IN ONE of his sermons, Mr. C. H. Spurgeon told the following tale: “One Lord’s Day evening, having returned from the gospel meeting, there came a ring at my front-door bell. I opened the door myself, and there stood a big, burly Irishman.
“ ‘Good evening, yer reverence,’ he began. I said: ‘Don’t call me reverence; but what is it you want at this time of night?’ I took the man into ray study, and there Pat told me that he had been listening to my sermon that evening at the meeting; but he could not understand what I meant by a full and free salvation.
“I tried hard to show him the way of salvation, but he could not understand until I used this illustration. Tat,’ I said, ‘Suppose you had committed a crime, and were sentenced to a long term of imprisonment; and I were to go to the King and get him to set you free, and I went to prison and suffered in your stead.’ Sure,’ said Pat, ‘That would be very kind of you.’ Yes,’ I said, ‘And in the same way Jesus suffered for your sins on the cross.’ "
“I prayed with the man, and after much soul struggle he admitted his condition as a sinner, and accepted the Lord Jesus as Saviour. I saw him many times afterward, and he was still resting on the finished work of Christ.”
ML-09/16/1962