WHILE recently glancing over the pages of an old volume of the Christian Treasury (1850), we came across, under the title of “The Old Ploughman,” the following interesting narrative of the conversion of a man who had passed the allotted span of life, and had never crossed the door of church or chapel for fifty years. Steeped in the deepest ignorance of all religious matters, he was introduced into “a new world,” as he termed it himself, when his mind was spiritually enlightened in the knowledge of the truth. The story first appeared in the pages of the Scottish Congregational Magazine, as the Christian Treasury tells us, and was published at a later date in tract form, as we may gather from the Memoir of the late Professor John Duncan, LL.D., Edinburgh, written by the late Principal Brown, of Aberdeen. At page 407 of this Memoir, the biographer gives a quotation from Dr. Duncan in which he commends “Poor Joseph” and “George Medway” as two of the best tracts he had ever seen. To not a few of our readers this circumstance will give an added interest to the otherwise striking narrative. The author was a Congregational minister, and the sketch was first published under the head of “Ministerial Reminiscences.”
In the year 1840, at a church meeting, along with several young persons, and some in the middle of life, I received into fellowship three old men, whose conversion to the faith of Christ had taken place in the preceding part of the year, and who lived to adorn that faith by the purity of their lives, and who are now, I doubt not, amongst the spirits of the just made perfect. Of the history and death of the eldest I will now present a brief sketch.
George Medway, who was a native of Shropshire, was born in the year 1766, in a small cottage near the village of—. This village, with its suburbs, contained a population of about 150 souls, and like most in England, it consisted of two classes, the upper, including the rector and the squire, and a few respectable farmers, and the lower, including the agricultural labourers and their families. In it there were a few good houses, but the rectory was the most snug and tasteful, though not equal in size or in splendour to the old baronial mansion. The rector and the squire were the chief men of the parish—wealthy, but not benevolent; great sportsmen, and very severe in punishing any violation of the game laws. The rector did duty once on the Sabbath; and as his stock of sermons, which were dry and heartless essays, amounted only to fifty-four, one for the club feast, one for Christmas day, and one for each Sabbath in the year, they were read with undeviating regularity; his congregation growing smaller by degrees, till the church was deserted by nearly all the parishioners except the squire and his family, who usually graced their stately pew with their presence, repeating with audible voice the solemn responses of the service. In this village there was no Sabbath school for the instruction of the young, nor any benevolent society to afford occasional relief to the sick and the aged; and as no form of Methodism had obtruded itself amongst the people, they were living quietly together as in a mausoleum of spiritual death,
“Without one cheerful beam of hope,
Or spark of glimm’ring day.”
Here the old ploughman lived for upwards of seventy years. When a young man, he was distinguished amongst his fellows for his great strength, his fleetness in running, his dexterity in all the rural sports of the village, and equally distinguished for his profanity and habits of intemperance. He married about the age of twenty-five, and had three children: one died when an infant, another was a cripple, and the third, when a youth, went to reside at B—, taking with him some of the worst principles and habits of his father. George Medway, though a very depraved man, and as ignorant of the religion of the Bible as though he had been born in the wilds of America, was a good and a trustworthy servant, and laboured in the same farm, though under different masters, from the time he was able to ring a bell to frighten the birds from the ripening corn, till he removed to B—, on completing his seventy-first year. His domestic habits, in process of time, became very orderly, going to and from his labour very punctually; and on the Sabbath he spent the mornings at home, and in the evenings he constantly visited the Hare and Hound, to take his pipe and tankard of ale, often boasting that he had not missed one night for upwards of half a century.
At length, having buried his wife, and become too feeble to follow the plough, and being unable to procure a lighter place of work, he took his cripple child to the Union Workhouse, and removed to B—, to live out the few remaining years of his life with his son, who kept a public-house. At first, having free access to the ale, he became intemperate, till his son very prudently limited the quantity, and even this greatly impaired his mental faculties, which had never been very strong, but which were now contracting into the rigidity of petrified dulness and stupidity. Thus passing from the quiet of a village where he knew every face, to the hurry and bustle of a large manufacturing town where he knew no one, he often wandered about alone, gazing on the novel sight with as much apathetic indifference as we may imagine a draught horse feels on being removed from the homestead to the wharf of merchandise. One day when thus wandering, he turned into a little pathway leading to a garden, and at the end of this pathway he saw a cottage, and at the door of the cottage stood its inmate, a very godly and zealous disciple of the Lord Jesus, who seeing a stranger, and that stranger an old man like himself, he invited him to walk in and take a seat. He did so; and being now surrounded by shrubs and trees, which concealed the great town from his view, he began talking of the rural occupations and the scenes of his early days with rekindled emotions of high gratification. John Dean, the inmate of the cottage, gave full scope to the loquacity of his visitor, presuming that when he had gone to the length of his mental tether, he would become quiet, and then an opportunity would occur to introduce other and more important subjects of remark, if not of conversation. This expectation was soon realized; and he found an old man in his presence who was not only ignorant of all the facts and doctrines of the Bible, but who did not appear to possess the faculty of understanding them when presented in the simplest form of communication, or even of listening with any degree of fixed attention to the statements and explanations which were given. The only remark he made was after a detailed account of the crucifixion of the Son of God: “Methinks it was too bad to sarve Him so; they wouldn’t do so in Shropshire.”
As he was leaving the cottage, Dean said to him, “You had better come some evening and take a pipe with me; and then we can have a good long chat.” This invitation was given because he knew there was a power connected with the truth as it is in Jesus which could give expansion to this contracted intellect and sensibility to this hard heart; and he also knew that that power sometimes employs a feeble instrument as the means and the medium of its own transmission. “We must pray to the Lord for the poor old man,” said Dean to his godly wife after he had left, “and who can tell but faith and prayer may prevail, and we may live to see him divinely quickened into the newness of life?” “It will be,” she replied, “a grand thing. And what a striking proof, if it should take place, of the mighty power of the Lord Jesus Christ, who can subdue all things to Himself.”
The next evening he came attired in his bit of best, sat down, took his pipe, and talked away with great rapidity and fluency about the doings and occurrences of his past life: but after a while, having exhausted his very scanty store of knowledge, he sat in mute silence, a dull and unexcitable listener to all that was said to him about Jesus Christ and the great salvation. Many efforts were made by Dean and his wife to make him feel that he was a sinner who needed a Saviour; but, like the echoes returning on the rock that sends them forth, they produced not the least impression. But still, though depressed, they did not despair, as they knew the Divine Spirit, who new creates the soul, can as easily give to the petrified intellect a capacity to understand the truth, as He can give a susceptibility to the flinty heart to feel its purifying and consolatory power.
At parting, Dean said to him, “I wish you would come next Sabbath morning and go with me,” which he engaged to do, thinking it was to take a walk into the country. He was punctual at the hour; and after resting a little preparatory to his expected ramble, they took their staffs in their hands and set off. As they were walking up the pathway leading from the cottage, Dean said in reply to a question, “I am not going into the country, but to what your country people call a church, and I suppose you will have no objection to go with me.” “Why, as for that, I sha’n’t tell what to do, for I never go’ed to one but when I was married, nearly fifty years agone last Easter Sunday.” “You will have nothing to do but sit still and hold your tongue, and just hearken to what the minister says.” “Part of that, methinks, is easy enough, as I shall soon be off to sleep, if I be to sit still and do nothing.” I happened to be in the pulpit when Dean walked up the aisle, followed by his rustic companion, whose simple appearance, and almost ludicrous stare, as his eyes rolled over the congregation, seized my attention. As this was the morning when I had to administer the Lord’s Supper, I preached, as my custom was on such occasions, on the design of the death of Christ, and on the obligation of its commemoration. Now and then during the sermon, my eyes turned towards the pew in which he was sitting; and I was more than once very forcibly struck with the singularity of his attitude and appearance. He sat motionless, with his hands holding the little book shelf in the inside front of the pew, with his mouth wide open, looking at me with a fixedness and intensity of look, as though he had never previously beheld the form of man. When this part of the service was over, the congregation withdrew,* leaving the members of the church to engage in the solemn act of commemorating the great event of the death of the Son of God in behalf of sinful and worthless man. On descending the pulpit stairs, I accidentally saw a slight confusion in the pew in which he was sitting, which somewhat disconcerted my feelings, as I knew not the cause of it; but I subsequently ascertained that it was occasioned by his positively refusing to go away when the congregation withdrew. His first remark rather astonished his friend Dean, especially as he uttered it in a very firm and rather loud tone—”I am in a new world; and I sha’n’t go till you go; and I shall do as you do:” What to do John Dean knew not, as he was unwilling to let him remain, and equally unwilling to force him away; but at length he resolved to leave him to act for himself.
He now resumed his seat, and sat speechless. His countenance assumed a more intelligent aspect; his features relaxed from the stern hardness of dull stupidity to the expression of a tranquil tenderness of emotion; and the tear was seen to fall from his eye. He took the bread, and ate it; and he took the wine also, and drank it; many eyes were directed towards him; and could the veil which conceals the invisible world have been drawn aside, and had the faculty of vision been rendered capable of seeing the angels of God, and the faculty of hearing rendered capable of hearing their many voices blended in the harmony of praise, we should have seen them, and heard them rejoicing over this poor old man brought to repentance.
* This is the usual practice among Congregationalists.
When the plate was handed to the pew, for the offerings of the church in behalf of its poor members, without any suggestion from his friend he put in his penny—all that he had—along with the other contributors. On walking away he walked some distance in silence. At length he broke silence by repeating his first startling utterance: “I’m in a new world; yes, I be in a new world.” This he repeated again and again as they passed along to their home, apparently insensible to every interrogation or allusive remark which his friend uttered.
On entering his son’s house he excited no small degree of alarm, by saying to his son, and some of the neighbours who were sitting in the tap-room, “I have been and heard a man who has taken me into a new world; you must all go with me and Mr. Dean to-night. It is a main wonderful world.” He called on his friend Dean in the early part of the afternoon, and took tea with him, and then accompanied him to the evening service. The text was taken from Luke xv. 2: “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” I saw him as I read the text, and his eye told the tale of the wondrous effect of the morning’s discourse, as it let fall more than one tear—the tear of penitential joy. The following passage produced a powerful impression, judging from the quick relaxation and rapid changes of his long set and almost petrified features. “Yes, my brethren, Jesus Christ is able and willing to save the chief of sinners; those who have gone to the greatest length in wickedness, rendering themselves offensive to others of a less depraved order. In confirmation of the truth of this assertion, I will refer your attention to some of the recorded facts of His history, which will tell you what He has done. There is Zaccheus, who grew rich by the crimes of oppression and extortion; there is the dying thief, a robber and a murderer; there are the sinners of Jerusalem, who imbed their hands in the blood of His life, and who derided and insulted Him when in the agonies of death; there is Saul of Tarsus, the chief persecutor of his age; and there are some of the citizens of Corinth, who were guilty of the most flagrant crimes; though the eye of Omniscience could not find out more depraved and atrocious sinners on the face of the earth, yet they were forgiven, and renewed, and sanctified, and are now mingling their praises with the spirits of the redeemed before the throne. And Jesus Christ is the same now as when He saved these men from the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity: the same in power, and the same in compassion—elevation to the throne of glory having produced no change in His disposition towards fallen humanity. And are not some of you, my brethren, living witnesses of the truth of this assertion? Have you not gone with the multitude doing evil, surpassing many in the number and aggravation of your sins? Do you not even now tremble when you look back on that moral precipice on which you once stood with careless indifference? Can you retrace your moral history without being stung with remorse, and overpowered with shame and contrition? Is any language too strong to describe your guilt and your depravity? Will you object to own that you have taken rank with the chief of sinners? And yet through the exceeding riches of divine grace you hoped to be saved, even as others.”
Having expressed an earnest desire to be introduced to me on the following evening, as I sat in my vestry musing on the grand and awful realities disclosed by the Bible, he entered, preceded by his friend Dean. I at once recognised him, and rose, offering him my hand. For a few moments there was obvious embarrassment, which I endeavoured to relieve, but still he was embarrassed; he looked on me with great benignity of expression, and his eye spoke the deep upliftings of his soul at this crisis in the history of its new creation, but he remained silent, the power of utterance was suspended. I avoided, in the few remarks I made, all allusion to mental excitement, adverted very casually and briefly to the scenes of his early life; and he very soon recovered himself, and said, in a firm tone, “I am now, sir, in a new world. I’ll tell you what I mean. I know I am in the old world; but what you said yesterday morning has led my heart into a new world, and my heart, not my eyes, sees wonderful things.”
I knew his meaning, and therefore sustained the conversation without breaking up by interrogation the form of expression which was probably the most correct embodiment of his thoughts which he could construct.
“And what have you seen in this new world?”
“I have seen myself a sinner. I have lived near seventy years sinning against God, and didn’t know it till yesterday morning.”
“What sins have you committed?”
“A power of sins, I’ve been a great sinner. Why, sir, I didn’t love God nor fear Him. I didn’t know nothing about Him till yesterday morning.”
“What else have you seen in the new world?”
“I have seen Jesus Christ. O how kind to come down from heaven and die for us! This is new to me—it is wonderful.”
“What made you stay and take the bread and the wine yesterday morning?”
“Why, sir, you said all should do it who loved Jesus Christ. I felt I loved Him. Yes, my heart told me so. It has been telling me so ever since. It tells me so now. I can’t speak His name, but I feel I love Him. I can’t think about any thing else very well. If I think of any thing else, my heart gets dull and cold; but when I think about Jesus Christ it gets young again.”
“But why do you love Jesus Christ?”
“Because He com’d down from heaven, and died on the cross. I don’t know how to make out very well what I mean. But I think Jesus Christ will save me. This makes me love Him. I feel a great change here,” putting his hand over his heart. “I can’t tell it, but it is something real.”
“Are you quite sure that you feel a real change of heart?”
“Why, if there be no change in my heart, where do my fresh thoughts and feelings come from? I never had none such till yesterday morning. I don’t know much now; but I wouldn’t be again such a poor old ignorant sinner I was before yesterday morning for all the lands and houses in our village, or all the parish.”
“I hope your change is real, and that it will prove a lasting change.”
“I hope so: I should cry a power of tears if I thought I should be changed back again. The Lord save me from that!”
“Then you must thank Him for making this great change in you, and pray to Him to make the change a lasting one.”
“I do. I’m sure I do. I cried hundreds of tears last night when I was in bed, and they be such tears as I never cried before. Tears of heart sorrow, and heart gladness.”
“You hope to be saved?”
“I do, and am main thankful for it.”
“But how do you expect to be saved?”
“Why, just how you told yesterday morning. By Christ, and by nothing else. I should not like another Saviour, because He was so good as to die for us. How wonderful! I never heard any thing like it before. I wish I had heard that blessed sermon fifty years agone.”
I was much pleased with the artless and guileless simplicity of the old man, who, though unable to describe in appropriate language the great change through which he was now passing—from a state of spiritual death to newness of life—said enough to satisfy me, and ultimately the whole church, that he was become a new creature in Christ Jesus; and, as such, we received him into fellowship with us.
After his admission into the church, he formed an intimacy with several of his fellow-members, who treated him with great kindness: and such was his attachment to public worship, that he allowed neither the heat of summer nor the frosts or snows of winter to prevent his regular and punctual attendance. But it was when singing the praises of the Lord that he was most powerfully excited, having a passion for music, and a strong melodious voice, not much injured by the desolating havoc of age. No descriptive language can do justice to his appearance when thus engaged, especially on one occasion when the congregation was singing the following verse of a favourite hymn:—
“Lo, the great High Priest ascended,
Pleads the merit of His blood:
Venture on Him, venture wholly,
Let no other trust intrude;
None but Jesus
Can do helpless sinners good.”
He stood erect, with his hands resting on the pew, and his eyes closed, yet allowing the tear of penitential joy to steal silently out and trickle quietly down his deep furrowed cheek; and when the last stanza of the verse, “None but Jesus can do helpless sinners good,” was repeated in full chorus, he caught the inspiration of the hallowed fact, his countenance indicating by its varying expression the deep feeling of his soul as he raised and mingled his loud and sonorous notes with the harmony of the great congregation.
My numerous engagements had prevented me from having any conversation with him for many months; when, feeling anxious to ascertain what progress he had made in knowledge and in grace, I met him by appointment at John Dean’s cottage. He was still the same man as when I first saw him, but he looked at least ten years younger, his voice was firmer, his eyes brighter, and he was now capable of sustaining a lengthened conversation with a degree of ease and facility of expression which astonished me.
“I suppose you would not like to go back to your native village and live as you used to do?”
“Why, sir, methinks no happy spirit would like to come out of heaven to live on earth again.”
“You often think of how you used to live.”
“I think of it with sadness and horror. But I know’d no better then. What a mercy that I was not taken for death when my poor wife died!”
“What thoughts had you of God?”
“I didn’t think about Him much; but when I did, I thought He was a great mighty Being, who never cared nothing at all about what we said or did.”
“Had you any idea of your soul, or its immortality?”
“Why, sir, I was always puzzled about it. Sometimes I thought that very wicked people went to hell when they died, especially the rich.”
“Had you never any fears about going to hell?”
“No, never. My common thoughts were, that when I died there would be an end of me; just the same as with the sheep or the horse.”
“You believe there is a change in you now, and one for the better?”
“O yes, the Lord be praised! I know’d there was a change in me when I was in your vestry the night after I heard that blessed sermon; but I know it better now. I now find it lasts with me; but then I fear’d it wouldn’t. If I had known fifty years agone what I know now, it would have been a good thing for me. I should have been all that long time a power happier in my soul. I wish my poor wife had lived to see this day.”
“To whom do you ascribe the great change that has been produced in you?”
“Yes, it is a great change, like changing a flint stone into bread, or a bog into a garden. The Bible calls it, being called out of darkness into marvellous light. This is a faithful account of it. Darkness, I take, means ignorance, and light, I take, means knowledge. I have come from one state to another, and nobody can make me think otherwise. Why, if a blind man sees the sun, he must know that his eyes be opened.”
“Very true, but who produced the change which you say you have felt?”
“At first I thought it was you, because I felt it when you were preaching that blessed sermon. But now I know better. Now I know that it is the Lord that gives light to the understanding and grace to the heart. And, praised be His name, I can now say, what Paul said, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.'”
“You have felt a great change, but do you feel perfect; or do you feel that your heart is still wicked?”
“O, sir! there is a power of sin in my heart. The fallow is ploughed up, but it is not cleared yet. And this puzzles me. I pray the Lord to make me holy, but He hasn’t done it yet. But I had great comfort when Master Dean read to me the seventh chapter of the Romans. I thought when he was reading, that the writer of that chapter felt that he had a wicked heart, as I often feel that I have one.”
“I suppose you believe that He who has begun the good work in you will carry it on, and bring it to perfection?”
“Yes, if you mind, sir, you proved that, when you preached a sermon ‘tother Sabbath from the gladsome works of Paul. I got them on my heart the next day. ‘Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ'” (Phil. i. 6).
“Do you remember any illustrations which I brought forward to show the reasonableness of our expecting that the Author of the good work of grace will complete it?”
“Yes, sir, you said that a wise builder, when he has put in the foundation, and carried up the house a story or two, will not leave off, and let it tumble to ruins, when he wants to use it. No, he’ll go on till he has finished it. And so I hope the Lord will finish the good work He has begun in my soul. It is wonderful. I sometimes think about it till I get so puzzled that I have to go a walk to get my thoughts back; and then my heart gets warm with gratitude to Him for His great kindness.”
“I suppose you sometimes long to have the good work brought to perfection?”
“Now, sir, on this point I’m a bit disappointed. I thought at first, when I felt the change, that I should soon get free from sin. But now I find, from reading the Bible, and from Master Dean’s talking to me, that I sha’n’t get free from sin till I get to heaven. The sermon you preached last Sabbath morning brought a power of comfort to my soul; I got the text on my heart and don’t think it will e’er get off—’We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’ How wonderful! To see Jesus Christ in His glory so soon as we be dead, and to be like Him! I should like that hour to come.”
I was much gratified at this interview, and somewhat surprised to find the rapid progress he had made in learning to read. At the age of seventy-two he could not tell a letter, but now he could make out, with a little help, several chapters in John’s gospel, and some other parts of the Bible. The 23rd and 103rd psalms greatly delighted him. In addition to the regular time he devoted to his studies, every Monday morning he went to the cottage, and got his friend, John Dean, to help him to read the texts of the preceding Sabbath; and he put many of them upon his memory, which soon acquired such an extraordinary power of recollection that he could repeat many verses, and relate the leading particulars of some of the more striking and interesting narratives of the Bible.
He came into my vestry one evening, and said, “I can’t, sir, do much to serve Jesus Christ and His cause, as I’m old and poor; but I should like to do what I can, as the woman did you told us about on Sabbath. I’m thinking as how I could get rid of some tracts among the boatmen that come to my son’s tap-room. And perhaps the Lord may bless the reading of them to the conversion of some poor sinner, as old and as ignorant as I was once. If He should, I shall have a power of heart gladness.”
In addition to his labour of tract distribution, he became a visitor of the sick; and from the devotion of his spirit, and the humble simplicity of his manners, he was always welcome in the chamber of affliction and death. On one occasion, when calling to see a member of the church who was dangerously ill, I found the old ploughman was with him, and, stepping up the stairs very cautiously, I had the satisfaction of hearing him in prayer. I could not catch every sentence of his prayer, but I heard the following confessions and petitions:—
“O Lord, by nature we be poor, and wicked, and ignorant sinners. O Lord, we don’t know ourselves. We don’t know Thee. We don’t know Jesus Christ.”
“O Lord, we were once under a sentence of death, but we didn’t know it. Pardon all our wickedness, and all our sins, for Christ’s sake.”
“O blessed Jesus, we thank Thee for living for us. We thank Thee for dying for us. We thank Thee for living again for us. We come to Thee for rest of soul; and we come to Thee for eternal life.”
“O blessed Jesus, look upon our dying brother. Comfort his heart. Keep away the great enemy. Come and meet him on his way to Thy kingdom. May he soon see Thee, and be like Thee!”
“O Lord, save me, a poor old sinner, who lived for threescore years and ten, and didn’t love Thee, nor pray to Thee. Make me fit for heaven, and take me there when I go out of this world of sin and sorrow.”
“O blessed Jesus, we bless Thee for going to get a place in heaven ready for us, that we may have a good home when we are taken out of this world of sin and sorrow.”
After pursuing the noiseless tenor of his way for about the space of five years, growing in knowledge and in grace, developing his deportment in the great, and good, and lovely principles of the Christian faith, and highly esteemed by those of his brethren who knew him, his natural strength began to decline, and other symptoms indicated the approach of his latter end. I visited him during his confinement, and was much pleased, by finding him patient and resigned, anticipating, with subdued eagerness, his entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
“Are you suffering much?”
“Yes, sir, my sufferings be great, but not so great as the sufferings which my dear Saviour suffered for me. When He was suffering for me He was forsaken, but the Lord does not forsake me. He was on a cross, but I be on a good bed. He was mocked when dying by the wicked, but all speak kindly to me.”
“You are not afraid to die?”
“Why should I be? I got upon my heart yesterday this blessed verse, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’ Oh, I long to see my dear Saviour, and be like Him, and with Him for ever!”
“Then you have no doubt of going to heaven?”
“Why should I, when Jesus Christ says, ‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out?'”
“Then you consider heaven as your future home?”
“Yes, sir, I do, and I believe my dear Saviour is waiting to receive me. This comforts my heart.”
He was confined to his room during the whole of the winter, but in the spring he rallied, and recovered his usual flow of spirits; and as the summer advanced, he resumed his attendance on public worship, which he designated “the gate of heaven to his soul.” The last time I saw him was when administering the Lord’s Supper; his countenance indicated great intensity of emotion, and after taking the cup the tear of penitential joy was again visible. My eye followed him as he walked down the aisle with his friend, John Dean, and had I then known that I should see his face no more, I would have stepped after him, and, bidding him farewell, I would have offered him my congratulations on the grand issue of his faith, now so near its consummation. In the course of the following week, I abruptly heard of his death, which deeply affected me; and, on inquiry, I found he died suddenly and alone, being found dead by his relatives when they arose in the morning.
“I didn’t suppose,” said John Dean, “that he would leave us so suddenly; though we have thought lately that he would not stay with us much longer, his common conversation was so much about heaven and heavenly things. When looking on a field of wheat we had both looked at the week before, he said, in allusion to a remark he heard from the pulpit on the preceding Sabbath, ‘If we did but get ripe for heaven as fast as this bit of wheat has ripened for the reapers since a week agone, we should very soon be meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.’ Having touched on this subject, which had been for some weeks his favourite theme of conversation, he exclaimed with great animation of voice, and look, and action, ‘O what a wonderful world heaven must be!—how I long to get there!—how I long to see my blessed Saviour, and get like Him! O how I long to bow down on my knees to worship Him! how I long to sing His praises! What grand harmony there! What a power of voices to sing His honour and glory!—and they will sing for ever! O, if I had never left the country to live here, I should never know’d nothing about these grand and glorious things! What a mercy! the Lord be praised!'”
“His conversion, sir,” said Mrs. Dean, as I was rising to leave the cottage, “is a grand proof of the power of the Lord Jesus over the stupid intellect and the stubborn heart of man; and it is a grand display of the exceeding riches of His grace, in the salvation of another of the chief of sinners. A joyous day for the angels when he heard the first sermon at the chapel.”
With what rapidity did George Medway pass through a series of wonderful changes within the space of a few years! At the age of seventy-two he had never seen a Bible, knew not a letter of the alphabet, and was ignorant of all the facts of the Christian revelation, consenting to be led to a place of worship with no other expectation than merely enjoying a nap of sleep; and yet when there, his attention is riveted to the lips of the preacher, he hears the truth and understands it, feels its renovating power, and comes forth before the eye of the world a new creature in Christ Jesus. In his case there was no progressive training, no reiterated efforts to illumine his dark mind, no repetition of ingenious experiments to rouse up some latent faculty of intellectualism and moral sensibility; his spirit broke out of the prison-house of its long confinement by one thrust of its newly-acquired power—comes at once into open space—sees the great and grand facts of a spiritual system of faith as clearly as though he had completed a long initiatory term under the most able professors—and instantaneously recognises his obligations to obey the laws of Jesus Christ, of which he had previously no knowledge. This does not turn out to be a day-dream—a passing illusion—a mere moral ignis fatuus, appearing and disappearing by some unknown power of spiritual enchantment; but a positive and palpable reality, confirmed by a considerable amount of mental improvement, and a life of practical devotedness to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The sceptic, who has never fairly examined the Christian system, which makes ample provision for the appearance of such a moral phenomenon, may look on such a fact as this with as much indifference as a clown would look on a new comet; and might imagine that he had discovered the cause of it, in the strange magic power of enthusiastic fanaticism; but no man who takes a deep interest in phenomena, whether physical or moral, will feel at liberty to stop in his investigations till he has arrived at something like an adequate cause of its existence. To suppose that the old man effected this great change which took place in his mind and in his character would be absurd. And it would be equally absurd to refer it to the mere agency which was employed in its production, because there was wanting both the intellectual capacity and moral sensibility for that agency to act on. To what other cause can it be referable, but to the intervention of a divine power, rendering the preaching of the gospel effectual to the recovery of the fallen spirit of this old man from the dominion of ignorance and of sin, preparatory to his final salvation?
EXTRACT FROM JOHN FOSTER’S ESSAY ON EVILS OF POPULAR IGNORANCE.
“We cannot close this subject without advertizing to a phenomenon as admirable, as, unhappily, it is rare, and which the observers may, if they choose, go round the whole circle of their philosophy, and begin again, to find any adequate cause other than the most immediate agency of the almighty Spirit. Here and there an instance occurs, to the delight of the Christian philanthropist, of a person brought up in utter ignorance and barbarian rudeness, and so continuing till late, sometimes very late in life, and then at last, after such a length of time and habit has completed its petrifying effect, suddenly seized upon by a mysterious power, and taken with an alarming and irresistible force out of the dark hold in which the spirit has lain imprisoned and torpid, into the sphere of thought and feeling.
“Occasion is taken of advertizing to such facts, not so much for the purpose of magnifying the nature, as simply exhibiting the effect, of an influence that can breathe with such power on the obtuse intellectual faculties, which it appears, in the most signal of these instances, almost to create anew. It is exceedingly striking to observe how the contracted and rigid soul seems to soften, and grow warm, and expand, and quiver with life. With the new energy infused, it painfully struggles to work itself into freedom from the wretched contortion in which it has so long been fixed, as by the impressed spell of some infernal magic. It is seen filled with a distressed and indignant emotion at its own ignorance; actuated with a resistless earnestness to be informed; acquiring an unwonted pliancy to its faculties of thought; attaining a perception, combined with intelligence and moral sensibility, to which numerous things are becoming discernible and affecting that were as non-existent before. It is not in the very extreme strength of their import that we employ such terms of description; the malice of irreligion may easily force them into poetical excess; but we have known instances in which the change, the intellectual change, has been so conspicuous within a brief space of time, that even an infidel observer must have forfeited all claim to be esteemed a man of sense, if he would not acknowledge—‘This that you call divine grace, whatever it may really be, is the strangest awakener of the faculties after all.’
“And, to a devout man, it is a spectacle of most enchanting beauty, thus to see the immortal plant, which has been under a malignant blast while sixty or seventy years have passed over it, coming out at length in the bloom of life.”