A YOUTH sat on a wooden bench in a very plain and unpretentious meeting-room, the picture of sadness itself. Now and again a tear rolled down his cheek. For an hour preacher and friends tried to help him, and lead him to decision for Christ. All seemed useless, there was a stone before the wheel somewhere. At last a remark, providentially directed, brought it to light. “If I am converted, can I keep it up? "he asked, or words to that effect.
He was assured that though of himself he could not keep it up one hour, there was One who could, and he was invited straightway to trust himself into the hands of Jesus, who would as surely keep him now from the power of sin, as save him from its penalty by and by.
Many people have this difficulty. Rightly enough they do not want to profess to be Christians and then find they have no power to live Christian lives. The world mocks at those who begin to build and are not able to finish. So they hesitate; the great unanswered question in their minds being not, “Is the Lord Jesus Christ able to save?" but," Is He able to keep?”
It may help such to remember that for over eighteen centuries He has kept up so large an affair as His own cause in this world in the teeth of every assault.
The French infidel, Voltaire, once said that "though it took twelve men to found Christianity in this world it would only take one man to destroy it." By "one man" he was modest enough to mean himself! He did not know that it was really founded by the Son of God and that He was maintaining it.
He further ventured to predict that within a century from his day the Bible would be a discredited and forgotten book. Is it? Why, strangely enough Bibles by the thousand have been printed since his death in the very house where once he lived! There is One behind the Bible with whom he had not reckoned.
Philip II. of Spain made frantic efforts to stamp out every vestige of vital Christianity in his country. The house still stands in which he lived while directing the building of his great palace, the Escurial, and from whence he issued his edicts to arrest the "heretics" and burn them at the stake. Not very many miles away in Madrid stood the grim buildings of the Inquisition. He kept them full and busy, and by the time he died it must have seemed to the onlooker that he had only too well succeeded in his fiendish task. But did he really? No, for to-day there is more scope for the gospel in Spain than for many centuries; and, as if by some strange irony, the house in which he lived is now a country home for orphans, where they are instructed in the gospel, having been named "Paz," i.e., "peace;” and the former residence of the Inquisitor General in Madrid is the headquarters of the Bible Society, well stocked with the Scriptures and thousands of gospel tracts.
Open your Bible at the fourteenth chapter of Romans, and look at the end of verse 3:
“God hath received him.”
Can that be truly said of you? It may help you to answer this question if you turn to Luke 15, and read carefully the parable of the prodigal son. Have you ever come to yourself as he did and discovered your lost and ruined state? Have you ever thought of the goodness of the One you have wronged, and of the plenty that fills His house; and have you ever risen up in your need, just as you were, and come to Him with honest confession on your lips? If you have, He has certainly put the kiss of forgiveness upon you and treated you as the father treated the prodigal.
And should you never yet have done these things, we can safely say that if you will but do them now, the result will be the same, and it will be recorded of you, “God hath received him.”
Now look at the end of verse 4 of Rom. 14
“God is able to make him stand.”
Do you believe it? You think of yourself and tremble. Your powers of endurance and perseverance are as nothing; your courage is down to zero; your faith is lamentably weak. Yes, but look up and away to Jesus seated at the right hand of power in the heavens. It is not a question of you and your abilities, but of Him. Left to yourself, the world and the powers of evil will easily overcome you, but with Christ in command you may safely sing:
“When I fear my faith will fail,
Christ CAN hold me fast;
When the tempter would prevail,
He CAN hold me fast.
He WILL hold me fast,
He WILL hold me fast,
For any Savior loves me so,
He WILL hold me fast.”
Will you not trust Him for this, and boldly confess His Name? Hesitate no longer. God is able to make you stand. F. B. H.