One Lord’s day afternoon, in the latter part of the summer of 1871, I was preaching by the roadside, in the small village of G―. Notwithstanding the intense heat, a large company had been drawn together by the opening hymn, and remained, as they had frequently done before, until the close of the address.
About half an hour had elapsed when my attention was drawn to a respectable-looking old man, neatly attired in a white smock frock, who appeared to have walked some distance, and was glad to avail himself of the rest offered by an upturned cart under the opposite hedge.
He seemed greatly interested, and I determined to have some conversation with him, but a crowd pressed round me for tracts directly preaching was over, and when. I sought for the old man he was nowhere to be found. However, I commended him to Him whose eye of love rests on poor sinners, for I felt persuaded the word had entered.
The last week in October had arrived, when one evening a message reached me from a poor woman in the little town in which I then lived, begging that I would visit her aged father, who had expressed a wish to see me. The woman, who had kept a low public-house, was personally unknown to me, and on my calling at her cottage the next morning she explained that her father, who was nearly eighty years of age, while engaged in thatching a barn the day previously; had missed his footing and been precipitated on to a heap of stones, severely injuring his spine. He had been brought to her home to be nursed, and, it was feared, to die; and immediately on his arrival had asked if she knew the gentleman who during the summer months had preached at G―. Upon her suggesting that it was I, he begged that she would send for me.
On entering the sick man’s room, I at once recognized the frank, open face; but it now wore an expression of unrest, which told of a heart to which the peace of God was unknown.
Seating myself beside his bed, I listened to his account of the impression the preaching had made upon him, but was distressed also to hear a detailed defense of his fourscore years of sin and distance from God. He urged his morality, his love of truth and honesty, and the like, until I at length interrupted him by reading those solemn words in Rom. 3:10-2010As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 13Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: 14Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: 15Their feet are swift to shed blood: 16Destruction and misery are in their ways: 17And the way of peace have they not known: 18There is no fear of God before their eyes. 19Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:10‑20).
He seemed hurt by my refusal to accept all he had urged on his own behalf, but I reminded him that it was not I, but God, who had made these strong statements as to man’s condition by nature, and urged him to bow to the word of the living God, and own himself a lost, ruined sinner. My time was now expired, so after prayer I left him, promising to call the next day.
Though he was eagerly watching for me, I was disappointed, on seeing him again, to find he had completely forgotten the truth of the verses read to him; but feeling convinced the Lord had blessing in store for this poor sinner, I took courage, and sought His guidance.
As the poor man was unable to read, it occurred to me to teach him a single passage of Scripture daily; so, beginning with the following, “For there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” I made him repeat the words slowly after me several times, until he could say them without assistance; and again asking God to cause His own precious Word to enter and give light, I bade my old friend good-bye.
On my third visit he repeated the verses correctly; hut the uppermost feeling in his mind seemed to be gratification at having so well remembered his lesson. This time I sought to impress him with the solemn reality of being a sinner before God, and to divest his mind of his fondly-cherished notion of measuring himself by his neighbors. As he appeared equal to the effort, I taught him the twenty-fourth, and part of the twenty-fifth verses: “Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus: whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness.” At these words I stopped, and dwelt a few moments on the wondrous fact that the blessed, eternal God, who had created man for His own glory, and had seen him fall short of it, and who had testified to man’s utter unrighteousness, now proved His own righteousness in freely forgiving the sins of every believer in Jesus, who bare them all in His own body on the tree, and who was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
A ray of light seemed to break in that day, and I had the joy of seeing during the following-week that the Divine work had indeed begun.
The injuries to the spine proved incurable, and paralysis quickly seized the aged sufferer. I was now anxious that he should give testimony that he was firmly resting on Christ before the power of speech was taken from him, and the Lord graciously permitted this. For some time he had been thoroughly aroused, and his face wore an expression of deepest anxiety, occasionally relieved by a gleam of hope as the ground of peace was presented to him.
It was, I think, during my fifteenth visit that he learned to repeat those precious words in Titus 3., “ But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior towards man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that being justified by his grace we shall be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
The next morning when I called I saw at a glance that at last God’s peace had chased all trouble away. His perfect love had cast out fear.
The old man’s countenance was radiant with joy as he exclaimed, “According to His mercy He has saved ME,” and together we poured out our hearts in grateful thanks to Him who had wrought so wondrously.
He now became rapidly worse, and when I saw him again he was unable to speak, but with his finger he pointed upwards, his face all the while beaming with heavenly peace and joy, especially when I repeated slowly the verses which had been so blessed to him. This was the last time I was allowed to see my new-found brother in Christ, for during the following night the Lord called him up to the joys of His own presence.
No other case of conversion was known to follow that summer’s campaign; but as I thought on the one hand of the long weary trudges in the intense heat, and preaching to people who returned to their homes apparently unimpressed, and on the other of the dear old man who listened to the Gospel for the first time in his life, and was now with the Lord, I could deeply sympathize with those sweet lines in Rutherford’s last words:―
“Oh, if one soul from Anworth
Meet me at God’s right hand,
My heaven will be two heavens,
In Immanuel’s land.”
E. J.