A gentleman was preaching the gospel in a large English town. He told the story of God’s love to lost sinners fully and clearly. Slowly some listeners drifted away and others filled their places. The newcomers showed too plainly that they had come only to cause trouble.
After a while they gave vent to their anger in loud, rough interruptions, and as the preacher continued speaking, their rage overcame them. One hurled a stone at him. This signal led to a general onslaught, and all of them rushed at the defenseless man and overpowered him.
It was a short struggle before one powerful man knocked the preacher to the ground, where he lay stunned and, to all appearances, dead. In the stunned silence that followed, the rough mob looked awestruck at the still figure. Turning to the one who had delivered the blow, one of the men remarked, “I say, there’ll be hanging for this.”
The criminal cast a terrified glance around and ran for his life. On, on, he rushed through unfrequented alleys and byways of the great town, and at last he ducked into the filthy place he called home. A little boy was the only occupant.
“What’s the matter, Father?” he asked timidly.
“What’s that to you?” the man replied harshly, but then he added nervously, “I must hide, Willie. Where can I go?”
The child looked around the room in a terrified way and pointed to the attic. The man, after some fierce threats as to what he would do if the child allowed him to be discovered, climbed up into the only place of concealment.
Night came and slipped slowly away. The words, “There’ll be hanging for this,” rang in his ears until he was almost frenzied with fear. Hanging meant death, and death was a terrible thing. It meant the end of life, the end of everything. But was it the end of everything? Something told him it wasn’t; something whispered back the nearly forgotten words: “After death the judgment.” And the preacher had just been telling them the way of escape from judgment. Why had he not listened?
Morning came and found him still hiding. He didn’t dare to venture out, so he sent his little boy to buy him a little tobacco for his pipe.
The child returned from his errand with the tobacco wrapped up in a page of an old Bible, which the shopkeeper was tearing apart to wrap up her products. Anything was welcome to break the monotony, and he turned gladly to read the page. It was Hebrews 9, and as he read slowly down, he stopped suddenly at verse 22: “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” What did it mean? Did God say that he must die? Was there no forgiveness for him, even from God? He knew he deserved the death penalty from man, but had his sins forfeited his life to God? Those were dreadful hours! At last he could bear it no longer, and he sent the boy once more to the shop for more tobacco, hoping to receive another leaf which might tell him more.
Meanwhile other customers had come and gone; the woman was tearing away at the Bible. This time the tobacco was folded up in the first chapter of John’s first epistle. The words of the seventh verse met the man’s eye: “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” What a message from God to his sin-burdened soul! Blood had been shed for his sin — the blood of God’s own Son. But how much of his sin did the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleanse away? Not — surely not — the sin of last night. Yes, the words were “all sin,” and in this fact the man who was hiding from human justice found refuge from divine justice in the blood shed for him.
Finally news reached him that the gentleman whom they had left for dead had not been killed, as they supposed, but he had recovered and was preaching again. He immediately went and confessed everything, and he was welcomed and forgiven.