Jeremiah 18

Jeremiah 18:1-23

THE PARABLE FROM THE POTTER’S HOUSE Jeremiah 18:1 to Jeremiah 19:15. IN continuing our studies from Jeremiah we come now to the parable from the potter’s house. One of the incidental proofs of Christ’s Deity is discoverable in Jeremiah. He, who is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” did not change His custom of teaching by parables. The Old Testament had its parables, for it was the same Spirit that moved the mind of its writer, that later voiced Himself at the lips of Jesus of Nazareth; and with that Holy One the parable, as a means of teaching, was often employed. So we read,“The Word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear My Words. “Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. “And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it “Then the Word of the Lord came to me, saying, “O House of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in Mine hand, O House of Israel. “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; “If it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them. “Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord”, etc. If at a single sitting one reads through these two chapters he will be impressed with The Prophet’s Commission, The Prophet’s Crime, and The Prophet’s Course.THE PROPHET’S This is clearly declared: “The Word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying” (Jeremiah 18:1); “Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying” (Jeremiah 18:11).How repeatedly the inspired penmen remind us of the fact that they are not personally philosophizing, that they are not delivering personal convictions, they are not indulging themselves in a course of human reasoning. Quite the contrary, they are delivering a Divinely given message, and before attempting to instruct others they have themselves been instructed, and that instruction came to them, as Christ came to us, “from above”.Note three facts in the first seventeen verses, namely, The Prophet is Divinely taught: The lesson is Divinely interpreted: God’s truth does not always prevail.The Prophet is Divinely taught. “The Word of the Lord came to me, saying” (Jeremiah 18:5). The whole material world is little other than an unlimited reservoir of spiritual truths. A man may go through the world as a bull passing through a China store, indifferent to the beauty and utility all about him; unconsciously trampling and breaking both, while learning nothing from what he sees or feels; and then he may go through the world, indulging in a limited measure what Jesus of Nazareth enjoyed to the full, namely, that vision or understanding of the true meaning of everything that He sees or touches. Of all the wonderful sayings and the wonderful workings of Christ, none are more astonishing than His spiritual interpretations of natural forces and features.In the sower of the wheat field He saw and illustrated the truth spreading, and the application was so apparent that men, having once read the parable, never forgot its interpretation. A kindred remark could be made concerning the parable of the tares, a Divinely used illustration, with its exact opposite intent—the scattering of falsehood in the field of truth and its evil effects for men.When He went to the home of Lazarus and watched Martha make bread with leaven that she used, effecting an immediate chemical change which resulted in disintegrating and destructive forces, it reminded Him of the leaven of the Sadducees and Pharisees, the evil-working of false teaching.How meaningful also were His parables of the laborers in the vineyard, the marriage of the king’s son, the ten virgins, the talents, the rich but foolish farmer, the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the Pharisee and publican, and so on!But this New Testament custom had also its Old Testament type. Jeremiah was both taught by the parable of the Potter’s House and in turn sought to show Israel its great truths, and so warn them against such behavior, as would defeat the Potter’s purpose and compel Him to form far less attractive, far more ignoble forms than He had planned, purposed and desired.In fact, it may be accepted as fairly clear that there are few lives that ever take the shape God meant to give them; there are few righteous men that ever attain the degree of success that would be His delight; and there are few governments or nations that ever reach the Divine ideal.This is not because of the Potter’s fault; but rather of the material with which He works; it is faulty, and at the very moment that He, the Lord, is seeking to put it into the most beautiful and blessed shape, it reveals an inability to take the same, and to His grief, becomes marred, not through lack of deftness in the Divine fingers, but of purity and adequacy in the human material.Has it ever occurred to us that clay seldom reveals its true character while in its most plastic state? It is as it approaches the final form intended by the potter, and the hardening process effected by time, that its deficiencies become increasingly apparent.Here also is a parable true to life, the child is amenable to every teacher, and youth can be easily shaped in this direction or that; but maturity is another matter; then the hardening process has had its effect, the winds of time have taken away the moisture of youth; the wet clay is no more, and the mar now is noticeable in its features and may compel the potter, whether he wish it or not, to cast away the deficient, cracked, or broken product.That is why they are wise men who seek to win youth to Christ; that is why those are wise churches that major in work with the young.The downtown mission, filled with the flotsam of society, may prove a clinic where expert workers will behold an occasional proof of the Great Physician’s miracle working power, but if all the mighty products of mission work were brought together and solidified into one body of believers, they would never make a model church, nor even compare favorably with one of those great successful institutions that brought children to God and let Him form life from youth, handle the human material while yet it was in plastic state, and create for Himself vessels of honor indeed.So it seems to me this lesson of the potter’s house was Divinely interpreted:“Then the Word of the Lord came to me, saying, O House of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in Mine hand, O House of Israel. “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; “If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. “And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; “If it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them”. The teacher must himself first be taught. When Christ was alive, and yet with His people, He made them an inspiring promise. Anticipating the time when He should no longer be with them, He said, “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My Name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26).When, therefore, the day of Pentecost was fully come and those men who had been for ten days in the prayer-meeting of the upper room, were suddenly called upon to testify they were not unprepared; having been in the school of the Spirit, and having been instructed by Him, they were able to teach. Therein is a uniformly recognized principle of teacher training.One writes: “Of all the people in the world who should be learning teachers should head the list.” The fact is you cannot be a teacher until you have been taught. When a teacher ceases to be a learner he should also end his attempt at instruction. “No reserve from former learning will remain fresh and dependable unless it is constantly being replenished.” The teacher who has a closed mind will never succeed in opening the minds of those who sit at his feet. The Pentecostal principle will never pass from the experience of the Church.Those who would teach in the streets must first have taken time with Him who is the Teacher of teachers.

The upper room, therefore, must precede the Gospel deliverance whether it be made in the sanctuary or from the dry goods box on the street corner. Jeremiah must learn what he shall say and what he shall speak.

The counsel of nations, or their denunciation, is equally futile except the preacher has brought his information from the higher source of Infinite knowledge and eternal truth.He who would be obedient to the great commission itself to “go” and “teach” must first have responded to the Divine invitations “Come” and “Learn”.Why does Jeremiah live? Why is he yet regarded as among the major Prophets? Twenty-five hundred to three thousand years have swept by since he uttered the words that we now study. Why have they survived the centuries and still command the attention of men?Only one answer; he who was taught of God uttered truths of eternal value; and though Heaven and earth pass “not one jot or tittle” which the inspired man has spoken, fails. Teaching may be a great office indeed, but only on condition that he who attempts it is himself correctly instructed— Divinely taught.God’s truth does not always prevail. Mark the answer that comes up from the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They said:“There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart” (Jeremiah 15:12). There are people who hold the opinion that failure to secure response to the Divine revelation is a reflection upon the preacher, an evidence that the Prophet is not Divinely sent. Not so! There were spots, visited by Jesus Christ, who was none other than God manifest in the flesh, that rejected the word at His lips. Even in His own country He could “do no mighty works because of their unbelief”. You recall what He said of Chorazin and Bethsaida, “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to Heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell” (Luke 10:13-13). Why? Because they were treating His words as the word of Jeremiah was treated. They said: “There is no hope: we will walk after our own devices, end we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart”.There has been enough truth preached to save the last man in the world; but preached truth, instead of redeeming men, may even become their condemnation, for the Gospel is a saver of life unto life to them that receive it, but of death unto death to them that reject it. While there is no promise that the heathen, in ignorance of God, will be saved through his ignorance, there is a clear statement to the effect that a man who knows the truth and rejects it will receive the greater condemnation.How strange the speech, “There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart”. It sounds like a contradiction of terms. In the first instance they say, Salvation cannot be; and in the second, they say, Salvation shall not be.

In fact, there is a perfect consonance therein. The only man for whom salvation is impossible is the man who opposes the same. The only man for whom there is no hope is the man who prefers sin to holiness, and hell to Heaven.The virgin who says, There is no hope, has decided upon a “horrible thing”; the man who says, “There is no spring at which to refresh one’s soul,” is the man who has quit the snows of Lebanon and passed by the clear waters that gushed from the mountain side. The man who has no memory of God is the man who burns incense to vanity; and the man who stumbles in his walk is the one who deliberately quits “the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up;” and the people who are scattered as an east wind and to whom God shows His back and not His face in the day of calamity are those whose conduct made the land desolate and the wagging of whose heads indicated their utter infidelity.“Oh, wonderful, wonderful Word of the Lord, True wisdom its pages unfold.” THE PROPHET’S CRIME The next sentence is true to all human observation, the latest relation of the true Prophet’s experience;“Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the Law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the Word from the Prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words”. How often the prophet’s speech is an insult to the sinner! No matter how deep-dyed his sins he does not propose to have them spoken against. Woe to the young man who dares, in his pulpit utterances touch upon the pet social vices of prominent members. Woe to the preacher, whose word is heard by a city, if he dare to uncover its moral sinks. Woe to that exponent of truth, who like the late William Jennings Bryan, has the ear of the nation, if he dare to call attention to either its false teachings or its false practices.The most profound impression that is made upon my mind, as I move about among the churches of America, is at this point. There are comparatively few free men in the modern pulpit.

In thousands of instances young pastors are ruthlessly slain in their pastorates by those whose sins they have condemned, even though unconsciously, and whose opponents in secret conclave said identically what was said in Jeremiah’s day, “Come, let us devise devices against” him, let us “smite him with the tongue” and let us “not give heed to any of his words.” Even among the more mature ministers of the land there are comparatively few, in fact, a very, very few, who dare to confront the laymen-leaders of influence on matters where there may be an inconsistency in their individual lives; a moral menace in their money making methods or political trickery in their ecclesiastical manipulations. More than once have I seen big men, eloquent men, brainy men retreat before this concentrated fire of devices, or else settle down to a silence on all questionable subjects to escape being smitten with the tongue of those to whom God had sent them.Herein is the reason for the average short pastorate; herein is the explanation of the apostate condition of the Church in both its message and its morals; herein is the answer to the question, Why all the slowing of the ecclesiastical wheels and the annual depreciation of spiritual power?The counsel of the Prophet is not only rejected, his tongue is to be forever silenced.Some years ago, and before the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect, the Indiana Legislature was in session.

The Chaplain of the Senate was at prayer, and in his petition he prayed for the time to come when Indiana should refuse to sell to men the right to sell to other men that which makes them drunkards and murderers, and to fill prisons and asylums. Lieutenant Governor O’Neal was presiding and in the midst of the petition he shouted out, “STOP THAT!” At that particular time the Republican party, which he represented, was back of the license system and it did seem inconsistent for a member of the same to plead with God to defeat the party’s program. But the Lieutenant-Governor had at least this in his favor, beyond the conduct of the average opponent of the true prophet, viz., he spoke out loud; he even yelled at the Chaplain. Those who would silence the preacher’s tongue are still behaving much as they did in Jeremiah’s day; now as twenty-five hundred years ago; they are sitting in secret session and devising devices; whispering, “Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words”.This opposition to Jeremiah was scarcely justified. They were opposing the wrong person. They were planning to sacrifice the ambassador, for communicating to them the decision of his state or nation.

They were making ready to mob the messenger boy for delivering what the Western Union had sent by his hand; they were making ready to kill the Clerk of the Court for recording the decision of the Judge.The office of the Prophet is not a sine-cure; he is compelled to proclaim the words that have first been delivered to him; the message of the Book that he did not originate. The opposition, therefore, should have been against God and not His messenger.

Jeremiah was not uttering an individual opinion nor pronouncing an individual sentence. He only consented to be the medium of the Divine mind, the delivery boy for the Divine message.The French War Office once issued an order, specific in its wording, to the troops involved. The commanding officer communicated that order in his own words. The Minister of War punished the act, and on being criticised, as severe, said, “He paraphrased an order which it was his duty only to read.” Sir Robert Anderson, reciting the incident, said, “What a lesson for the preacher of the Gospel! When he has to do with truths of transcendent importance, it behooves him to keep to the very words in which they are revealed.”Yet you will find if you turn but another page that when you read the twentieth chapter, “Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the House of the Lord”, when he heard what Jeremiah had prophesied concerning his nation, “smote Jeremiah the Prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the House of the Lord”.True preaching has never been popular business; and the only reason, under Heaven, why so many of us get by as smoothly as we do, is our unfaithfulness to the Divine message. I have lived long enough to get to the point where when the public is rising up by the thousands against preachers, as they have risen against Bob Shuler in Los Angeles, and as they have, for years, raged against Frank Norris in Fort Worth, and as they used to fight Parkhurst in New York, to see in it the finest possible evidence that God has found some true prophets among the preacher-softies of the twentieth century.Of one thing I feel more certain this morning than ever since I began this fifty year ministry, and that is the days of my greatest opposition have been the days when my delivery of the truth was most positive and uncompromising.I am ashamed, now, that I have left the study of Jeremiah alone for so long a period; he is a tonic to my soul and I bring his deliverances to you, my people, not as the vain rationalizing of some so-called modernist minister, but as the very words of Almighty God, to attend upon whose statements is salvation, and to oppose whose deliverances is condemnation.

Let us hear what God said at the lips of the Prophet. Instead of rejecting all, let us receive all, and where sin exists let repentance come; where unrighteousness reigns, let reformation arise, and where spiritual deadness holds in its embrace, let regeneration clothe the dry bones of folly with flesh and breathe into them the Divine life.THE PROPHET’S COURSEThis chapter not only reveals to us the Prophet’s criticism with its poor occasion, but it also records for us the Prophet’s course under criticism.That is indeed a needful study, particularly for preachers.

Let me call attention to the high points in Jeremiah’s behavior.First of all he confided in God. “Give heed to me, O Lord, and hearken to the voice of them that contend with me”. In other words, Hear me and at the same time listen to them that You may know what my situation is.“Shall evil be recompensed for good? for they have digged a pit for my soul. Remember that I stood before Thee to speak good for them, and to turn away Thy wrath from them”. One is here strikingly reminded of the experience of Moses in dealing with this same folk. Again and again he, who was their best friend, the man who so loved them that he preferred personal death for himself to their just judgment, was yet the subject of their criticism and hatred, and at times, even of their attempted murder. It was Moses who had finally secured Pharaoh’s consent to release them from his land; it was Moses before whose feet God had parted the seas that they might pass over, and yet how speedily they forgot the affection that prompted him, the wisdom that guided him, and the Divine favor that rested upon him.When they were in the wilderness without water “they murmured against him”; when they lacked for bread, they increased their complaint; when he ascended into the mount to receive the Law and his return was delayed, “The people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him”.They turned their disappointment into a heathen dance and voiced their contempt in an orgy of idolatry and lechery.The Book of Exodus is as perfect a revelation of man’s inconstancy and iniquity as it is of the Divine will; and it is filled with repeated illustrations of Israel’s disloyalty to their great leader; and yet, it is also a marvel of suggestion for every minister of the Most High, since Moses did under every provocation, exactly what Jeremiah here does when he finds the Divine message opposed and the person of the Prophet despised.HE PRAYED! In other words, he talked it over with God, confiding all in Him, and looking for relief from Him. Daniel discovered himself to be the object of envy on the part of a hundred and nineteen vice-presidents. His office of God’s Prophet was despised by them; and his deliverances, by inspiration, were rejected; and like the brothers of Joseph, they determined to silence him.The answer of Daniel was not an opposition meeting, not a political maneuver that would outwit the presidents, not an enemy camp, set up by kindred devices; it was, instead, prayer.

For “when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime”.Someone says, “Is that all?” Yes; and that was enough. “If God be for us, who can be against us”?The Prophet’s re-commission is an answer to prayer. We come now to the nineteenth chapter.“Thus saith the Lord; Go”. Where? “GO”. Do what? Rush into another field; quit the profession and sell life insurance? Hardly!“GO and get the potter’s earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests; “And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee, “And say, Hear ye the Word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle. “Because they have forsaken Me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; “They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into My mind: “Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter. “And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. “And I will make this city desolate, and an kissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. “And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them” (Jeremiah 19:1-9). That is God’s early method of answering the minister’s prayer. There are a great many men that get release from difficult positions, hard pastorates, and trying circumstances. But the release is not Divine; it was not given of God; it was accomplished by human reasonings, by strategies of the intellect, by multiplied excuses, and a series of self-defenses.If there is any one thing, with which my defenseless ears have wearied, it is preacher-explanations of why they quit the last pastorate, or why they must secure a change!The difficulty with a great many of us is that we have not learned to endure hardness as good soldiers. Every skin-scratch, given, we reckon a vital wound, and the report of a single gun sounds, in our timid ears, like the attack of an army, and before the battle is well begun we are beating it to the tall timber; yea, looking even for a hollow tree in which to hide.Old Joseph Parker was a prophet. He stood in the center of London and the swirl about him was a moral slush, and when the pipers of “peace” had fulfilled the prophecy of the day of “smooth speech”, he said,“What we need here is a prophet, ‘a terrible man’, a man of ‘iron lips’ a man of ‘throat of brass’ a man ‘too strong for patronage’, yet weak in the presence of tenderness, necessity and helplessness. Let him come, oh, living God, with his potter’s earthen vessel and break it before us!”And if I know my land that is the need of every city in it; yea, even of every people, of every church in the same.To declare judgment is the Prophet’s hard fate.“Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee, “And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury. “Thus will I do unto this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make this city as Tophet: “And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods” (Jeremiah 19:10-13). How hard for Jeremiah to have to speak these words to his own people, the people that he loved above his own life; and how difficult it is for every faithful preacher of the Gospel to proclaim the sentences of the law. How his very lips burn as such words emit from them, and his soul within him is sick because he has to say them!And yet, before I finish let me justify God! Difficult as it is for the preacher to proclaim the words of the Lord, far more difficult for God Himself is it, to utter them, when, originally, what He desires is not judgment but mercy. It is men that necessitate the former by stubborn wills and rebellious hearts and hardened necks. At the first show of repentance how pleased is God; at the first sign of contrition how speedily His words soften! At the first cry for mercy how swiftly He comes to bestow the same.

Judgment is His strange work; mercy His “ever dear delight”!A few days since, in returning to my office, I sought out that excellent monthly the “Christian Faith and Life” to read the same. Every thirty days my faith is strengthened by the perusal of its pages; my path is illumined by its clear and spiritual interpretations of the Word.

It always has in it some nuggets of gold, and often veritable mines! In the November 1931 edition I found Bishop Berry’s story of “Another Dying Thief”. He put it in this way:“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 arid asked:“Is your name Berry?’“It is,’ I replied.“I know you,’ was his hearty rejoinder, as he put 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?“Then I knew that the young fellow was 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 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 Northwestern 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 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 suggested another.“ ‘Then a verse came to me, and another and another.“ ‘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 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 hand I bring; Simply to Thy Cross I cling,” he pushed his hand a little higher, clutching at 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.”“ ‘In a moment his hand dropped, and he leaned heavily upon me. I was startled, and looked down into his face. Clark was gone—to be with his Saviour.’ ”When we listen to the thunderings of Divine wrath we are tempted to forget the infinity of Divine mercy; but no man truly knows God who does not understand that great as is His wrath against sin, greater yet is His compassion toward the sinner and His desire to save.