The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1910, Page 45

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

45

The pastor was shocked. He had often heard
such talk from people in health, but never before
from the lips of a dying man.
very earnestly of God’s Law and of man’s sinful-

He spoke to the man

ness avd damnation, and pointed him to Jesus, in
whom alone there is salvation, admonishing him to
commit his soul as a lost and condemned sinner to
the Savior of sinners. It was all in yain. At last
the pastor rose to go.

“But are you not going to pray with me?” asked
the man with surprise.

“Why should L pray with you?” the pastor re-
plied. “LT cannot offer your prayer: ‘God, [ thank
You cannot
offer my prayer: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner P

Thee that [am not as other men are.”

Ifow can we pray together?”
But he
évidently thought it was a sort of puzzle which he

This seemed to startle the man a little.

was too weak to solve, and so he begged the pastor
to pray just as he wished. ‘The pastor then did pray
for him, entreating the Holy Spirit to reveal to him
his own sinful heart and his need of forgiveness.
But the man never in the least changed. ITe
Ie repeated often his little
It was faith in himself.
with his own life.
pentance.

lingered some days.
He was satisfied
He died without a word of re-

“creed.”

On the pastor’s return to America he was re-
quested by the man’s family to see his brothers and
family friends. ‘They were very polite, but they did
not care to talk about the dead man. At last the
pastor asked one of them, a distant relative by mar-
riage only, to tell him what it all meant.

“You are entitled to know,” he replied. “I can-
not understand how the man could have died without
telling you. He was a forger and an embezzler. He
lived and died in France to escape arrest for his
crime. His family are suffering yet for the disgrace
of forgery and stealing in a public office!”

The pastor who tells this story adds: “I com-
mend this true story to all who are ‘trusting in them-
selves that they are righteous.’ How easy it is to
believe a lie! ‘The things which are against the
self-righteous man, be it even forgery and stealing,
are in his eyes ‘little faults, common to ‘all men,
not serious.’ What blindness and devilish delusion,
often held on to even in the face of death!”

No the self-righteous Pharisees Christ said,
“Verily, I say unto you, That the publicans and the
harlots go into the kingdom of God before you,”
Matt. 21, 31.

The Robber Saved.

At the time of the cholera in London a distin-
guished preacher was called to a death-bed. The
man who came to fetch him was a rather rough
fellow; but as the call came from a dying person,
the preacher, trusting in God’s protection, went with
him. After passing through several streets, they at
last came into a very narrow street, where the
preacher followed the man down a rope ladder into
a room which evidently was a den of thieves and
robbers.

Several wild-looking men were sitting about, and
in the corner of the room lay the dying man on a
bed of straw. As the preacher drew near, the man
groaned: “A short time ago [ was in your church
for the purpose of spying on some one.
heard words which L cannot forget. I thought I
could hide from God. But even the densest dark-
ness cannot hide us from Him. Ah, THe has found
me; Ife has laid His hand heavily upon me, and
covered all over with crimes and sin, I shall soon
appear before Him. [t is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God.”

Deeply moyed, the preacher told the man the
Gospel of God’s grace in Christ, and pointed him
to the Savior who says to all that labor under the
heavy burden of sin: “Come unto me, all ye that
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Trusting in the Gospel of Jesus, the dying penitent
robber found forgiveness and rest and salvation like
the dying thief at the side of the crucified Savior.

The words which he had heard in church and
which had pierced his heart like a sword-thrust were
the words of the 139th Psalm, in which David says
that God is everywhere, and that there is no escape
from Him: “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit,
or whither shall I flee from ‘Thy presence? If I say,
Surely, the darkness shall cover me, even the night
shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth
not from Thee.”

There I

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It Is All God's.

There is no portion of our time that is our
time, and the rest God’s; there is no portion of
money that is our money, and the rest God’s money.
It is all His; Me made it all, gives it all, and He
has simply trusted it to us for His service. A sery-
ant has two purses, the master’s and his own, but
we have only one. — Monod.