Passing along a country road recently, we saw an old man clipping the hedge, whose happy reply when we offered him a gospel booklet led us to say: “Then you know the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, do you?”
“Yes!” said he, pausing for a moment in his work, “and a seven-days’ One too.”
“Well, we are delighted to hear that,” was our reply, “it is the best thing we’ve heard for a long time.”
Why should this homely remark please you so much? the reader may ask.
Because in too many instances salvation is connected with great occasions, and Sunday observances, and the Saviour is sought only then, which is a serious mistake. Jesus and His salvation are as needed and as much suited for Mondays and Saturdays, as for Sundays, and quite as essential for the busy hours of every day life, as for the dying hour.
Too much importance cannot be attached to the fact that Christ Jesus the Lord is a living Saviour to those that are His by faith in His death; and His presence and help are everyday necessities, more and more indispensable as we grow in the experience of them.
There is nothing like this to deliver us from the sordid struggle for existence, or the equally sordid struggle for wealth and position; no power like the name of Jesus for snapping the chains that bind the drunkard and the gambler to their besetment! and no medicine can so readily and effectually soothe the heart’s anguish in this vale of tears!
But, my reader, make sure of this, that you start right in this all-important matter. The knowledge of forgiveness and acceptance through faith in the atoning death of Christ on the cross, is the only way of peace with God, and the only basis of our claim on that grace which is the privilege of every true believer.
What pleased us so much in the old countryman’s quaint reply was this, that he seemed to have found out the every-day joy and help, in the same One whose precious blood had cleansed his once guilty conscience.
How often have we heard persons exhorted to start the Christian life, without this being made clear to them, that the only real start is at the bottom rung of the ladder a sinner needing salvation from sin and its judgment. Once this start is made, then are we on the road to learn what the blessedness is of finding a “seven-days’ Saviour” in that One “Who bore our sins in His own body on the tree,” now “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,” and from that place in heaven, sustaining us through all the changing scenes of life: scenes often trying and testing, and becoming to many, as so frequently now, “the valley of the shadow of death.” But
“The light of love and glory,
Has shone through Christ our Saviour;
Who lived, Who died, the Crucified,
That we might live forever.”
T. R.