A YOUNG Scotch strident was spending the winter of 1837 with a family in the town of Leamington, in the capacity of private tutor. He had been carefully and religiously brought up, had just finished his university course with brilliant honors, and was, withal, aspiring to the ministry. But, alas! he had never been brought to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. With a highly-cultivated intellect, great transparency of character, and sterling moral worth as to outward behavior, he was as yet a stranger to grace. He was religious, but knew not what it was to be a new creature in Christ. In the November of that year, a circumstance occurred which turned the whole tide of that young man’s life. Here is his own account of it.
“I happened, one day, to turn up to the mineral spring. A young man entered the building whose appearance at once attracted my observation; his coarse linen frock contrasted with the gay apparel of the groups before me. He was emaciated, and walked forward with a feeble step. After drinking of the water out of a vessel of earthenware, which was placed beside a number of tumblers, he, without having apparently observed anyone, again slowly withdrew. After a little I began to descend the hill, in the middle of which the spring was situated, and found the young man sitting at one of the bends of the winding path which slopes gently down the declivity. I spoke to him. His diffident tone of voice, and his modesty of manner, at once enlisted my sympathies. During several weeks afterward I frequently visited his father’s lowly cottage. My intercourse with the young man soon gave me ground to conclude that, if my theoretic knowledge of gospel truths were greater than his, he, unlike myself, had experienced their sanctifying power. Truly his was the better portion. When he spoke of the Savior’s love to sinners, and His obedience unto death for their redemption, he at times gave vent to gratitude with tears of joy. Pointing to his clothes on one occasion, he said, addressing his father, ‘These will be no more needed. I wish you to sell them. The price of them will be enough to pay for my coffin.’ He seemed like one who had obtained ‘everlasting consolation, and good hope, through grace,’ to have not a shadow of doubt or anxiety on his soul as to the prospect of eternal glory. One evening, about sunset, he fell asleep.”
The student’s soul was reached by the arrow of conviction. That poor country lad had a secret of peace to which he was a total stranger, and the question flashed upon him, “Could I thus calmly pass into the immediate presence of the holy and just Jehovah? Am I, like him, sheltered from the terrors of ‘the wrath to come’?” The question, too plain to be evaded, and too urgent to be postponed, constrained the earnest inquiry, “What must I do to be saved?” Many a struggle followed this awakening before peace and liberty were really reached. Like thousands more, he began by trying hard to put himself right with God. He tried to find love in his heart for God, instead of believing the love which God had manifested toward him, in the gift of Christ. Again let me quote his own words, written at that time. “How miserable a state of mind is that in which sorrow, like a heavy load, weighs and weighs upon the heart, and tries to find relief in tears, but cannot find it How miserable, above all that is most miserable, to wish that the heart was full of love towards its God and Savior, and after all to feel that it is as cold as ice, and as hard as adamant! I cried to the unknown God with my voice, and often cried in despair. The cry seemed never to reach His ears; and then I was so troubled that I could not speak.” The fact was he was reasoning from what he was at his best for God, and not from what God was to him at his worst. In other words, it was a fruitless effort to find merit in self, because of what a bettered religious self was, instead of putting confidence in God because of what God was. He was ransacking all the workings of his unsatisfied heart to find satisfaction, and no wonder he was bitterly disappointed. A village pauper might as well search every hole and corner of his comfortless cottage in order to find how much wealth there is in the Bank of England, as a sinner to search his own heart in order to discover what there is in the heart of God. No, dear reader; God’s heart is not so learned. Man cannot by such searching find out God. “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son which is in the bosom or the Father, He hath declared Him.” The gospel begins with the heart of God, and comes to the heart of man. “For God so loved the world; that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)). “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet shiners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)). God can only be known in Christ, redemption only secured by Him, and peace and pardon preached through Him. God has found eternal satisfaction in His finished work, and has caused every divine glory to shine in His countenance as the risen Man, and He wants me to find my satisfaction, therefore, where He finds His―not in self, but in Christ; in Him, and in no other. Is this where my reader is looking for it?
At last the clouds dispersed from the young student’s heart, and the glory of gospel light shone in. Let him still tell his own tale. In a letter to his father he thus writes: “I am now convinced that, after hearing it a thousand times over, we still remain ignorant of the gospel, unless we see clearly, and feel joyfully, that Christ is offered to us, wretched, lost sinners, in all His fullness as the free gift of God. I am sure of this, that for a long, long time I have been deceiving myself and making myself miserable every day, through ignorance of the free, glorious gospel, while I imagined that I clearly understood its gracious character. For long the painful feeling preyed upon my mind that I must do some good works myself, or God would not accept me in Christ Jesus; and my misery was, that while Satan thus blinded my eyes, I found myself unable to do the good work that I would. Now I see that the gospel is quite different―that it is free, and full, and wholly of grace.” And at another time he wrote: “The giving up of all things―of all earthly possessions, of father, mother, sister, brother―is easy, compared with giving up all our fancied righteousness―our own works. This is the last and most difficult thing that the earnest seeker finds to do. We often fancy, and often say with our tongues, ‘None but Christ. I place my whole dependence upon Christ. I know I am nothing, can do nothing―He is my complete Savior;’ and yet all the time we are trusting to and, looking for something in ourselves.”
Perchance our reader may be one of this very class. You are worried, and disappointed, and distressed, because you cannot be what you ought to be. But suppose you were, what then? Why, like the Pharisee in the parable, you could then go before God and tell Him how well satisfied, you were with yourself; that now, being “what you ought to be,” you could stand in your own righteousness before Him; and while thanking Him for His great kindness in giving His Son, yet, that as far as you were concerned, you could manage very well without Him.
Now, perhaps your whole soul rebels with utmost indignation against such a thought, and yet is this not the very timing your deceived heart is seeking after, viz. self-satisfaction? You hear the precious testimony of the work and worth of the Lord Jesus Christ. You listen again and again to what God has plainly declared concerning all who believe on Him—that they are justified from all things (Acts 13:3939And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. (Acts 13:39)), that they shall not come into judgment, that they have passed from death unto life (John 5:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24)). And yet you turn from the perfections of a glorified Savior at the right hand of God to your own wretched self, and say mournfully, “If I were this, and if I were not that, it would be different, but —.” But―why your eye is simply on the wrong person―that is all; it is self instead of Christ. The moment you really turn to Christ, and give up all expectation from self, your heart will be at rest. Till then, instead of happy assurance, your heart will be filled with the “ifs” and “buts” of unsatisfied desire and of miserable uncertainty. May the Holy Spirit of God so turn your eye and heart to Christ. God has glorified Him upon His heavenly throne, and that because He perfectly satisfied and glorified God when bearing our sins upon the cross. May it be your happy experience to “worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:33For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. (Philippians 3:3)).
“In self there is nothing in which I can glory;
In Christ I’ll rejoice to the end of the story:”
“Satisfied with Thee, Lord Jesus, I am blest!
Peace which passeth understanding on Thy breast;
No more doubting, no more trembling,
Oh, what rest!”