For when the Saviour’s Blood has washed away the sin, the blackness can no longer remain. Humble penitence and contrite love remain, but the misery and despair are taken away. He bears the grief and carries the sorrow; He takes the shame, the curse, the wrath of a holy and a just God. It was a thought almost too overwhelming for Saul to bear. It broke his heart and humbled him to the very dust. But he no longer fought against the infinite love—no longer hardened his heart against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of comfort and sanctification. He had felt the blessedness of the pardoning love, and he yearned for the guiding light that should show him how he might direct his steps for the time that remained to him.
Of that time he had not yet thought. Those hours had been too crowded with extreme emotion. He had passed through a crisis of spiritual existence which made all earthly things dwarf into insignificance. It was only when the hour of midnight tolled forth, and he recollected that a new day had begun for him, that he first folded his hands in prayer, lifting up his heart to God in thanksgiving for the light which was now in his soul, and then turning his gaze upon Abner, who had never moved from his side all this while, asked softly—
“What day is it?”
“Sunday, my lad. A new day and a new week. I little thought upon the last Sunday what the Lord had in store for me for this. The Lord’s Day, my lad—the Lord’s Day. That’s what I love to call it. May we have grace to keep it to His glory. Saul, my lad, you have no fears now?”
“Fears of what, grandfather?”
“Fears about the Lord’s love—about the forgiveness He has granted yu?”
A singular radiance came over Saul’s face.
“No—I can’t doubt it. It’s too wonderful to be understood. But I can feel it right through me. I’ve no fear.”
“And would you fear, my boy, if you had to see Him face to face—if you should be called upon to meet Him—if He should come this very night to gather to Himself those that wait for His coming?”
Saul looked earnestly into the old man’s face. He knew something of Abner’s belief and hope, though it was now several years since he had spoken of it in his hearing. As a youth his grandfather, who was slowly gathering up fragments from the prophetic Scriptures, and, in common with many others who met for prayer and meditation, beginning to awaken to a belief in the sudden and instantaneous appearing of the Lord on earth, had striven to convince the boy of the truth of this belief, and awaken within his soul that burning love and longing after the coming and kingdom of the Lord which was stealing upon his own. Saul, however, had not been responsive. To him it was all old wives’ fables, and he had sometimes mocked and sometimes sneered, so that Abner had soon ceased to urge him, trusting that faith would come at last through the mercy of God, though not by the will of man. Nevertheless the foundations had been laid, inasmuch as Saul now understood what his grandfather meant, and could even recall the words of Scriptural promise in which Christ had spoken of His return, and the Apostles had exhorted the early churches to remain steadfast in the hope of it. And as these memories crowded in upon his mind and brain now—now that the love of the Lord had awakened within him, and he was only longing for some means of showing that love and abasing himself at His feet in penitence and adoration—the memory of these words and promises came back to him charged with a wonderful beauty and significance, and clasping his hands together he replied in a choked voice—