VII
Many years ago, Ebenezer Wooton, an earnest but eccentric evangelist, was conducting a series of summer evening services on the village green at Lidford Brook. The last meeting had been held; the crowd was melting slowly away; and the evangelist was engaged in taking down the marquee. All at once a young fellow approached him and asked, casually rather than earnestly, 'Mr. Wooton, what must I do to be saved?' The preacher took the measure of his man.
'Too late!' he said, in a matter of fact kind of way, glancing up from a somewhat obstinate tent-peg with which he was struggling. 'Too late, my friend, too late!' The young fellow was startled.
'Oh, don't say that, Mr. Wooton!' he pleaded, a new note coming into his voice. 'Surely it isn't too late just because the meetings are over?'
'Yes, my friend,' exclaimed the evangelist, dropping the cord in his hand, straightening himself up, and looking right into the face of his questioner, 'it's too late! You want to know what you must do to be saved, and I tell you that you're hundreds of years too late! The work of salvation is done, completed, finished! It was finished on the Cross; Jesus said so with the last breath that He drew! What more do you want?'
And, then and there, it dawned upon the now earnest inquirer on the village green as, at about the same time, it dawned upon young Hudson Taylor in the hay-loft, that 'since the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid upon the Cross, there was nothing for him to do but to fall upon his knees and accept the Saviour.' And there, under the elms, the sentinel stars witnessing the great transaction, he kneeled in glad thanksgiving and rested his soul for time and for eternity on 'the Finished Work of Christ.'