No. 1.
IN the city of L―, in the north of Ireland, there lived a godly mother who had two sons and one daughter. This dear mother had often said that she had not so much concern about their earthly position; her main concern was about their precious souls’ eternal welfare. Within a fortnight of each other the two sons took ill and died. The elder was twenty-one years old, and the younger fourteen.
The elder was laid down with consumption, and attended by the family physician, who was very kind and attentive. He did all he possibly could to preserve the young man’s life, but to no purpose.
When the doctor saw that medical skill was of no avail, and that the inevitable was near, he felt it his painful duty to tell the patient so, adding at the same time that he must now prepare for death and make his peace with God.
The young man at once raised himself from his pillow, and, resting his elbow on the bed, with the little remaining strength that he possessed spoke out clearly and distinctly, thus: “Make my peace with, God, doctor! Make my peace with God! Too late now, doctor! If I had that to do I never could do it. I am very weak, and I never could do it. But, thank God, my peace was made eighteen hundred years ago. Jesus made my peace when He died upon the cross.”
The doctor, who was standing in the middle of the room, said, with tears flooding his eyes, “Oh, Bobbie, Bobbie, I wish I could say that.”
That was the last time the doctor saw him. He died about twenty-four hours afterward in perfect peace, resting simply and sweetly on the precious blood shed for his sins, and by which they were all put away.
The death of Christ for him was the firm, immovable foundation of his peace with God. Not his prayers, tears, or good works. These would have been all in vain to cancel sin’s awful debt. He had the fullest and happiest assurance that he was not only saved from judgment―eternal judgment―which his sins, if not put away by the atoning death or Christ, would have brought upon him, but that he was made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light, and that he was going to be forever with the Lord.
What unspeakable, divine happiness to be thus resting on Jesus, whose precious blood cleanseth from all sin, and gives the vilest, blackest sinner who trusts it the conscious knowledge of fitness for the holy presence of God!
“Thy Weld is my claim and my title,
Beside it, O Lord, I have none.”
No. 2.
The other boy lay in the adjoining room. He had been repeatedly pressed by his dear mother to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and trust Him as his own personal Saviour, but his constant reply was, “Mother, I cannot: God must help me.” It is strange but true that people can trust one another in many things but cannot trust a Saviour who shed His life’s blood to win their love and gain their confidence. What a shame! What base ingratitude in the face of such amazing love!
A few days before his death, he called for his mother, saying, “Come, COME, COME QUICKLY. It is all settled now, IT IS ALL SETTLED NOW.”
“What is settled, WILLIE?” asked his mother. “My sins, mother, MY SINS.”
After explaining to his mother what had taken place between his soul and God, he immediately called for his grandfather, who was, alas! then unsaved, though nearly eighty years old.
The happy youth, in his own simple way, at once began to speak to his grandfather, beseeching him with burning earnestness, to “FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME.” The old man replied, “WHLLIE, I am a hardened old sinner, and you are but a youth that has never done anything wrong.”
The lad replied, “Remember the thief on the cross; you are not worse or more hardened than, he, and yet he was saved in the last hour. It is not the greatness of your sins but the blood that puts them all away.” The old man burst into tears and went away into his room. What the result was with him it remains for eternity to tell.
What a deeply affecting testimony from a youth in his teens of years to the value of the blood of Christ. “It is not the greatness of your sins, but the blood that puts them all away.” As the Scripture says, “Without shedding of blood there is no remission,” and “It is the blood that maketh an atonement for, the soul.”
Well might Cowper the poet sing: ―
“Dear, dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed Church of God
Be saved to sin no more.”
A colonel in the army is said to have been converted by reading in a gentleman’s parlor these beautiful lines: ―
“In peace let me resign my breath,
And Thy salvation see;
My sins deserve eternal death,
But Jesus died for me.”
This will be the theme of Mary and Martha, Paul and Peter, John and James, of John Bunyan, the converted tinker and immortal dreamer, of George Whitefield, and John Wesley, and every sinner who has known its cleansing power. Hallelujah!
Will it be your theme, dear reader?
Afterward Willie called his sister, who had fled from the room in terror. She was yet unsaved, and had hidden in the attic of the house. When she was brought into his presence, he said to her distinctly with his dying breath, “Ellen, seek Him, and you shall find Him,” meaning, of course, that she should seek the Lord Jesus Christ as her Saviour, and that He would save her as He had saved him.
“He welcomes and never refuses,
He died as a ransom for all.”
Shortly afterward he passed away out of this vale of tears into the bright regions above, to be with Christ forever. Who would not like to leave such a noble testimony behind them? It shows what the grace of God can do. It not only displaces the torturing fear of death, but gives confidence and joy in the sight of it.
No. 3.
Lastly the dear mother has also gone home, and her dying testimony to the friend who related all to me was, “Nothing could make me sad! Nothing could make me sad!”
She had lost much so far as this world was concerned, but she had found Christ, and having Him she had everything. She was happier than a king on his throne. A palace without Christ is poor indeed, a prison with Him is a palace. His presence enjoyed in the soul lightens the darkness of the darkest hour and brightens the most dreary, desolate pathway His people may be called to pass through.
Listen to the following statements from the pen of one who called himself the chief of sinners, and thought himself unworthy to be called an apostle, and said he was less than the least of all saints: ―
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle (the body) were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.... Now he that hath wrought for us the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are ALWAYS CONFIDENT, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.... We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
To die is the greatest terror and loss to the man of the world. All his prospects are for this life. When death comes in upon him, it spoils all his joys and pleasures and all his worldly pursuits. It puts its cold hand upon him and asks no questions. He must go. He has no power to say, Nay. It robs him of all that is dear, or goes to make life a pleasure. It says, Come to the bar of God, and answer for your sins and your misspent life. Even Shakespeare said, “Death is a fearful thing.”
Can you deny it, honest reader?
Christ not only saves from the awful penalty and enthralling power of sin, but He satisfies all who come to Him. In Christ the believer is brought into a region of divine satisfaction. “He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” Precious words! Great reality for all to prove who will only in simple faith come to Him. “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” What gracious words! “In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Though He tabernacled as man among us, yet was He the mighty God: “God over all, blessed forever” “God manifest in the flesh.”
Had He not been God as well as man, He could not have made such a wonderful proposal. What mere man could use such language without the highest presumption? What can equal such an offer? The poor world can offer you nothing but what is fleeting, for all it possesses is passing away. Its pleasures are like bubbles or passing shadows. “What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue,” was the dying testimony of Burke, the greatest orator and statesman of the eighteenth century. “I wish I had never been born,” said the witty, clever, voluptuous infidel, Voltaire.
Reader, just a loving word with you. If you were on your dying pillow, and were being called away to meet your God, could you say, “Thank God, my peace is made. Jesus made my peace with God”? Could you say, “It is all settled now. It is all settled now”? Are all your sins forgiven you of God for Christ’s sake, and are they gone from your conscience? “It is not your sins, but the blood that puts them all away,” that God’s holy eye sees, if you believe on Jesus. HE died for sins and rose again without them, and now appears in the presence of God to represent those whose sins He bore. Could you say, “I am satisfied: nothing now can make me sad. I have all I want for time and eternity in Christ the blessed Son of God’s love”? “He satisfieth the longing soul.”
If you are unsaved be warned in time; there may be but one step between you and death. It may come to you very suddenly and most unexpectedly. Would every member of your household be able to Bay when the earth had covered your body, “It is well with his soul”?
Remember―
“There are no pardons in the tomb,
And brief is mercy’s day.”