Adoniram Judson’s Conversion.
A New England student sets out on a tour through the Northern States. Before leaving home he avows himself an infidel. His father argues, his mother weeps. He can resist his father’s arguments, but finds it more difficult to resist his mother’s tears. Still, he leaves home, resolved to see life, its dark side as well as its bright, having perfect confidence in his own self-control that it will protect him from anything mean and vicious. In the course of his travels he stops at a country inn. The landlord mentions, as he lights him to his room, that he has been obliged to place him next door to a young man who is probably in a dying state. The traveller passes a very restless night. Sounds come from the sick-chamber—sometimes the movements of the watchers, sometimes the groans of the sufferer; but it is not those that disturb him. He thinks of what the landlord said—the stranger is probably in a dying state; and is he prepared? Alone, and in the dead of night, he feels a blush of shame steal over him at the question, for it proves the shallowness of his philosophy. What would his late companion say to his weakness. The clear-minded, intellectual, witty E—, what would he say to such consummate boyishness? But still his thoughts will revert to the sick man. Is he a Christian, calm and strong in the hope of a glorious immortality, or is he shuddering on the brink of a dark unknown future? Perhaps he is a “Freethinker,” educated by Christian parents, and prayed over by a Christian mother. At last morning comes, and its light dispels what he would fain consider his “superstitious illusions.” He goes in search of the landlord and inquires for his fellow-lodger. “He is dead.” “Dead?” “Yes, he is gone, poor fellow!” “Do you know who he was?” “Oh, yes; he was a young man from Providence College, a very fine fellow; his name was E—.” Our traveller is completely stunned. E—! E— was his friend, the friend whose wit and raillery he dreaded, when he blushed at the thought of his own weakness during the wakeful night. And E— was now dead. The traveller pursues his journey. But one single thought occupies his mind. The words Dead! Lost! Lost! ring in his ears. Neither the pleasures nor the philosophies of the world can satisfy him now. The old resolution is virtually taken—”I will arise.” He abandons his travels and turns his horse’s head homewards. His intellect does not readily accept the evidences of religion. But his moral nature is thoroughly aroused. And within a few months this young man surrenders his whole soul to Christ as his Saviour and Lord. This was Adoniram Judson, whose six-and-thirty years of unwearied devotion to missionary work have won for him the honourable and well-deserved appellation of the “Apostle of Burmah.”
A Word of Warning.
I beseech you, by the salvation of your precious soul and the mercies of God, to make good and sure work of your salvation. O for the Lord’s sake, look narrowly to the work. Read over your life with the light of God’s day—light and sun; for salvation is not casten down at
every man’s door. It is good to look to your compass, and all that you have need of, ere you take shipping; for no wind can blow you back again. Remember, when the road is ended, and the play either won or lost, and you are in the outmost circle and border of time, and shall put your foot within the march of eternity, and all your good things of this short night dream shall seem to you as the ashes of a blaze of thorns, and your poor soul shall be crying, “Lodging, lodging, for God’s sake,” then shall your soul be more glad of your Lord’s favour than if you had the charters of three worlds for all eternity. Let pleasures, gain and the desires of this world be put over into God’s hands as arrested and fenced goods that you cannot intromit with. Be humbled and walk softly. Stoop, stoop; it is a low entry to go in at heaven’s gates.. There is infinite justice in the party you have to do with: it is His nature not to acquit the guilty. The law of God will not want (deduct) one farthing of the sinner; and every man must either pay in his own person or in his cautioner, Christ. It is violence to corrupt nature for a man to be holy; to quit will, pleasures, worldly love, earthly happiness, and an itching of heart after this overgilded world, and to be content that Christ trample upon all. My counsel is that you come out and leave the multitude, and let Christ have your company, let them take clay and this perishing world who love it—Christ is a more worthy and noble portion. Blessed are they who get Him.—S. Rutherford.
The Redeemed in Heaven.
The saints in heaven shall have the glorious presence of God and of the Lamb. God himself shall be with them, and they shall ever be with the Lord. God is everywhere present in respect of His essence; the saints on earth have His especial gracious presence, but in heaven they have His glorious presence. There they are brought near to the throne of the Great King, and stand before Him, where He shows His inconceivable glory. There they have the tabernacle of God, on which the cloud of glory rests, the all glorious human nature of Christ wherein the fulness of the Godhead dwells; not veiled as in the days of His humiliation, but shining through that blessed flesh, that all the saints may behold His glory, and making that body more glorious than a thousand suns, so that the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, but “the glory of God doth lighten it. And the Lamb is the light thereof”; properly the candle thereof, that is the Lamb is the luminary or luminous body, which gives light to the city; as the sun and moon now give light to the world, or as a candle lightens a dark room. And the light proceeding from that glorious luminary, for the city, is the glory of God. Sometimes the candle burnt very
dim; it was hid under a bushel, in the time of His humiliation, only now and then it darted out some rays of this light, which dazzled the eyes of the spectators, but it is set on high in the city of God, where it shines and shall shine for ever in perfection of glory. It was sometimes laid aside, as a stone disallowed of the builders; but now it is, and for ever will be, the light or luminary of that city, and that like “unto a stone most precious even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.”
—Boston.