking behind him, making use of bad language, when one of them, probably to outdo the others in profanity, expressed the awful wish "that God Almighty might damn his soul in hell to all eternity!" The servant of the Lord immediately faced about, and, with a look of deepest compassion, said solemnly, "Poor man! What if God should say, `Amen,' and answer that prayer?”
He then passed on; but the soldier stood still, as if suddenly struck with a bullet, and hardly recovered himself sufficiently to reach his quarters. There his distress of mind grew deeper, until his distraction was so great, that it threw him into a fever, under which he had the most awful forebodings of eternal misery.
The words were few and simple, it was neither them nor the manner of utterance that could account for the terrible distress of this vile sinner. What was it, my reader, that thus harrowed up the man's conscience? It was that God had spoken in that short sentence to his soul. He had heard God, not man: and was so conscious of this, that he was under the full conviction that it was an angel who had spoken to him in the street, and that God had sent him to do so.
He told those about him that he was beyond the reach of mercy, and when asked why he thought so, said, because God had told him so by an angel from heaven! Of course he was mistaken in this, but it serves to show how fully persuaded he was that the message was not man's, but God's.
All the sins of a lifetime had risen up before this man's soul, and he felt as he judged himself in the light of the presence of God, that he deserved the doom which he believed God had announced by His messenger.
At last, it occurred to someone in the hospital, to ask him to describe the supposed angel he had seen on the street, and on his doing so, a well-known minister was recognized from the vivid description which the poor man gave. He was asked whether he would like to see him again? and replied, "O, I would wish of all things to see him; but he will not come near a wretch like me!”
The servant of Christ was fetched at once, and set before the convicted sinner, Christ crucified and risen again, "able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him.”
"Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world!" Look to Him, exclaimed the preacher.
"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
See Him on the cross bearing sin, forsaken of God, enduring all the judgment due to sin, exhausting the whole penalty, and crying, "My God, My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
In conscious perfection, integrity, sinlessness, yet "made sin" there, in infinite love for sinners! Only believe in Him and all your sins shall be at once forgiven, for God hath said, "Be it known unto you, that through this Man (His own Son), is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things.”
The convicted sinner listened as to the voice of God, and believing Him, got peace to his troubled soul at once. After this, the agitation of his mind being gone, he speedily recovered, and became as remarkable for his piety and consistency, as he had previously been for his profanity.
By his desire, the minister who had been so remarkably used in his conversion, procured his discharge from the army, and the man obtaining more suitable employment, continued to "adorn the doctrine of Christ", thus proving to all who knew him that "the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth;" salvation not only from the awful doom that once threatened his never-dying soul, but also from "the dominion of sin," to which he had so long been a miserable slave.
Will you, my reader, now and henceforth hear in the Gospel, the Voice of God?