The King's Conversion

The King of Terrors is the terror of kings. Face to face with him the potentate of an Eastern state had trembled. Sickness had laid him low and cut him off from his wonted pleasures and delights. But he had hoped for recovery and for restoration to his ordinary pursuits. Now, however, hope deferred made his heart sick, and the tidings that soon death would claim him filled him with alarm. He felt that his soul was in peril. Eternity was before him. Soon the place that knew him would know him no more, and he would be in the great “For Ever.”

Oh those words

“MY SOUL.”

We are conscious that we are not creatures like mere flies or beetles that are crushed and brushed out of existence. Man has been given the sense that this life is not all. It is implanted deep in the heart of the darkest of the heathen. There is a future beyond the present existence. The sheep and the goat perish—they cease to be—but the human being at death only passes into another condition. What is that condition to be—one of joy or of pain? one of suffering and sadness or of bliss and peace? Where shall my soul be eternally? This is the question of all questions which every child of man should settle without delay. And yet multitudes trifle their years away and give scarcely a serious thought to the all-important matter.

Then the king, looking over his past life, thought of his iniquities. He had to own to himself that sins of omission and sins of commission had marked his course.

“MY SINS.”

He cried. Thought, word and deed testified against him. How could he answer for one in a thousand of them. How should their record be removed. How could their stain be blotted out? And, in view of their guilt, multitudes when they reach the confines of life and look across into eternity groan in anguish.

“Oh! my sins and the day of judgment,” cried a dying poacher, making the walls of his room ring again with the soul-stirring words.

“Oh! my sins. Oh! my sins,” sobbed another, as her life of Christ-neglect and God-forgetfulness pressed itself upon her view.

No wonder there rose from the monarch’s soul the prayer, “Oh! Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me.”

When conscience—God’s deputy in his soul, was loudest in its condemnation of him, the Lord, against whom the king had sinned, was his resource. His deep need led to discoveries of deep grace in God who was waiting to bless him. And the king telling the story could narrate how for him salvation was ready. His eye turned to Him in faith and be could say of God.

“MY SAVIOUR.”

The light that has shone for us in these glad days was not known to him. Christ had not yet come. His atoning death upon the cross had not yet taken place. The work of redemption was not yet accomplished. And yet light shone into his soul and he could rejoice and say, “Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption, for thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back . . . The Lord was ready to save me, therefore we will sing

MY SONGS

all the days of our life in the house of the Lord.”

For us, today, the knowledge of a seated Saviour at God’s right hand may well fill our souls with abiding peace. He was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And joying in God we raise our notes of praise to Him. Thus the believer can say,

MY SOUL is delivered from condemnation

MY SINS are cast behind God’s back.

MY SAVIOUR, who loved me and died for me, loves me and lives for me now and will carry me through.

MY SONGS shall be of Him, in His own house, eternally.

I.Fleming

Scattered Seed 398 (1917)