A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

Some one handed him a hymn-book open to the hymn. He was not acquainted with any hymns, but it struck him as strange that this one should be about hiding. He accepted the book, as he did all things when he was conscious of his predicament, merely as a mask to keep him from suspicion, and he pretended to sing, although he had never heard the tune before.

“Oh, safe to the Rock that is higher than I,

My soul in its sorrow and anguish would fly;

So sinful, so weary, Thine, Thine would I be;

Thou blest ‘Rock of Ages,’ I’m hiding in Thee!”

Murray Van Rensselaer had never heard of the Rock of Ages except in connection with an insurance company. He did not understand even vaguely the reference, but as his lips formed the words which his eyes conveyed to his brain from the book, his heart seemed to grasp for them, and be saying them in earnest. Hiding! Oh, if there were only some hiding for him! Sinful? Yes, he must be sinful! He had never thought he was very bad in the days that were past, but somehow since he had been in this region where everybody talked about Right and Wrong as if they were personified, and where all the standards of living were so different, it had begun to dawn upon him that if these standards were true, then he personally was a sinner. It was not just his having been responsible for Bessie’s death. It was not even his running away when he found he had killed her. Nor yet, was it his allowing these good people to think he was Allan Murray—a Christian with a long record of good deeds and right living behind him. It was something back of all that—something that had to do with the Power they called God, and with that vague Person they called Jesus, who was God’s Son. It was dawning upon him that he had to do with God! He had never expected that he would ever have anything to do or decide in the remotest way connected with God, and now suddenly it seemed as if God was there all the time, behind everything, and had not been pleased with his relation to life. It seemed that God had been there dealing with him even before he was born into the family of Van Rensselaer. Back of being Van Rensselaer’s child, he was God’s child! His father had bitterly berated him for the way he had misused and been disloyal to the fine old name of Van Rensselaer; how would God speak to him sometime about the way he had treated Him?

“Hiding in Thee! Hiding in Thee!” sang the gathering throng earnestly and joyously, and he shuddered as his lips joined with theirs. Hiding in God! How could he hide in God? It would be like taking refuge in a court of justice and expecting them to protect him from his own sin!

He recalled the first lesson his Sunday-school class had taught him about Saul who was Paul, when a light shined round about him and he met the Lord on the way to Damascus. He had heard more of him since, in sermons, and in the Bible readings, and in his talks with Mrs. Summers. One could not hear a story like that referred to again and again without getting the real meaning into his soul, but never before had it come home to him as a thing that really happened, and that might happen again, as it did while he sat there singing. It seemed to him that he was suddenly seeing the Lord—that for the first time he had been halted in his giddy life and made to see that he was fighting against the Lord God; that his whole life had been a rebellion against the Power that had created him, just as his whole former life at home had been a life apart from the life of the home and the parents who had given him life and maintained him. It was not the square thing at all. He had never thought of it so before. He would not have done it if he had ever thought of it that way. Of course his father had told him in a way—a bitter way, cursed at him, but given him the money to pay for his follies. And he had not been square with his father! He had not been square with the law of the land either! He had broken it again and again, and counted it something for which to be proud when he got away without having to pay a fine. All his life he had run away from fines and punishments. So far as law was concerned he had been many times guilty. And then when one went further and thought about the laws of God, why he did not even know what they were. He had never inquired before until a Sunday-school session had forced the ten commandments to his attention. Of course, he had always heard of the ten commandments, but they had seemed as archaic as the tomb of some Egyptian Pharaoh. He had no notion whatever that anybody connected them with any duties of life today, until Mrs. Summers had discussed the subject briefly one night in that mild impersonal way of hers.

But now as he sat on that platform, singing those words about a hiding-place for a soul that was sinful and weary, he knew that he ought to have known those commandments. He ought to have found out God’s will for him. He knew that the right name for the state he was in was sin, and he felt an overwhelming burden from the knowledge. He was hearing God’s voice speak to him, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,” and he did not understand it any better than Saul had done as he lay blinded on the way to Damascus.

The singing had ceased, and he realized that he had not yet slipped away. This was to be a devotional meeting. Perhaps during a prayer he might find a better opportunity.