CHRIST saves to the uttermost. He is able to do so. Such is the merit and efficacy of His sacrifice. Such is His power as a priest upon His throne. Thus, He goes out early in the morning to hire labourers into His vineyard. About the third hour He says to others, “Go ye also into the vineyard.” Again, about the sixth and ninth hour He does likewise: “All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gain-saying people” (Rom. x. 21). At the closing of the day He finds others standing idle. He says even to them, “Go ye also into the vineyard,” although the day is far spent, for already it is “about the eleventh hour.” Yet it is still day, and He says, “I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work” (John ix. 4). “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him” (Heb. vii. 25). Scripture has its encouragements to early piety; yet salvation is of grace, and of grace so abounding that, late in the day as a sinner may feel it to be, he may not despair if then he makes haste and delays not to keep His commandments (Psalms cxix. 60). How alarmingly near to the final reckoning is the eleventh hour; yet, with the judgment almost upon them, there are those—alas, how many!—still “standing idle.” The day of grace expiring! The last sermons; the last invitations; the last warnings, reaching the sinner! O glorious grace that says even then, “Go ye also into the vineyard!”
Of such precious and solemn truth, the writer has had occasion to feel the reality. In the course of his ministry on the Clarence River, N.S.W., no deathbed scene more remained with him than that of a young man in his congregation—James M’Phee, Clarenza—at the eleventh hour, as it seemed, delivered from going down into the pit. Now some ten years ago, at the very moment of attaining to full manhood (on 7th June, 1902), this bright youth was suddenly brought to face death. Pneumonia was the malady which so fatally seized him. He had been a church-goer, but hitherto a stranger to grace. And now, so terrible was the destruction which wasted at noon-day of that young man’s career, that, once seized, there was but the step of a few days between him and eternity. “Behold, I come as a thief” (Rev. xvi. 15).
On the previous Sabbath, as the writer well remembers, his eye had been specially directed towards him whilst preaching from Hebrews iv. 16: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” During the sermon he even felt led to direct the message to him in particular. It was at the end of the same week that God’s hand came so irresistibly upon him. To the stricken one himself, as he said, it immediately presaged death. Of that he felt so satisfied that he could not go up to the bed, which he apprehended would be his deathbed, without seeking first to be brought to peace with God. With the deadly disease already upon him, but with consciousness yet undisturbed, he fell on his knees and prayed as never before for the mercy that he needed through Jesus Christ. He recognised himself a lost sinner, needing salvation, and that his time was short; and he wrestled in prayer. This was his own account to the writer. Nor did he rise till, as he indicated, he was made willing to die, trusting in Christ as his Saviour.
To that exercise, to which he had felt impelled as on the verge of eternity—to what then passed between his soul and God, as so strangely brought to his knees with such trouble upon him—must be traced the hope that he had in his death. To it we seemed pointed, under God, for the change which then became manifest. For, once laid down, great was the struggle between life and death. By and by delirium set in; yet there were bright intermissions in which the state of his mind found wonderful expression. To these the reader is pointed for his dying testimony. Free access to the sick chamber was allowed to interested friends and companions. To such, as well as to his minister, he addressed himself from time to time. He spoke not only as a dying man, but out of the abundance of his heart, and in such manner as had never been his wont. He acknowledged the vain life he had lived—only desiring life prolonged that he might live differently. He professed his faith in Christ and his trust in Him in view of death, which he recognised as very near. Prostrated as he was, he, without scruple, went to work in the vineyard. It was the eleventh hour, but he was as one doing with his might what his hand found to do. Thus while consciousness lasted he exhorted those around him. He warned his youthful companions, gathered at his bedside, to forsake their way and turn to the Lord—pointing them to his own case in connection with the danger of delay and the awfulness, as he said, of entering eternity unprepared. It was with affecting solemnity that he bade comrade-lads who came into his room to flee from their sins to the Saviour, not knowing in what hour the Lord would come. Those whom he thus charged were taken aback—so great was the change. Nor had they witnessed the like before. One or two, on getting outside, attempted to jeer, saying, “Oh, he’s turned preacher!”—so completely nonplussed were they by their unexpected experience. Ah, have not men even, and rulers, derided in circumstances unspeakably more solemn? The writer, on his part, felt the moving effect of the scene witnessed, and of the appeals of that young man in the very grip of death. Not only did he plead with those at his bedside to take warning by his case, and to repent without delay and turn to God; but he testified again, to his deepest sorrow, that he had lived as he had done—without God. He had seen his error, and it made him agonize in death over his near acquaintances—beseeching them to come to the Saviour in the day of opportunity.
Thus did he spend his remaining strength while the hand of death was paralysing him, and life was fast ebbing. The persuasion of its being his last illness remained with him despite the fact that everything was being done medically at the instance of grief-stricken relatives to arrest the disease—such grief meantime, however, only intensifying, by the life of one of the parents (the pious mother) being equally threatened. He had no resentment at his condition. He was not afraid to die, he said: he was trusting in Christ. Yet, he exclaimed, if he had his life to live over again, it would be to live very differently. Anxious to use his latest breath seeking the salvation of his associates, he expressed regret when disabled. During his ravings he was troubled lest his repentance was not genuine. His thoughts, even in delirium, were all of his soul, as now entering the great eternity. And thus it was that his spirit returned to God who gave it.
Reader, have you considered your latter end and how near it may be? It is a solemn thing to see one die. In this case, it was not the wasted, emaciated frame, the effect of age or lingering disease. It was the strong youth, in his 21st year, suddenly arrested in his life’s course. The powerful arm was there, apparently unchanged: yet was life ebbing from it. Under the delirium, it seemed, for the moment, stronger than ever; again, it lay motionless, powerless. Soon the cheeks became sunken and hollow; the eyes glazed and vacant; the features sharp. There were the death throes. The earthly house of this tabernacle—how quickly it was dissolving! Yet the heart remained strong, and still life lingered, but all unconscious. Life pulsated; but there was neither voice, nor any to answer. A few days had sufficed to bring this strong, active youth to the dust of death. Reader, “Because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God” (Amos iv. 12).
The outward man here was perishing, but what of the soul? A conflict was being waged greater than that with flesh and blood. Realities unseen were here involved. Had the spark of grace been kindled in that soul? Was the prey being taken from the mighty? Was the inward man being renewed? Eternity will reveal it.
To the writer looking on, nothing could be more solemn and affecting than that last struggle. Here was one of his flock to whom, as a hearer in the pew, his eye had been directed so recently; now, alas, in the very jaws of death, yet testifying that, in the brief interval, he had come boldly to the throne of grace, and had obtained mercy, and was finding grace to help in his time of need. “And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” (Zech. iii. 2).
W. S.