IN the pages of the March number of “God’s Glad Tidings” for 1876, was narrated the solemn account of one who “meant to be a Christian someday,” but, alas! for a mere passing vanity, rejected Christ, rejected eternal life, rejected God’s offered mercy, and made “the fatal choice” of the world and its attractions; until death with his cold icy finger, made her sensible of her folly, and then, “Too late, too late,” bursting from her frantic lips, told its own tale of woe, as she passed out of time into an endless eternity.
On the day of its publication, a sorrowful group stood around an open grave in the churchyard of one of the pretty villages of Huntingdonshire. The inscription on the coffin-plate, telling of only twenty summers, having passed away, since her birth, made the sorrow more poignant, that one so young, so beautiful, and so beloved, should be severed from those to whom she was so dear, and, were it not that the bright gleams of the resurrection morn gladdened the parents’ hearts, sad indeed would have been the prospect. “In sure and certain hope” was no unmeaning word to them, but it was a ray of holy sunshine amidst the blinding tears of sorrow.
The contrast in her history, to that of the one to whom I have alluded, suggested a few details respecting my short acquaintance with Adah H—, trusting the Lord may own them in causing my reader to make “The Happy Choice” she did, ere it be “too late, too late.”
The sands of 1875 had well-nigh run their course, when I first heard of the illness of Adah, and asking the Lord to give me a word from Himself to meet the need of her precious soul, I wended my way across the then bleak and desolate fields, where the plow was breaking up the fallow ground ready for “the principal wheat, the appointed barley, and the rye in their place.” (Isa. 28:2525When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? (Isaiah 28:25).)
My destination, a small low thatched dwelling, with a neat garden adjoining, and the usual out-buildings of a farm, was soon reached, And I was gladly welcomed by an anxious mother, who conducted me to the chamber, where her suffering daughter, a fair, interesting girl of twenty, lay. The bright tinge upon her cheeks, the penetrating glance, the distressing cough, the wasted frame, all indicated the dreadful nature of the disease that has carried so many to an early grave.
As I approached her side, I said softly,
“Well, dear, you are very ill.”
“Yes,” she replied faintly.
“And do you think you will get better?”
“Oh, no!”
“And would you like to get better?”
“No.”
“Well then, are you quite ready to go if it should please the Lord to take you?”
She bowed her head, as if assenting.
“Bless the Lord for that,” I rejoined, “it is something to know that. Are all your sins forgiven?”
She nodded assent.
“All put away by the precious blood of Jesus?”
Again she assented.
“So that you can now say ‘I am saved’?”
To this there was no reply.
“If death were to put his cold hand upon you at this moment, or the Lord Jesus to come, would you go right up into His own presence forever?”
There was no answer to this query, so I repeated the question, awaiting anxiously the response, and after a short pause, she opened her feeble lips to give me that disheartening reply which so often blights the expectations of the evangelist, “I hope so.”
“Ah, dear soul,” I replied, “that will not do. I do not like that answer, for do you know that is the pillow on which Satan gets so many souls to rest? Alas, to find out the delusion when it is too late! ‘I hope so’ in the sense that you have used it, is not found in the word of God, because you have a little doubt about it, haven’t you?”
She nodded assent.
But the word of God says ‘He that believeth hath everlasting life.’ ‘These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.’ (1 John 5:1313These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. (1 John 5:13).) This is the privilege of the believer the moment he comes to Jesus. But Satan seeks to hinder the soul from grasping this, because it glorifies the Lord Jesus, and proclaims settled peace.
“I may tell you I have not come to alarm or excite you; neither have I come to talk about religion to you; you have heard enough of that. I have come across these fields today at God’s bidding, to present Jesus to you, to tell you He loves you, and that He wants you to be with Himself in glory forever.
“But first of all I must ask you one question, and I pray you to think over it before you reply, as it is a most important one, and it is this—Can you put your finger upon a moment in your history from the time you first knew anything, up to this very moment, when you have ever had to do with God about your sins?”
Her bright piercing eyes were rivetted upon me; and the tears came rolling down her cheeks, but no response. Again I repeated the question, and then as the flood-gates gave vent to the tears that came thicker and faster, she uttered three words that I shall never forget, words that lay bare her true condition—words that came from a heart truly convicted of sin “No, I CANNOT.”
“No, I cannot.” Only think of this, dear reader. See what a blindfold Satan had put over her eyes, and with what an opiate he had lulled her conscience to sleep, saying, Peace, peace! when she had never known the peace God is preaching by Jesus Christ, or the living reality of the second birth, and its peace-giving power.
Well might she have no better answer to give than “I hope so.” How true it is, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
“Ah, dear soul,” I exclaimed, “do you see how Satan has been deluding you all these years, and brought you to the very brink of the grave, and almost within the gates of an everlasting hell: because you have never owned your need of Jesus as your Saviour.
“Do you not see that you have never owned yourself a lost sinner, and it is only a lost sinner that needs a loving Saviour, for in the 19th of Luke, 10th verse, it is written, ‘The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.’ And blessed be God, a lost sinner and a living Saviour can meet together at this moment.
“Mark, it is not good, moral, upright, or religious; but, lost. As Jesus Himself declared, ‘I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.’” (Matt. 9:1313But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Matthew 9:13).)
The plow of conviction had now done its work. The fallow ground was broken up, and the seed thus scattered had taken root; for she exclaimed, “I see it now, I am a lost sinner, but Jesus is my Saviour.”
“And are you quite sure he is your Saviour?”
“Oh, yes!”
“And can you now say that you are saved?”
“Oh, yes, Jesus is my Saviour, I am saved.”
We wept tears of joy together, and there was joy in heaven at that moment over one sinner, whose happy choice was made, made at once, and fox ever. Not almost, but altogether persuaded. She had decided for Christ, and being justified by faith, had peace with God. (Rom. 5:11Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1).)
At this juncture a knock at the cottage door announcing some kind inquiries after her, bid fair to interrupt her newfound joy. But so desirous was she of learning more of her now precious Saviour, that she exclaimed, “I do hope mother will not let them come in, for I have never heard anything like this before.”
“I have no doubt they are most kind to you,”
At her request, we thanked the Lord together for His delivering mercy in opening the eyes of the blind, and bringing life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
I then left her quite happy, and without a doubt in her soul. I visited her several times after to find her “always confident,” and to use her own words, “Longing to be with Jesus.”
On one occasion I said to her, “Well Adah, if it should please the Lord to raise you up again,—though according to nature there is not a ray of hope,—still nothing is impossible with Him; would it be to go back into the world?” Her firm negative indicated the “good part” she had chosen.
She had done with the world, its vanity and religion; with herself, her hopes and fears.
And she had now one object which filled the vision of her soul, and that object was Jesus, “The chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely.”
On the 25th of February, she fell asleep, and her happy spirit passed from this world of sin, trial, and suffering, into His own presence forever.
And now, dear reader, I put the question to you, Can you say that you have ever had to do with God about your sins. If not, you are “condemned already” —a captive of Satan taken by him at his will, and if you do not break company with him, the place prepared for him and his angels, shall be your portion.
I beseech you then, be like Adah H—; own your lost condition, make “The Happy Choice” just now as you read this. Come as you are to Jesus and be saved, Hear His own gracious assurance— “Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.” The most depraved, or moral—the scoffer hitherto, or the “religiously disposed,” all are welcome, for God makes one sweeping assertion— “There is no difference,” “all have sinned,” all are guilty. (Rom. 3.)
T. M.