ABOUT July 1903, as I was sitting on a seat by the roadside, an old gentleman came and sat beside me. He was seventy-three years of age, nearly blind, and very hard of hearing. I could see he was very unhappy by the look on his face. I began to speak to him about his soul, and I found he was ready to listen, for he soon told me a sad tale.
He had not a friend on earth to whom he could unburden his mind; and although a wife and four grown-up children were living at home with him, yet he hardly ever got a kind word from them. Alas for such a family! But is not this a sign of the times? “Disobedient to parents... without natural affection” (2 Tim. 3:2, 3, 42For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; (2 Timothy 3:2‑4)). Moreover, I found he was concerned about his soul, and he owned that he was a lost sinner harassed by Satan.
In his distress he had cried to God to have mercy on him and forgive him his sins and save his soul. He repeated to me the little prayer which he had made up for himself and used night and morning and sometimes during the day. When I heard it I said, “Your prayer” (which was mostly confession) “is all right so far, but you have left out one thing.”
“Have I,” he said; “what is that?”
“You have left the Lord Jesus out,” I said. “His word is: I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”
“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t know that we had to go to Jesus to be saved.”
“Yes,” I said; “God so loved us that He sent His dear Son to die for us poor sinners that we might be saved, and ‘there is no other name given under heaven whereby we must be saved.’ In another place the Lord Jesus says, ‘I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.’”
This had a great effect on the old man; and as he expressed it, he went to that door and found that the Saviour opened that blessed door to him, and brought him out of darkness into the light. He asked me if he might come to my house sometimes to hear the Scriptures read, which request I was happy to grant, and it was a joy to see how eagerly he grasped the precious truth, as if he had been brought up in some heathen land where there is no Bible. Often when listening he would exclaim with tears, “Oh, He is a loving God.” And now his great desire is that other poor sinners may have their eyes opened that they may see the light — he knows there are hundreds who would be glad to be saved, but are like lost sheep, they cannot find their way.
Now, dear unsaved reader, may I ask you what are you resting your hopes upon? You may be very upright and moral, and no one be able to point the finger at you, but remember that you have to meet God. You may be a constant attendant at church or chapel, and be exerting yourself to do good works, but be sure of this, that until you are accepted of God your works cannot be acceptable to Him. Cain took great pains to be accepted of God, but he ignored that terrible question of sin.
“God cannot pass the sinner by,
His sin demands that he must die;
But through the blood of Christ we see
How God can save, yet righteous be.”
W. P.