“And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.”
The stranger’s voice was low and fervent; he looked round at his congregation, taking them all in, those old sinners, and young and middle-aged sinners, who, in the common acceptation of the term, were sinners more than other men.
He looked round at them, and then he gave it to them.
In that low fervent voice of his, his body bent a little forward, he opened out to them a revelation, he poured out on them the vials of God’s wrath. Not an idea had he of sparing them, he called things by their right names, and spoke of sin, such sin as theirs—drunkenness, uncleanness, thieving—as the Bible speaks of these things; and he showed them that every one of them were filthy and gone astray utterly.
When he said this—without ever raising his voice, but in such a manner, with such emphasis, that every word told home—he sketched rapidly two or three portraits for them to recognise if they would.
They were fancy portraits, but they were sketched from a thousand realities. The murderer’s last night in his cell—the drunkard with the legions of devils, conjured up by delirium tremens, clustering round him—the lost woman dying out in the snow. Then, when many heads were drooping with shame and terror, he suddenly and completely changed his tone.
With infinite pity in his voice he told them that he was sorry for them, that if tears of blood could help them, he would shed them for them.
Their present lives were miserable, degraded, but no words could tell what awaited them when God arose to execute vengeance.
On every man, woman, and child, that vengeance was coming, and was fully due. It was on its road, and when it overtook them, the dark cell, the whipping-post, solitary confinement for ever, would seem as heaven in comparison.
Then he explained to them why the vengeance was so sure, the future woe so inevitable.