MANY years ago, the following was related by a servant of Christ:― “In some of the wild, uncivilized parts of Cheshire there is a class of persons living―agricultural laborers or petty farmers― who are, many of them, removed far from any means of grace, and, indeed, the greater part only go to church three times in their lives,―when they are presented by their parents for baptism, when they go to be married, and when their bodies are carried there for burial. It was in some such region as this that I was wandering, when, as it seemed by accident, I lost my way, and entered a cottage, where I found a man sitting by the fire in a very dreadful state of suffering. I found it was a surgical case, and that there was no chance of his recovery, unless he submitted to a very painful and hazardous operation. When I proposed this to him, he quite refused, and said he would rather not hazard it; he would die as he was.”
“ ‘My friend,’ said I, ‘it is a very awful thing to die.’”
“To my astonishment he replied, “ ‘I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.’”
“I asked him how he, so far removed from all the ordinary means of grace, had been enabled to acquire so much knowledge.”
“He seemed delighted to meet with one who understood him, and said he had never met with a Christian before. He had had no one to sympathize with his feelings; and when he told his wife and children of what he had learned, they called him a madman. At last he had been obliged to give up speaking on the subject, excepting to tell them, that if that were really the case, then he would far rather live and die as they said—a madman.”
“I was, of course, much interested in this account, and asked him more particulars of his history, when he narrated the following:—
“He was one of the ordinary sort of his class, employing himself in agriculture and farming, until he was laid low by disease. He then found that time began to hang heavily on his hands. A weekly newspaper came; but when that was read through, he was again, at a loss. At length one day he asked someone to reach him down an old family Bible from a high shelf, where it had been gathering dust and cobwebs, since it was taken down the last time, to enter the birth of his youngest child, then twenty years of age. Well, he opened the Bible at the Gospel of St John, and when he came to the third chapter, he was struck with these words: ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God’ (John 3:33Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)). He began to think there was something more in religion than he had been accustomed to consider, and he longed for some Christian friend who could teach him, and explain what seemed so mysterious. However, he looked a little further into the Bible, and his eye caught these words: ‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not.’ He did ask, and he obtained from God that teaching of His Holy Spirit, which led him to Jesus as his Saviour, and taught him to rejoice amid all his sufferings, in the prospect of a future blessed life.
“I was obliged soon after to leave the house; and at parting he grasped my hand, and, with tears in his eyes, said, ‘Farewell, then, sir, till we meet again in heaven.’”
Oh! are there not many like this man, who, called from remote parts of the earth, where it seems to us that the gospel truth could scarcely have penetrated, will rise in the judgment against those who hear the gospel preached, and call themselves Christians without any saving faith in the name of Jesus?
W. T.