ABOUT two years ago, I went to a village in the garden of Kent to preach the gospel of the grace of God.
As I was walking towards the village, I met a man to whom I gave a tract. I was about to speak to him, when he turned and pointed to a spot twenty or thirty paces from the road-side. There I saw a poor fellow engaged in patching up his tumble-down dwelling.
“Give it to him," exclaimed the man, "go and talk to him. Do you see what he is doing, breaking the commandment and working on the Sabbath? Go and give it to him. He needs it and I don't.”
His attitude surprised me, and although I was somewhat taken aback, I told him that God has bidden us to judge ourselves, and riot others. I told him that Christ came to fulfill the law, and that Christians are in bondage to no law, but in the liberty of the law of the Spirit of life, "which hath made us free from the law of sin and death.”
I soon found that my words were wasted, and that his indignation, which he continued to express against the poor fellow who was patching up his shed, did not arise from any religious principle. Indeed, it was because he himself desired to work on Sunday, but that his shop (he was a second-hand furniture dealer), must perforce remain closed by the law of public opinion. That another man should dare to work while he could not ply his trade and make money, rankled in his breast, and this was the sole reason for his apparent solicitude for the cause of his discomposure.
I persisted in seeking to put the truth before him, but I discovered that he was quite an infidel; so, having given him an invitation to the gospel service, I left him and passed on. He did not come to the service, nor did I ever see him again.
A few days ago, however, I heard about him. A friend of mine who is a doctor in that Kentish village writes as follows, “I have just returned from his deathbed. He had evidently rejected the gospel. He was at his usual work, mending furniture, etc., yesterday, when he was suddenly seized with apoplexy, although only fifty-three. He was completely paralyzed on one side. I saw him again this morning and tried to show him his danger, and how small a thing might turn the scale. I also sought to show him that it was a token of God's mercy that he was alive, and able to speak a little, and to understand. In my own mind I was hoping to point him to Christ at my next visit. Herein I now think I was wrong, although I did what at the time I thought was right; for I did not see him again alive. When I went to him in response to a hurried message just now, I found him dead.
"He had been warned to keep very still, but he had laughed at the caution. The doctor thinks I will not get better,' he said, but I shall be up and about my work very soon.' He was talking cheerfully to a worldly friend an hour before his death." My friend continues, "His last words were ominous in the extreme. From an apparently comfortable sleep, he suddenly turned round to his wife who was sitting beside his bed, and clutching her hand with that of his which still had power, he cried out loudly three times, Look at that big snake.' Suddenly his head sank on the pillow, and he was gone.”
Gone! my reader. Gone! and whither? The words are hard to shape! Gone to a Christless grave! gone to an eternity without hope! gone to everlasting judgment! gone to meet the One whose love he spurned and to await his doom! Is it right for me to judge him so? It is not I who judge. God has written it in letters that time can never efface. "He that believeth not shall be damned." "The wrath of God abideth on him." For he has rejected the holy Son of God, and in the pride of his sinful heart, he has preferred his own deluded ideas of God to the revelation which He has given to us of Himself.
My friend, give heed to these lessons which God is seeking to teach us every day. You have heard of Jesus and His love. Maybe you have thought lightly of that love until to-day. If so, consider it now, and, realizing that it was all for You that He died upon the cross, repent with tears of those sins which nailed Him there, and lift your joyful heart to God in praise, for having given you a Saviour whose name is Wonderful, and who has wrought so marvelous a salvation.