The Soldier Street Preacher.
WHILE thankful for the sympathy of Christian friends, he uniformly declared that, “Had it not been for the companionship of God’s Word, its light and consolation,” he “would have perished in his affliction.” “I have just been sitting,” he would say, “under its shadow with great delight, and finding its fruit sweet to my taste. There are grand, sweet apples, on that tree. There’s the apple of justification—’justified freely by His grace,’ There’s the apple of sanctification—we are ‘made partakers of His holiness.’ There’s the apple of adoption —’Now are we the sons of God.’ And, best of all, there’s the golden apple of glorification—we’ll get that bye and bye; but it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ I mind when I’ve been in tropical countries, I’ve seen trees whose fruit just seemed as if it wanted to drop into your mouth, it was so rich and ripe. And doesn’t the Lord say to us, when we come to this blessed Book, now, ‘open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.’ While noticing his love for the Bible, I may advert to the sort of instinctive dexterity with which he made the most simple incident subservient to the enforcement of Bible truth. For instance, speaking of the time when he first saw the sin-bearing Saviour, he said to me, “Well, you know, after that I wondered that all the world did not see Him too. I fell to telling all my comrades what a Saviour I had found, and there was one of them, a young lad—Edward Brown—that I took great pains to instruct in the ways of peace; but he was little the better of my concern about his soul, for he soon ran again into excess of riot. He was taken up on charge of having to do with a highway robbery, and, along with two other soldiers, was condemned to be hanged. The night before the execution, he sent for me, and said, “You’ve been very kind to me, Flockhart; I want to make you my heir; to leave you all my effects.” So the morning came when we were all ordered out to attend the execution. There were the three with halters round their necks. I had heard of mercy at the foot of the ladder but I never saw it till then. For almost at the last minute a message came that there was a pardon for Edward Brown. “Well, lad,” says I to myself, “you’ve got your life, but I’ve lost my legacy; for a testament is not of force while the testator liveth.” But (turning to me with a beaming face), he added, “Isn’t it precious that we’re so sure that Jesus died; it is attested by so many ‘infallible proofs.’ ‘He died for our sins according to the Scriptures.'” We need not fear about losing our legacy because there’s any doubt about the reality of His death. But we may fear something else. My wife had once a legacy left her by a lady. The lady was dead, beyond a doubt, but the lawyers got the legacy into their hands, and it was not easy, I assure you, getting it out again. In fact, they wasted it among them, and my wife never saw a sixpence of it. Had the kind lady been living, she would have had the business better managed. And isn’t it doubly precious to “know that our Redeemer liveth?” “He liveth by the power of God.” He has made himself responsible to be the executor of His own will. When we put our case into His hands, He’ll let none wrong us of our legacy.