MARTIN BOOS was ordained as a priest of the Roman Catholic church in the year 1781. His conduct from his earliest youth had been irreproachable, and he entered upon the duties of his office as conscientiously as his character was unspotted. He was a close student, and completed his theological and literary studies with success. He tells us, twenty years later, what "immense pains" he took to become a really good and righteous man.
"For years together," he says, "even in winter, I lay on the cold floor ; I scourged myself till I bled again ; I fasted and gave my bread to the poor ; I spent every hour I could spare in the church or the cemetery ; I confessed and took the sacrament almost every week ; in short, I gained such a character for piety, that I was appointed prefect of the congregation of the ex-Jesuits. But what a life I led! The prefect, with all his sanctity, became more and more absorbed in self, melancholy, anxious, and formal. The saint was evermore exclaiming in his heart, 'Oh, wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me ? ' And no one replied, 'The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' No one gave the sick man that spiritual specific : The just shall live by faith ; ' and when I had obtained it, the whole world, with all its learning and spiritual authority, would have persuaded me that I had swallowed poi-son, and was poisoning all around me; that I deserved to be hung, drowned, immured, banished, or burned."
He continued this "fair show in the flesh" during a period of seven or eight years, when it pleased God to open his eyes in a way we should have little expected.
He says: "In 1788, or 1789, I visited a sick person who was respected for her deep humility and exemplary piety. I said to her: You will die very peacefully and happily.'
" ' Why so?' she asked.
" Because you have led,' I replied, ‘such a pious and holy life.'
"The good woman smiled at my words, and said, 'If I leave the world relying on my own piety I am sure I shall be lost ; but relying on Jesus my Saviour, I can die in comfort. What a clergyman you are ! What an admirable comforter! If I listened to you, what would become of me ? How could I stand before the divine tribunal, where every one must give an account even of her idle words ? Which of our actions and virtues would not be found wanting if laid in the divine balances ? ; if Christ had not died for me, if He had not made satisfaction for me, I should have been lost forever, notwithstanding all my good works and pious con-duct. He is my hope, my salvation, and my eternal happiness.'
The young priest was astonished. He had gone to the bedside of this dying woman to console her, if possible, while he himself knew not that true consolation found only in Christ, and not in religious rites and ceremonies. He had found instruction when he sought it not, and his astonishment turned to shame as it dawned upon him that he, with all his learning, was ignorant of that which this simple-hearted. woman knew so well.
Fortunately for him, he did not refuse to be taught by so weak an instrument. The dying woman's testimony made an ineffaceable impression on his soul, and, in course of time, he was led to reject the whole system of teaching that we are saved "by works of righteousness that we have done," and rested his soul entirely on the merits of "Jesus Christ the righteous." How perfectly vain are man's efforts in the matter of his soul's salvation seen to be ! And, not only are his efforts altogether vain, but his fancied righteousnesses are as "filthy rags," and his boasted wisdom is "foolishness with God." Martin Boos possessed a goodly measure of all three, but learned at last, at the bed-side of a dying woman, to count his acquirements dross and dung as a means of securing a fitness to stand before the judgment-bar of God.
Nothing, reader, that you can do, will avail aught towards the settling of the great account between your soul and God. To enter into His rest you must "cease from your own works," and rely alone on the finished work of Christ accomplished at Calvary's cross, ages before you were born.
"Oh, now believe that all is done,
Trust not in something you might do—
The finished work of God's loved Son
Alone will He accept for you."
God accepts that work and accepts us only on the ground of what has been once and for-ever done, and not because of anything that we have done, are doing, or may hope to do.
With faith, cast thyself on the Saviour and His work, and thou shalt be for eternity "ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED."