One day, when going my usual round of visiting, I called to leave some relief with a poor woman recovering from a severe illness. On leaving, she asked me very entreatingly to call at the next cottage, upon a family lately come into the parish, and in great distress. The man, she said, was far gone in decline, but so resolute and boorish in his language and behaviour, that the neighbours were afraid to go near him. The woman accompanied me to the house, but left me at the door, which was opened by a timid and rather interesting-looking woman. “Is it your husband who is ill?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, in a low voice, keeping the door half closed as she spoke; “and very ill indeed he is.” “Can I see him?” I asked. “Yes — no — I can’t say just this minute,” replied the poor wife, and her lip quivered while she spoke, and a flush of fear lest she had offended me rose in her cheek. “Well, never mind,” I said; “another day he may be able to see me, but in health or sickness there is no time like the present.” So saying, I moved away from the door. With an unexpected energy of look and tone, the poor woman answered, “That’s true,” and opening the door at once, bade me follow her. Seated beside the fire was her husband, and awfully ill he looked. He appeared to be about the middle size, with a very intelligent countenance, but a very bad expression; his piercing eye seemed to look me through as I entered, and ask, “What brings you here?” “Well,” I said, “my friend, I heard you were ill, and I called to see you.” He nodded his head, and looked at the fire. “You appear to be very ill,” I continued, “and I thought you might like to be read to, or have a tract lent you, as you must now be much alone.” “No,” he replied sternly, “I want neither; I can read for myself. I have a good understanding to know the meaning of what I read; and as to the tracts, I know quite as much as they can tell me. I am not an ignorant man.” “Well,” I said, “the first lesson learnt in the school of Christ teaches a man he is a fool.” “Then, thank God, I’m not a fool for all that,” he replied. “I have been blessed with a good understanding and a little education, and I have turned both to good account.” I soon saw this mode of skirmishing with a man of his mind was only trifling with time, so I turned the conversation by asking had he been long ill? “About six months,” he replied sulkily. “In following my trade, I met with an accident, fell into a well, took cold, and have been ill ever since.” “Do you think you’ll recover?” I asked. “God knows,” he answered; “how can I tell that?” “Well, in the event of your present illness ending in death,” I said, “what do you think of the state of your soul, and what hope have you beyond the grave?” “Oh, as to my soul,” replied the man carelessly, “that is well enough! I try all I can, and God is merciful.” “And are you dying upon that dependence?” said I; “for if so, what need had the Lord Jesus Christ to suffer, bleed, and die, if you can get to heaven without Him?” “I believe in Christ,” he retorted in the same careless tone. “I believe He came to save sinners.” “All sinners?” I asked. “Yes; all sinners.” “Well, then, why are not all sinners saved?” I inquired; “for the Bible tells us, ‘The wicked shall be cast into hell, and all nations that forget God.’ It is clear, then, from Scripture, He is not the Saviour of all sinners.” “No,” said the sick man, “not all sinners, I suppose, but only those that try for it.” “Try for it,” I repeated; “what do you mean by trying for it?” “Why, I mean, to be sure,” said the man, “those that do the best they can, and believe in God, and repent of their former sins; and I am trying for it.” There was a pause for a minute, and I broke it by saying, “Then the sooner you let it alone the better, for ’tis all labour lost.” An involuntary start was all the answer I got. I waited for a second or two, and then said, “The Bible tells us, ‘A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven,’ and till God begin with you all your trying will go for nothing.” “And do you mean to tell me my trying is of no use?” said the sick man, with a tone and look of defiance. “I do,” I said; “I deliberately say, on the warrant of God’s word, ‘Except you are born again you cannot enter the kingdom of God;’ and you can have no more to say to your spiritual birth than you had to say to your natural birth. It must be God’s work from first to last.” “And you mean to say a man can’t try?” he inquired, in the same tone. “Yes,” I replied; “I mean what I say. God must be beforehand with the sinner in everything. He is beforehand in the choice of the sinner in eternity. He is beforehand in his creation in time, and He is beforehand in his new creation in grace. It is all God’s work from first to last to save a sinner from hell.” “Very likely,” replied the man; “but I suppose he can pray for it.” “No, nor that either,” I said; “you can’t pray till you are born again. You may say words, but you cannot pray. The babe must be born before it can cry.” “Then do you mean to tell me I am to leave off my prayers?” asked the man. “Just as you like,” I answered. “If you think there is any merit in your prayers, the sooner you leave them off the better, as far as that goes. The prayer of the unconverted is like the bow I get from the poor of the parish — it is a mark of respect, and a token of superiority, and as such it finds its reward; as such it is an acknowledgment of God from His creatures, and on a par with the cry of the raven and roar of the wolf, which God recognises in His own way; but this is not prayer. True prayer must be dropped into the soul by God, and never comes but from a renewed heart.” “Then,” said the man, “what is the meaning of these words, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you?'” “Christ spake these words to His disciples, not to the unconverted,” I replied; “and if you should ever be made a disciple you will find He says them to you.” “Well,” rejoined the sick man in a taunting tone, “if people are not to be saved for trying or praying, will you just tell us how they are to be saved?” “It is God’s work from first to last,” I replied. “He loves His people — chooses them — dies for them in the Person of His Son — renews them by the Holy Ghost — cuts them down in their feelings — roots up all their fancied religion — reveals a precious Christ to their heart — keeps them to the end — and lands them in glory.” “And that’s your way?” said the man. “Well, I would rather have my own religion than that.” “Yes,” I replied, “and you will keep it too, unless God begins a work in you. Nothing to pay is the marrow of the gospel; but proud man won’t have it so; he wants to pay something towards his salvation by his tryings and his prayers; but when God the Spirit enters the soul, He shows the sinner he is lost and ruined, and has nothing to pay with. He brings sin to sight — He shows him what God is — what His law requires, and this terrifies — alarms; but ‘there is hope of a tree if it be cut down,’ and a soul brought here by God shall be made to see something more in nothing to pay, for that Jesus has paid all, done all, and left the sinner nothing to pay.” “Well, I’ll try for all that,” said the man doggedly. “I call your way cruel.” “You are not the first that has said so,” I replied; “but let us compare the two ways, and let us just see which is cruel. You believe you were born a sinner?” A surly sort of a grunt I took for yes, and proceeded. “Well now, I come to you and say, you are a sinner, but you must repent, believe, pray, love God, keep His law, and then He will change your heart, and take you to heaven. Or suppose I come to you and say, you are a sinner — dead in trespasses and sin, but God can raise you to life — give you a new heart — sprinkle the blood of Jesus upon your conscience — pardon your sin, and take you to glory; and, if you are loved and chosen of God, all this must and shall be done for you. Now which of these ways has most mercy in it for a poor sinner?” “Both cruel alike,” replied the man bitterly; “and the best thing for me to do, by your account, is to make up my mind to be damned.” “Well,” said I, “God only knows the end from the beginning; and unless you are born again you must perish; for ‘nothing can enter the kingdom of heaven that defileth, worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.’ You are a sinner by nature and practice, and as such you cannot dwell with God.” “I know that as well as you,” he answered; “but do you mean to say Christ Jesus does not save sinners?” “Christ Jesus came to do the will of God,” I replied. “He says, ‘I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me; and this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me, I should lose nothing.’ The work of Jesus was ‘to save His people from their sins.’ All sinners are not Christ’s people, or they would be saved from their sins; but the sinners whom Jesus saves are loved of God, and given Him by God, and He does the will of God in saving them. It is the Holy Spirit makes them sensible of their state as sinners, and this brings them to cry to God for mercy and pardon out of a broken, bleeding heart. But now,” continued I, as I rose to go, “what if God’s design in afflicting your poor body were to reveal all this to your soul, and so prove you to be one of those precious sinners loved by God, and given to Christ before all worlds! what if you should be made to see all your tryings and prayers were only ‘filthy rags’ — fuel fit for burning! what if God were to cut you down in your feelings and hopes, and tear away all your rotten props! and then display a bleeding, dying Christ to your wondering eyes, and say to you:
‘This heart I bought with blood,
This heart it shall be mine!’
and then make you happier than your tongue could tell in the enjoyment of a free salvation?” I waited for a response; there was none, except the answer in my own soul that it was precious truth, whether he was ever made to feel it or not. Just as I laid my hand on the lock of the door to depart, he looked over his shoulder, and said, “You may leave us one of your tracts if you like.” “With pleasure,” I replied, “and perhaps another day I may look in.”
(To be continued)