One day, in the North of England, a young man entered a shop where a servant of God was purchasing some article. He noticed how very ill this young man looked, and was led to ask him if he had found peace. To this question he got the reply, "I have Christ, and He is my peace." On inquiring how and when this came about, the following account of the way in which God was pleased to carry His own word home to a soul, which He had deeply exercised beforehand, was given by the young man, proving the truth of the passage of that same word which is at the head of this article, and which has been written with the simple desire of magnifying that word. Also that the blessed God I trust will use it to encourage any who have to do with anxious souls, to wield the two-edged sword of the Spirit, looking to God to carry it home to the hearts and consciences of those they are dealing with, and further that He will be pleased to own it to the relief of any precious souls into whose hands this little periodical may fall, who up to this moment have been going about seeking rest and finding none, that THEY may set to their seal that "The ENTRANCE of thy words giveth light.”
About a year and a half previous to this interview this young man had been employed as a clerk in the telegraph department, near Preston. For a long time he had been in deep distress of soul.
"Every Sunday," he said, " as the day came round, I went from place to place where I could hear preaching, to see if I could pick up any comfort; but God did not intend me to pick it up, He sent it to me in His own way.
"One Monday morning I was standing in the telegraph office, bowed down with sin and sorrow, in the act of asking God to give me relief and forgiveness, or I should go mad. Just at that moment a signal came from Windermere—an address—and then the words, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace;’ That 'LAMB OF GOD,' that ‘REDEMPTION,’ that ‘BLOOD,' those ‘RICHES OF HIS GRACE,’ went right into my poor heart, and no one in the whole world could have had greater joy than I had that Monday morning.
"The message I took myself; it was for a young woman, a servant in the neighborhood, who had written about her state of soul, being herself very anxious to hear from her master’s brother, who was staying at the lakes; and he had taken this means of replying to her letter. She, too, a short time after, as I heard from her own lips, found this same message to be to her own soul the ‘light of life.’”
Beloved reader, precious, exercised, trembling one, may you also find that "that Lamb of God," "that redemption," "that blood," "those riches of His grace" meet, most fully meet, every necessity of thy soul, because these two verses are God's testimony to the person in the first place, and in the second to the work of His dear Son, by whom He has been so glorified about sin and sins that He offers rest to thee now —rest in the One in whom He has found rest—the One who made peace by the blood of His cross—who is our peace, who believe, at the right hand of God. S. V. H.