As soon as the master of the field gave us liberty, all were in earnest, gleaning all we could. The corn was then thrashed out and sent to the mill; afterward to be fed upon. Of course to have wheaten bread, we had to glean in the field where wheat had grown; or, however earnest we might have been, we should not have had such food to feed upon.
So is it with food for the soul. The bread of God is He that came down from heaven, and gave His flesh for the life of the world. There is all fullness in Him. All that God required to be paid in the matter of our sin against God, Jesus Himself has supplied at the cost of His own life-blood. God's justice was fully met, and He is satisfied in every way.
And now the same Christ Who is enough for God is for the poor sinner, whom sin had made afraid of God. For no sinner could ever approach Him without Christ.
In all the world then this gospel is to be preached; and what Christ is as Savior for every sinner is to be made known to all, as God's free gift to poor starving, perishing souls.
I have before my mind a young man who used to glean in the Wiltshire corn fields, as above described. When young, he seemed very anxious to do and be what he thought God would accept. But from all this he sank, until the very people who cared for his soul seemed hateful in his sight. But there were those in that village who had been gleaning from God's holy word, and who fed upon Christ as their Savior, and who met for prayer together. On going home one evening, this young man found them at his father's house, for the purpose of asking God to stay his course. He was offended. But God was there, and as those people sang to God as their Father, and of Christ as their Savior, he sank down before them under the sense of his guilt. The presence of God struck terror into his very being. For days even his godly father despaired of his life.
How those anxious friends left his father's house, he never knew. All seemed out of order, but yet their prayers were answered. They felt sure that God, then and there, was doing a work, and that the poor hardened sinner himself would find their Savior as his Savior, and become a gleaner in the same place where they gleaned so much. And so it came about; as a verse, afterward written by him, clearly proves. His simple lines are as follow:
With Jesus my Savior, I'm waiting for glory;
Grim death with its terrors no longer appall;
The blood of the Lamb ever speaks in my favor
This proves that my Savior is suited to all.