Chapter 9

Such a rebuke smites a minister like the sudden coming of the Day of Judgment. After his conversion John Wesley wrote a terrible letter to his old counselor, William Law. 'How will you answer to our common Lord,' he asks, 'that you, sir, never led me into light? Why did I scarcely ever hear you name the _name of Christ_? Why did you never urge me to _faith in His blood_? I beseech you, sir, to consider whether the true reason of your never pressing this salvation upon me was not this--_that you never had it yourself_!'

'It was a terrible discovery to make,' says Mr. Begbie. 'To think that he--Richard Rodwell, Vicar of Bartown--knew so little of the nature of God that he could say no single word that had significance for this dying soul! He was dumb. The words on his lips were the words of the Church. Out of his own heart, out of his own soul, out of his own experience, he could say nothing.'

'Forgive me,' he said, as he bent over the form on the bed, 'forgive me for failing you. It is not Christ who has failed; it is I.' He turned to go. The dying man opened his eyes and looked at Rodwell sadly and tragically.

'Try to learn what those words mean,' he muttered. '_Born again!_ It's the bad man's only chance.'

They parted, never to meet again; and from another minister's lips the doctor learned the secret for which he craved.

II

It is very difficult to excuse Mr. Rodwell, especially when we remember that the words that the dying doctor found so captivating, and that he himself found so perplexing, were originally intended to meet just such cases as that of Dr. Blund.

'What is it to be _born again_? How can a man be _born again_?' asked the voice from the bed.

'How can a man _be born_ when he is old?' asked Nicodemus, as he heard the Saviour's words uttered for the first time.

'When he is old!' To Nicodemus, as to Dr. Blund, there was something singularly attractive about the thought of babyhood, the thought of pastlessness, the thought of beginning life all over again. But to the aged ruler, as to the aged doctor, it was an insoluble enigma, an inscrutable mystery.

'_How?_' asked Nicodemus of the Saviour. '_How_ can a man _be born_ when he is old?'

'_How?_' asked Dr. Blund of Mr. Rodwell. '_How_ can a man be _born again_?'

We all feel that, unless the gospel can meet just such cases as these, we might almost as well have no gospel at all. And yet we have also felt the force of that persistent and penetrating _How?_

Dr. Blund is no frolic of Mr. Begbie's imagination. Dr. Blund is the representative of all those--and their name is legion--who, in the crisis of the soul's secret history, have turned towards the Saviour's strange saying with the most intense wistfulness and yearning. Let me cite three instances--each as unlike the others as it could possibly be--in order to show that all sorts and conditions of men have at some time felt as Dr. Blund felt in those last hours of his. John Bunyan, the tinker of Bedford, was born in the _seventeenth_ century; the Duke of Wellington, soldier and statesman, was born in the _eighteenth_ century; Frederick Charrington, the London brewer, was born in the _nineteenth_ century. From a great cloud of available witnesses I select these three.

As to John Bunyan, the story of the beginnings of grace in the dreamer's soul is familiar to us all, but it will do us no harm to hear it from his own lips once again. 'Upon a day,' he says, 'the good providence of God called me to Bedford, to work at my calling; and in one of the streets of that town I came to where there were three or four poor women sitting in the sun talking about the things of God; and being now willing to hear them discourse, I drew near to hear what they said; but I heard, yet understood not; they were far above, out of my reach; for their talk was about _a new birth_!'

'_Their talk was about a new birth!_'

'_Ye must be born again!_'

'_I heard_,' says Bunyan, '_but I understood not!_'

'At this,' he goes on to say, 'at this I felt my heart begin to shake, for I saw that in all my thoughts about salvation, _the new birth_ did never enter into my mind!'

Thus the soul of the sleeper awoke. He walked the streets of Bedford asking the old, old question, the question of Nicodemus, the question of Dr. Blund, the question of us all. 'How can a man be _born again_? How can a man be _born again_?'

From John Bunyan to the Duke of Wellington seems a far cry. But the transition may not be as drastic as it appears. Dr. W. H. Fitchett, who has made a special study of the character and achievements of the great Duke, recently told the story of a remarkable and voluminous correspondence that took place between Wellington and a young lady named Miss Jenkins. To this earnest and devout girl, her faith was the biggest thing in life. She had but one passionate and quenchless desire: the desire to share it with others. She sought for converts everywhere. A murderer awaited execution in the local gaol. Miss Jenkins obtained permission to visit him. She entered the condemned cell, pleaded with him, wept over him, won him to repentance, and the man went to the scaffold blessing her.

Then, from the winning of the lowest, she turned to the winning of the highest. She fastened her eyes upon the Duke of Wellington, the victor of Waterloo, the statesman of the hour, the most commanding figure in the three kingdoms. Wellington was then sixty-five, a man covered with honor and absorbed in public affairs. But, to Miss Jenkins, he was simply a great worldly figure, and, in 1834, she wrote a letter--a letter winged by many prayers--warning him of the peril of living without a sure, deep consciousness of the forgiveness of sins, through the redemption of Jesus Christ. Wellington's iron nature was strongly moved. He replied by return of post, and thus inaugurated a correspondence in the course of which he wrote to Miss Jenkins no fewer than three hundred and ninety letters. In the course of this amazing correspondence, Miss Jenkins begged for an interview, and it was granted. Miss Jenkins took out her New Testament and read to the old warrior these very words. '_Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God!_' 'Here,' says Dr. Fitchett, in unfolding the story, 'here was a preacher of quite a new type! A girl's lips were reciting Christ's tremendous words: "_Ye must be born again!_" She was addressing them directly to him, and her uplifted finger was challenging him. Some long-dormant religious sensibilities awoke within him. The grace of the speaker, and the mystic quality of the thing spoken, arrested him.' To the end of his days the Duke firmly believed that, by means of this girl-prophet, God Himself spoke to his soul that day.

Mr. Frederick Charrington's story has been put on record by Guy Thorne. He was the son of the great brewer, the heir to more than a million pounds, and his time was very largely his own. He traveled and formed friendships. One of his earliest friends was Lord Garvagh. They traveled together, and, when they parted, Lord Garvagh asked Charrington if he would grant him one request. 'When you are quite alone,' his lordship pleaded, 'I should like you to read slowly and carefully the third chapter of John's Gospel!' Later on, Charrington met William Rainsford, and the acquaintance ripened into intimacy. 'Do you know what I wish you would do, Fred?' Rainsford said to him one day. 'I wish, when you are by yourself, that you would study the third chapter of the Gospel of John!'

'This is a very curious thing,' Charrington said to himself. 'My old friend, Lord Garvagh, and my new friend, Rainsford, both say exactly the same thing; and they both profess to be saved.'

Thus doubly challenged, he read the chapter with the closest attention, and was arrested by the words: '_Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God!_' 'As I read,' he says, 'light came into my soul,' and he ever afterwards regarded that moment as the turning-point of his whole life.

III

Now, what did these men--these and a hundred thousand more--see in the strange, mysterious words that Jesus spoke to the aged ruler twenty centuries ago? That is the question, and the question is not a difficult one to answer.

_A new birth!_ To be _born again_! What can it mean? It can only mean one thing. 'I wish,' somebody has sung----

I wish that there were some wonderful place Called the Land of Beginning Again, Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches And all of our poor, selfish grief Could be dropped, like a shabby old coat, at the door, And never put on any more.

The words, if they mean anything, mean that there _is_ such a place. A man _may_ have a fresh start. In describing the greatest change that took place in his life--the greatest change that can take place in any man's life--Frank Bullen says: 'I love that description of conversion as the "_new birth_." No other definition touches the truth of the process at all. So helpless, so utterly knowledgeless, possessing nothing but the vague consciousness of life just begun!' Dr. Blund was thinking of the babes whose first breath he had seen drawn. So innocent; so pastless! Oh, to begin where they were beginning! Oh, to be _born again_!'

Dr. Blund cannot begin where they were beginning. He cannot enjoy again--at any rate in this world--the opportunities of growth and development that were theirs. But he can be _born again_! He can start afresh! Dr. Blund made that discovery on his deathbed, and, in talking of the dead doctor's experience, the young minister made the same discovery a day or two later. He felt his need; he turned in an agony of supplication to the Saviour whom he had so often preached; and he, too, entered into the new life.

'He made the great discovery,' Harold Begbie says. 'It had happened; the longed-for event had come; he stood by himself, all by himself, conscious now of the heart; no longer satisfied either with his own intellect or the traditions of a church. The miracle had happened. He had discovered the helplessness of humanity. He had discovered the need of the soul. He had begun at last to see into the heart of things.' He had been _born again_!

There are two kinds of progress. There is the progress that moves away from infancy towards youth, towards maturity, towards age and decrepitude. And there is a higher progress, a progress that moves towards infancy. 'Except ye be converted and become as little children,' Jesus said, 'ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God.' And the only way of becoming a little child once more is by being _born again_. It is the glory of the gospel that it offers a man that chance.

XIV

HEDLEY VICARS' TEXT

I

'_Those words are the sheet-anchor of my soul!_' said Hedley Vicars, a gallant young Army officer, as he sat talking to his sweetheart in the handsome drawing-room at Terling Place.

'_Those words are more golden than gold!_' exclaimed Miss Frances Ridley Havergal, and she ordered that they should be inscribed upon her tomb.

'_Those words did give a great ease to my spirit!_' John Bunyan tells us.

'_Those words_,' said old Donald Menzies, the mystic of Drumtochty, '_those words fell upon me like a gleam from the Mercy-seat!_'

What words? Let us return to Hedley Vicars! He was only twenty-eight when he fell, leading his regiment--the Ninety-seventh--in action before Sebastopol. The enemy attacked suddenly under cover of the darkness. 'The men of the Ninety-seventh behaved with the utmost gallantry and coolness,' said Lord Raglan, in the historic dispatch that reached England on Good Friday, 1855. 'They were led by Captain Vicars, who, unfortunately, lost his life in the engagement; and I am assured that nothing could be more distinguished than the gallantry and good example which he set to the detachment under his command.' His biographer tells us that it was more than three years earlier--in November, 1851--that, whilst awaiting in his room the return of a brother officer, he idly turned over the leaves of a Bible which lay on the table. The words, '_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin_,' caught his eyes and profoundly impressed his mind. 'If,' he said, as he closed the sacred Volume, 'if this be true, I will henceforth live by the grace of God as a man should live who has been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.' That night he could scarcely sleep; the great words repeated themselves again and again within his throbbing brain; they seemed too good to be true.

'_All sin! All sin!_'

'_Cleanseth from all sin!_'

'_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin._'

He never tired of telling of that wonderful experience. Miss Marsh, to whom he was engaged to be married, says that, almost as soon as they were first introduced to each other, 'he gave her an outline of the manner in which God had worked the great change in his heart. With forceful simplicity he told the point of the story; how the words, "_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin_," became the sheet-anchor of his soul, adding, "Thus was I born again of the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever!"'

II

Away back in the infancy of the world I hear one of the earliest of the Patriarchs uttering a great and bitter cry. '_I have sinned!_' he cries; '_what shall I do?_' And, as I turn over the leaves of my Bible, I find that question echoed again and again, generation after generation and age after age. Yet never once does it receive the slightest hint or suggestion of an answer. And, depend upon it, if the Son of Man had never come into the world, it would have echoed round the globe--still unanswered and unanswerable--until this day. 'O Plato, Plato!' cried Socrates, 'it may be that the gods can forgive sin, but, alas, I do not see how!' Nor anybody else. Job's question fell back upon his face; the universe could give him no reply. It is very striking. And so, here at the beginning of my Bible, I hear the first man's question; and, here at the end of my Bible, I hear the last man's answer!

'_What shall I do? What shall I do?_'

'_I have sinned; what shall I do?_'

'_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin!_'

III

These two men--Job and John--present us, first with a _comparison_, and then with a _contrast_. It is interesting to examine side by side their views of the sin that represented so terrific a problem.

Job thought of it as a _contaminating_ thing. He felt that his soul was soiled. 'What shall I do?' he cries, 'what shall I do? If I bathe myself in snow water and wash my hands never so clean, yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch and mine own clothes shall abhor me!' Every day of his life he thought he heard, morning and noon and night, the awful Voice of the Most High. 'Though thou wash thee with niter, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before Me, saith the Lord God.' He felt as Macbeth felt when advised to cleanse the stain from his guilty hands.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand! No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red!

Job was like the old lama, in Rudyard Kipling's _Kim_, who, year after year, wandered through cities and rice-fields, over the hills and across the plains, always searching, but searching in vain, for the River, the River of the Arrow, the River that could cleanse from sin!

John, on the other hand, thought of sin as a _condemning_ thing. The great word 'condemnation' occurs on almost every page of his writings. He feels that every man's sin carries its own conviction. It is like finger-print evidence; it speaks for itself; it needs no long procession of corroborating witnesses. There it is! It tells its own terrible tale, and there is no gainsaying it.

IV

And yet, looked at in another way, the thoughts of these two men stand in sharp and striking contrast, the one with the other. '_I have sinned_,' cried Job; '_what shall I do? What shall I do?_'

But there is no reply. In the course of the stupendous drama that bears his name, Job scours sea and land, earth and sky, for some answer to the wild questionings of his soul. He climbs the summits of the loftiest mountains and thrids the labyrinth of the deepest mine; he calls to the heights of the heavens and to the depths of the sea. But there is no answering voice, and he is left to nurse his dumb and piteous despair. Every attempt that he makes to rid his soul of its defilement is like the effort of a man who, in trying to remove the stain from his window, rubs on the wrong side of the glass.

But, in contrast with all this, John saw the Cross! How could he ever forget it? Had he not stood beside it, gazed into the thorn-crowned face, and received from those quivering lips their last sacred bequest--the charge of the Saviour's mother? And, all through the eventful years that followed, John never tired of presenting the Cross as the only answer to the Patriarch's question. He may not have perfectly understood it--no man ever yet comprehended all its heights and sounded all its depths! But it is easier to accept it than to reject it. For, if I reject it, I am confronted by an enigma even more unanswerable than Job's.

Oh, why was He there as the Bearer of sin If on Jesus my guilt was not laid? Oh, why from His side flowed the sin-cleansing stream, If His dying my debt has not paid?

If, that is to say, the Cross is not the divine answer to the mystery of all the ages, then who shall attempt to solve the dark, inscrutable, impenetrable mystery of the Cross?

V

But it is! Experience proves it! In the course of his dazzling Apocalypse, John tells us that he saw a war being waged in heaven; and the hosts of righteousness overcame their powerful and sinister foes by the virtue of the blood of the Lamb. I do not know what he means--never expect to know in this world. But I know that, in this life, something very like it happens every day.

Martin Luther says that, in one of his periods of depression at the Wartburg, it seemed to him that he saw a hideous and malignant form inscribing the record of his own transgressions round the walls of his room. There seemed to be no end to the list--sins of thought, sins of word, sins of deed, sins of omission, sins of commission, secret sins, open sins--the pitiless scribe wrote on and on interminably. Whilst the accuser was thus occupied, Luther bowed his head and prayed. When he looked up again, the writer had paused, and, turning, faced him.

'Thou hast forgotten just one thing!' said Luther.

'And that--?' asked his tormentor.

'Take thy pen once more and write across it all: "_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin!_"' And, at the utterance of those words, the spirit vanished and the walls were clean!

In his _Grace Abounding_, Bunyan tells us of a period in his life during which his soul seemed to be held in fetters of brass; and, every step he took, he took to the sound of the clanking of chains. 'But about ten or eleven o'clock on a certain day,' he says, 'as I was walking under a hedge (full of sorrow and guilt, God knows), suddenly this sentence rushed in upon me, "_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin._" At this I made a stand in my spirit and began to conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the tempter did leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin and the blood of Christ thus represented to me: that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it than this little clod or stone is to the vast and wide field that here I see. This gave me good encouragement.'

Neither Martin Luther nor John Bunyan would object to my setting them in the company of Donald Menzies. For, like them, Donald was at war with principalities and powers, with the rulers of the darkness of this world, with spiritual wickedness in high places. In the lonely anguish of that grim struggle it seemed as though, at the last, the gates of hell must have prevailed against him.

'Then,' he says, 'I heard a voice, oh, yes, as plain as you are hearing me: "_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin._" It was like a gleam from the Mercy-seat, but I waited to see whether Satan had any answer and my heart was standing still. But there was no word from him, not one word. Then I leaped to my feet and cried, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And I looked round, and there was no one to be seen but Janet in her chair with the tears on her cheeks, and she was saying, "Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!"'

'_When I uttered those words,_' says Luther, '_the evil spirit vanished and the walls were clean!_'

'_When I made a stand upon those words,_' says Bunyan, '_the tempter did steal away from me and I entered into peace!_'

'_When I heard those words,_' says Donald Menzies, '_I waited to see if Satan had any answer, but there was no word from him, not one word!_'

This, surely, is what the seer means when he says that he saw all the hosts of evil routed and scattered by the virtue of the blood of the Lamb.

VI

Down at the library yesterday afternoon I spent an hour in glancing through the various volumes of Southey's _Commonplace Book_. And, among a vast assortment of musty notes that are now of interest to nobody, I came upon this: 'I have been reading of a man on the Malabar coast who had inquired of many devotees and priests as to how he might make atonement for his sins. At last he was directed to drive iron spikes, sufficiently blunted, through his sandals, and on these spikes he was to place his naked feet and then walk a distance of five hundred miles. He undertook the journey, but loss of blood and exhaustion of body compelled him to rest one day under the shade of a spreading tree. As he lay there, a missionary approached and began to preach the gospel. He announced as his theme the words: "_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin_." Whilst the evangelist still preached, the man sprang up, tore off his sandals, and cried aloud: "That is what I want! That is what I want!" And he became a living witness to the fact that the redeeming blood of Christ _does_ cleanse from human guilt.'

'_That is what I want!_' cried Southey's pilgrim on the coast of Malabar.

'_That is what I want!_' cried Luther in the Wartburg.

'_That is what I want!_' cried Bunyan at Bedford.

'_That is what I want!_' cried Donald Menzies at Drumtochty.

'_That is what I want!_' exclaimed young Hedley Vicars, as his startled eyes fell upon the tremendous words that seemed to leap from the Bible on the table. '_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin._' 'That is what I want! That is what I want!'

Hedley Vicars appropriated the priceless gift held out to him, and his whole life was transfigured in consequence. His life--and his death! For, on that fatal night before Sebastopol, it was with Hedley Vicars as it was with the soldier with whom the poet has familiarized us. Everybody knows the story. Two men of God moved in the darkness across the field on which, that day, a battle had been fought.

And now they stand Beside a manly form, outstretched alone. His helmet from his head had fallen. His hand Still firmly grasped his keen but broken sword. His face was white and cold, and, thinking he was gone, They were just passing on, for time was precious, When a faint sigh caught their attentive ears. Life was still there, so bending down, They whispered in his ears most earnestly, Yet with that hush and gentleness with which We ever speak to a departing soul-- '_Brother! the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, Cleanseth from every sin._'