A FRIEND of mine recently told me of a man whom he had persuaded to go and hear the gospel preached; that is, to go and hear the “good news” that there is in God’s grace for every sinning, desolate, and burdened heart in this sad, bad, mad, world.
He went, that man did, and he was impressed and convicted, but not converted. He acknowledged the truth of it all, and wanted my friend to ask his wife and children to go and hear the glad tidings of salvation also.
My friend consented to do this, but pressed on him the importance of deciding for himself; that was the first thing for him to do. He hung back and would not; but after much pressing the truth came out why he would not accept the mercy and love of God.
He was a trunk maker, and had a wife and five children, and he could not make sufficient profit, as he thought, to live unless he sold French trunks for English. “Now,” said he, “it is no use for me to think of having to do with God while I do this, and I cannot afford to give it up. I should like my wife and children to hear the gospel and get the benefit of it; as for me, I cannot afford to do it.” And so far as I know, or my friend knew, the matter was left.
This is a very sad and solemn case, and what makes it more sad and more solemn is, that it is such a common case.
There are tens of thousands who will go to hell, and lose this life, and eternal life also, because they will sell French trunks for English―so to speak.
Some positive sin or sins, some imagined profit or pleasure, stops the way to the acceptance of the gospel. Such know it is sin, and believe it is pleasure or profit, blinded as their judgment is by the sin, and thus Satan through sin, and then unbelief, holds them captive at his will.
Few rogues are so honest as this trunk maker. He was right so far; he could not have to do with God, in the way of grace, while he sold “French trunks for English,” but he forgot, when he made his choice, that he would have to do with God all the same, only in judgment instead of grace.
For the most part rogues offer other objections, doctrinal and speculative, like the woman of Samaria in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel. They want to know how about the heathen, or the Chinese, or election, or original sin, or somebody or something, heedless of their own dire need.
The fact is, a definite habitual sin, or some definite sins, are often at the bottom of the refusal of the gospel, and are rolled like a sweet morsel under the tongue, which refuses to be given up. The moment will come, and is not far off, when those self-same sins or pleasures will bite like a serpent, and sting like an adder. Remorse will possess that soul, and too late despair will seize it, and of itself it will find its own way to hell as its own most proper place.
The wonderful grace of God once known and rejected, the devil has a fair chance which he will not neglect to get between that soul and mercy; and to plant despair in it, and the end of that soul is a Judas end.
May God awaken thee, reader, if thou art sinning in the teeth of the known gospel of the grace of God, for, so refusing it, thou art already nigh to destruction.
“O sinner! ere it be too late,
Flee thou to mercy’s open gate,
And join Christ’s waiting band.
Trim your lamps, and be ready!
Is the midnight cry.”
F. T. R.