“OH! but you are such a saint!” “Don’t say that; if that were true, you would rob me of what I prize most — the sinner’s Saviour.”
I knew her well — knew that in life she did “prize” the “sinner’s Saviour” above everything else. And now she had been told her life was only a question of a few months. An old friend heard of her illness, and expressed a particular wish to see her. It was some years since they had met, and she was dying. He was much touched at seeing her thus. In her peculiarly winning way, she told him, that though about to leave this world, death would take her into the presence of Jesus, the Saviour, — that death had no terrors for her. It was this that elicited the remark, “Oh! but you are such a saint!” Do you understand her answer, reader? “Don’t say that; if that were true, you would rob me of what I prize most — the sinner’s Saviour.”
We have here two totally different states of soul. The first, revealed by the remark, “Oh! but you are such a saint!” is, alas! the commonest. It is so natural; it is human nature to look into our own hearts, and to present the fancied goodness we have tried — tried hard and earnestly too — to produce for God’s acceptance. We have made some good resolutions; they were at least partly kept, under difficult circumstances perhaps, and added to this we have earnestly prayed to be forgiven. Under such conditions we may have a “humble hope” of obtaining pardon from the God against whom we know well enough we have sinned. At all events, we cannot get any further than being “in a state of salvation.” And when we see any one without fear at the approach of death, naturally we exclaim, “Oh! he or she was such a saint.” Which really amounts to this, that such people were so much better than the rest of the world that God could accept them.
Is this the ground you are upon, deaf reader? Then, if you are honestly seeking for a ground on which God can accept you — you are, at times at least, utterly miserable. Those broken resolutions! those angry words! above all, the fear of man, which has snared you into doing what you know is wrong! God left out of your day’s work, or day’s pleasure; which was perhaps closed by “saying your prayers,” but has left you with a thoroughly uneasy conscience, which even confessing all the things you can remember — think of those you have forgotten! — cannot satisfy.
No! no such ground can satisfy a God-awakened conscience. Why not? Because God must meet you as a Saviour-God. Bring your sins to God. Come, “just as you are,” keeping nothing back. Relieve your conscience, by making a clean breast of everything to Him, and you will learn how abundantly God can pardon. On what ground? His own ground, beloved reader, the blood of Jesus, — for “without shedding of blood is no remission.” But “blood” has been shed. And God’s testimony to the blood of His Son is this, it “cleanseth from all sin.” The blood of Jesus alone can give a purged conscience. Well might the sweet Psalmist of Israel say, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” May you, dear reader, prize most “The sinner’s Saviour.” L.