To Jesus at Once

A T a certain prayer-meeting a friend of ours arose, and gave the narrative of his first year’s experience as a Christian. He had tried the religion of Jesus for himself; and the more he followed the Saviour, the more of delight he found in the service. If those who sneer at practical religion would only seek it for themselves, and make a fair trial of it, their lips would be sealed to scoffs, and only opened in grateful praise. I never heard of a sincere Christian who pronounced Christianity an imposture or a failure. Have youl

Our friend told us of his conversion. It was very sudden, yet none the less genuine for that. No conversion could be more sudden than that of Saul of Tarsus; but the jailer’s at Philippi, and the eunuch’s on the road to

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Gaza, seem to have been quite as much so. In fact, the Bible descriptions of regeneration are generally alike in two particulars: there is a powerful drawing of the soul by the Holy Spirit, and there is an immediate turning from sin to the Divine Redeemer. It was so with my friend. He told us that he was at church on a certain Sabbath evening, and the command of Christ to Andrew, ^’■follow me,” came into his mind with prodigious power. He at once resolved to follow Jesus, and ever since that time has been an earnest, working Christian. He had no protracted season of distress before he was willing to accept the Saviour. But he commenced the practical duties of the Christian life at once, and sought to “do the work of to-day, with to-day’s light, and help from the Lord.”

This was a very brief and business-like statement of a great religious revolution in a human soul. It furnishes a model for every unconverted sinner, with whom the Spirit of God is striving. That loving Spirit may now be striving with you, my reader. If you have felt, or do feel, an inward compunction over your life of sin, and a yearning after a better life, then is the Divine Spirit at work upon your conscience. Do not wait for the Spirit: he is already with you. Yield to him; pray for his deeper power and renewing grace. Do not wait for a more vivid sense of guilt: men find out more of their own wickedness after they have come to Jesus than they ever dreamed of before. Do not wait for more feeling of any description. If you had fallen from a ferry-boat into yonder river, with its floating ice, would you wait to feel any colder before you seized the rope flung to you from the vessel’s deck %

Christ has waited long enough — too long — for you already. Accept him at once! When the leper came to him for healing, the Master bade him “go shew himself to the priest,” and report himself cured. The suff’ering creature did not stop to count his loathsome “scabs,” or to pull off a single “scale “from his frightful face. He asked no questions either, but set ofi” at once as directed; and we read that “as he went he was healed.” The path of obedience was the path of his salvation. When Christ found Andrew and James and John on the lake-shore of Galilee, he said to them, “Follow me.” They obeyed the authoritative call, and straightway followed him. He did not come twice after them, nor did he need to speak twice to them. They forsook their nets, their homes, their kindred, and entered at once upon a career of self-denying toil, which gradually grew into the mightiest mission for God and humanity that was ever intrusted to mortal hands and hearts. Just imagine that those men had said no, instead of yes.

But they did not even sit down to weep over their sins, or stop to chaffer with the Saviour about the profits of the trade they were abandoning. The gripe of that command, “Follow me,” was like the gripe of a hand of steel clothed in velvet: it was soft, but strong. They rose up, quit their nets, and set off immediately on a march of toil and humiliation, which led to martyrdom on earth, and to a crown of unfading glory in the presence of God and the holy angels.

You, too, must forsake your “net.” It is your favorite sin. Perhaps many a sin; but often a single besetting sin is a “net” that entangles a soul in its meshes, and unless that net is forsaken the soul cannot follow the Master. What is your net ■? God knows; and so do you. Perhaps others have seen your hindrance in a sparkling glass which fashion or appetite keeps on your table. Break that glass, or it may break your heart in the world of woe. We have seen more awakened sinners drawn back to impenitence through the stress of sensual temptation than by any other device of the devil. The decanter, the card-table, and the play-house are damning more souls to-day than all the infidelity on the globe.

Perhaps your “net” is a complicity with dishonest dealing. You may be making money against the protest of conscience. Perhaps you are held back by fear of your associates; you seek to live on good terms with sinners, and to die on good terms with. God. This cannot be done. He who takes up no cross ishall wear no crown. But suppose that some irreligious friend does stare at you, or sneer; it may be that some other one may be startled out of his thoughtlessness by your fearless standing up for Jesus, and you may save a soul unawares. Do right, and leave consequences to God.

We cannot specify all the “nets “of favorite sins, or indulged cavils and doubts, which our thousands of readers may be clinging to; no matter what the hindrance, so that it keeps you from Christ. A man may be crushed by an avalanche, or poisoned by an atom of strychnine: each one takes life! And the sin that keeps you from Jesus takes your life for all eternity.

The only true repentance is an abandonment of known sin. The only true faith is the entire yielding of the soul to Jesus for salvation. The two make up evangelical conversion. And sincere coming to Jesus embraces the two. This vital step may be

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attended with poignant distress of mind, or it may not. This will depend on your temperament and on the methods of the Holy Spirit’s work. Do not be anxious about the degree of your distress. Tears do not save: Christ does. Wait for nothing. Wait for no one. Just begin to serve Jesus in the first duty that comes to your hand. Just refuse to do the first wrong thing to which you are tempted. Do this in prayer for divine help. You will get no help and no comfort while you remain with your “nets:” hasten to Jesus, and at once!