Years ago, Nicholas the First, Czar of Russia, was occasionally in the habit of throwing aside the garb of royalty, attiring himself in the uniform of a lower officer, and going about to find out how things were going with his soldiers. On one occasion he had a favorite, a young man, the son of an intimate friend of his, to whom he had given a position in a border fortress in charge of the money used for paying off the soldiers. This young man fell into bad habits; he took to gambling, and by and by, led on and on by the will-o’-the-wisp that lures the gambler to his doom, had gambled away all his own wealth and then had taken from the government funds entrusted to him. He had taken just a few rubles at a time and had no idea of the amount abstracted. He received notice that on the following day, an official was coming from the court to examine the records and to count the money he had on hand. He felt he never could face the exposure of that day and so the night before, closed his door and sat there with his books before him. He opened the safe, took out the pitifully small amount of money, counted it carefully, jotted down the amount on a sheet of paper, made note of the various peculation that he had abstracted, and when he had added it, he sat looking at it, and finally wrote under the figures, “A great debt; who can pay?”
He knew it was impossible for him ever to settle; looking at the small amount of money, he thought, “What a failure I have been!” He made up his mind that he would not live to face the disgrace of the morrow; he would blow his brains out as the clock struck twelve that night and leave all the papers so that the agent would understand all that had happened. As he sat there reflecting upon the way he had thrown away his opportunity, suddenly he felt himself overpowered with drowsiness and in spite of the horror of his situation, went off to sleep.
It so happened that night, the Czar Nicholas, attired as a lower officer of the guard, entered the gate of that fortress, by giving the proper password, and moved down through the halls. Every light should have been out according to regulations but as he came down the main hall, he saw the light shining under a door. He went up to the door and listened but there was not a sound. He tried the knob, the door opened; he looked inside and saw the sleeping officer and then the money and the open safe, the papers, the books, and he wondered what it meant. He tiptoed in and stood behind the man, and looking over his shoulder, read the paper before him. The whole thing became clear in a moment. The young man had been stealing systematically for months.
The Czar’s first thought was to put his hand on his shoulder and tell him that he was under arrest. The next moment his heart went out to him in compassion; he remembered his boyhood; he remembered the father; how broken hearted he would be if the son should be arrested! Then he happened to see that pitiful question, “A great debt; who can pay?” Moved by generous impulse, he reached over, picked up the pen that had fallen from the hand of the sleeping man, wrote just one word under that line, tiptoed out, and closed the door.
For an hour or so the man slept, then, wakened suddenly, he saw it was long past midnight. He sprang to his feet and picked up his revolver, put it to his forehead, and was just about to pull the trigger when his eye caught sight of that one word on the sheet of paper which he knew was not there when he went to sleep. It was the name, “Nicholas.” Dropping his gun, he said, “Can it be?” He went to one of his files and got hold of some documents that had the genuine signature of the Czar and compared them with the one word written under the line, “A great debt; who can pay?” It was the real signature of the Czar and he said, “The Czar has been here tonight, he knows all my guilt and yet he has undertaken to pay my debt, I need not die.” And so instead of taking his life, he rested upon the word of the Czar as indicated by that name written upon the paper, and he was not surprised when, early the next morning, a messenger came from the royal palace bringing a sack of gold which he counted and found to be exactly the amount of the missing money. He placed it in the safe and when the inspector came and went over the books, everything was found to be all right. Nicholas had paid in full.
It is only a human illustration but it pictures what the Lord Jesus Christ has done.
“Jesus paid all my debt
Oh, wondrous love;
Widest extreme He met,
Oh, wondrous love.
Justice is satisfied,
God now is glorified,
Heaven’s gate thrown open wide,
Oh, wondrous love.”
One word spoke peace to that man’s heart, “Nicholas.” One word has spoken peace to my heart, the name, “Jesus.” For through Him and His work upon the cross, satisfaction has been made for all my sins. And for you, there is the same salvation, the same absolution, the same pardon, the same forgiveness, for God “hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:2121For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)).