Handsome in face, and of powerful and athletic physique, endowed with good abilities, and the owner of a fine estate, C. E. was one whom the world has esteemed highly favored. Possessing the means of procuring the pleasures he desired, and the health to enjoy them, what did he lack? In later years he thus described his own past life and character.
"I was," he said, "until the age of twenty-three, in the world, and of it. I delighted to exceed all my boon companions, and to dare what they would not dare. I was an acknowledged leader, and boasted that I was on the way to hell myself, and that I would have plenty of companions there! Thus I ran riot, seldom opening my lips without an oath serving Satan well.”
"A manly, jolly sort of fellow!" do you say? Stay! How does God describe such an one?
That is the divine verdict, and that was C. E.'s own verdict later on. The bravado with which he talked of going to hell, showed that he had no hope of heaven; the oaths with which he blasphemed the name of God, showed that he was as yet "without God.”
But the very God without Whom he was willing to live, had His eyes upon that bold, careless young man, and was determined to make him His own.
One day, returning from a cricket match with two or three companions, they came to a wide ditch spanned by a plank. With his usual reckless daring, he proposed that they jump the length of the plank, instead of walking over it. His friends saw the danger, and at first tried to dissuade him from the attempt, then dared him to make it. One of them tried it, but failed. His failure and the opposition of the others, rendered C. E. yet more determined, and although he knew the risk he was running, he made one mighty effort and cleared the ditch at a bound. But, as he alighted on the farther side, an awful pain shot through his head. His companions, knowing nothing of this, laughed and applauded him; he kept it to himself, and made an excuse for returning to his home, where he writhed in agony. The pain passed off in the course of time, and in the evening he was merry as any of them, but, as he afterward related.
"Next morning, I awoke to find myself a helpless log. I was paralyzed!”
O, the misery—the desperate, hopeless misery—of that poor young fellow of three and twenty! All the fun, all the manly exercises, all the amusements over forever! Little did he dream that, ere many years had passed by, the life which he now looked on as spoiled forever, would be so full of joy that he would be known to his friends by the name of "the Sunbeam"!
For three years C. E.'s heart was filled with hard, rebellious thoughts of God, the God Who had thus come in and blighted all his prospects, as he thought. His temper was so violent that none dared speak to him of God, or of heavenly things. Satan, who had succeeded in keeping him away from God by the pleasures of life, now did his best to attain the same end by its miseries. But the devil who hated him, and sought his ruin, was no match for the God Who loved him, and was bent on blessing him.
He had a Christian cousin, for whom he had sincere affection, in spite of the wide difference that existed between them with regard to the things that matter most. One morning, Mrs. T. came in, holding in her hand a little black book, which aroused his suspicions.
“Sit down, sit down," he said, noticing that she appeared very nervous. After a pause she said very gently:
"Charlie, God loves you.”
"You, and your God, and your love!" he replied angrily. "It looks like it! I'm a helpless log. I tell you, Theo, I believe this life is a school. I was the worst boy in the school, and God hit me hard. I was going to hell, and He stopped me.”
Strangely enough, he did not realize the meaning of his own words.
"Did I not tell you God loved you?" Mrs. T. replied. "Your own words have said it, "I was going to hell and He stopped me.”
He started. For the first time the truth came home to his heart; the love of God was beginning to make itself felt. Both were silent for awhile; then he asked: "Tell me, Theo, can it be possible that your holy God loves me?”
"Yes, Charlie, He does; your own words admit it. Shall I read a verse for you?”
"Go on, go on," he said, crossly, and she began to read the third chapter of John. He interrupted her: "I know that," he said, and went on, flippantly, "There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus.”
She stopped; then asked, quietly: "May I read one verse?”
"Go on, go on," he said again, and she read:
"Jesus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
That was all; she added no words of her own, and soon after went out, leaving God's Word to do its own work.
And it did work. He became far more miserable than he had been before, but it was a different sort of misery. Now he felt his own utter sinfulness—saw himself to be "nothing but sin," as he said later on, and what misery can equal that of a man who sees himself to be a lost sinner in the presence of a holy God?
But not yet did C. E. turn to the One Who had thus opened his blind eyes to see his own true condition.
"I cursed myself," he said—"wished I had never seen Theo, and vowed she should not again be admitted to my house.”
"Two weeks passed in a state of untold wretchedness, and then, one day, when he went in to tea, who should he find in the room but the cousin whom he had resolved to forbid the house! And by her means he was led as a penitent sinner to the feet of Jesus, and was saved.
"God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."