|
Simply To Thy Cross I Cling |
||
|
I was traveling through the southern end of New Mexico, when our train
stopped at a little station below Deming. Several men came into our
coach. One of them sat down beside me. He was an athletic young fellow, rather good looking, and his dress belonged to the frontier region through which we were passing. I greeted the young man as he sat down and we began to talk. While we were chatting I noticed that he was looking at me closely. Presently he turned sharply upon me and asked: “Is your name Berry?” “It is,” I replied. “I know you,” was his hearty rejoinder as he reached out his big, brown hand, “You were at our house when I was a kid, and I have never forgotten you,” he went on. “Don’t you remember when you visited our house at Adrian?” I remembered Then I knew that the young fellow as from Michigan, and that his father was an old friend. It dawned upon me also that I had heard my friend’s laddie had become wayward and had gone west. Then sitting by my side as the train rumbled along, he told me a remarkable story, told with a kind of realism that made it very vivid and clothed with dramatic power: “A little while after you were at our house,” began young Bickel -- Joe Bickel was his name -- “father and I had a difference one day. I became very angry and said some things I ought not to have said. That night I ran away from home. “A week later I was in the Sherman House at Chicago, and met a young fellow from north-western Ohio, who had also had trouble at home and had left abruptly. We struck up an acquaintance which ripened into a warm friendship.” There was something in the circumstances so similar, which caused us to run away from home, that drew us together and made a common bond. We each got a job and saved our change, and finally came to Denver. “In Denver we went bad,” he confessed. “We learned to drink and gamble and went into sins that should have made us shudder. After a few months we drifted into New Mexico.’ “One afternoon,” continued bickel, “my friend Clark and myself were in the back room of a saloon playing cards with two Mexicans. A dispute arose over the game and angry words were spoken.” Without warning, one of the Mexicans pulled his gun from his belt and shot Clark through the body. The poor fellow’s face turned white and he rolled off his chair to the mud floor of the room. I was too horrified to speak or act, but I heard Clark say: “I guess I’m done for, Joe, but I can’t die here. For my mother’s sake, take me out of this place.” With the help of an attendant, I lifted my chum and carried him out of the saloon, across the narrow street, and to the shade of a tree on a little hill. Then I took off my coat, made it into a pillow, and laid the poor fellow down upon the rocky ground. He was quiet for a few moments and seemed to be scarcely breathing, but then he opened his eyes and whispered pathetically: “Joe, I can’t go this way. Both of us were taught to believe in God, and that Christ is merciful. Maybe He would be merciful to me if we’d ask Him. Won’t you pray a little for me? I’ve tried, but this pain hurts me so I can’t keep my mind on the prayer.” I wondered for just a moment whether I could venture to pray, but I had gone so far away from God and had been so reckless and wicked, that I dared not try to pray, so I shook my head. Excepting for the low moaning that escaped his lips, involuntarily, Clark was very still for a time. In a few minutes, however, he looked straight at me and said : “Old man, I’ve been trying to remember some of the words of the bible that tell of God’s mercy to sinners, but I can’t get any of them. Won’t you get some of those words for me?” I reached back through the years and tried to compel my memory to reproduce some of the promises I had learned when a boy. Soon I got hold of one word that suggest another then a verse came to me, and another and another. John 3:16-21; Isaiah 53:5,6; Luke 23: 33-43. He asked to be lifted to a sitting posture. Then, after steadying himself, he said slowly: “you will never know how much those words from the bible mean to me. How beautiful! I never saw them so wonderful before. They seem to be just for me. Now, my chum, do one thing more. Sing one of the songs we used to know back home, something about His mercy.” I tried to remember some gospel song. At first the silly ditties I had learned on the frontier came to my mind. I could also recall snatches of college songs. But for anything serious my mind seemed to be a blank. Suddenly, like a flash, there came out of the rubbish of memory a line of an old hymn. That line suggested the stanza and other stanzas. With my arm around my dying chum I began to sing in a low voice. “Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee.” The eyes of my friend were fixed upon me as I sang the first stanza. Then I began the second: “Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone: Thou must save, and Thou alone.” Before the next line was reached I saw that Clark was trying to lift his right hand. He got it partly up and it fell by his side. Then he tried again. He seemed to be reaching for something he clearly saw. Just as I was singing, “Nothing in my hands I bring; simply to Thy cross I cling” He pushed his hand a little higher, clutching a something above him, He seemed to grasp it. Then, turning a radiant face to me, he said: “It’s all right, Joe, it’s the cross. I’ve got hold of it, and I’ll never let go, It was for me Christ died! In a moment his hand dropped, and he leaned heavily upon me. I was startled, and looked down into his face. Clark was gone. “Ble’st cross, ble’st Sepulchre, yea blessed rather be, The Man, who there was put to death for me.” Salvation is in Christ and in Christ only. Shame upon us, we find it difficult to keep from mingling something of self with Christ, His precious blood, and His once forever sacrifice for sin and for sinners, as we seek salvation. We think it hard that we are not allowed to contribute something, work, prayers, tears or ritual, (shocking thought) we would put something of our own, into the scale, with the precious blood of Christ, to make it full weight. In Christ and in Christ alone and through his sacrificial sin atoning death --- In no one else, nothing more and nothing less will God accept to meet the need of a guilty perishing sinner. Acts 4:12, Acts 13: 38-41 Words In Season 1929 |
||