INCIDENTS OF GOSPEL WORK
or
by
Charles Stanley
Nothing to read but the Bible.
Trying to Reform.
Conversion.
Need of Fellowship.
First Sermon on John iii. 16.
Early Life.
Visit to the Old Butler.
Remove to Sheffield.
No advance in divine knowledge.
Hear of the second Coming of Christ.
How wondrously true is that word which the Lord spake to
Moses, ”I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” The writer of these
pages desires for His glory, who hath shewn mercy to him, to record His ways of
sovereign grace.
As a child I had very little opportunity: but I had a great
thirst for books and learning. One day I happened to say, in the presence
of a poor woman, how I longed for books, and had nothing to read. “What,
Charles,” she said; “there is the word of God on that table, and you have
nothing to read!” She said no more, but those words could not be
forgotten. They were used by the Spirit to shew me that I had no heart
for God. This, no doubt, came with deeper force as I had, though only twelve
years of age, a good knowledge of the letter of the word. In those days
it was the lesson book in the village school, which I had left about a year;
and for which I have ever been thankful.
As yet I had no knowledge of my true condition as a lost
sinner, and at once set about becoming religious., I tried hard to reform
my outward conduct. What surprised me much was this, the more I tried,
the worse I became. This went on for some months. There were none
in those villages who could point me to the finished work of Christ. All
who seemed to have any care for the things of God, were working for salvation.
From acquaintance with the letter of scripture, I was sure there was a peace
with God that I could not obtain by all my doings and efforts. After
months of struggle and distress, I was returning home one dark rainy night,
when the burden on my soul was so great, that I fell down on my face in the
road, and cried out, “Oh Lord, I can do no more,” and a deep sense that I was
lost came over my soul. It was there, as I lay in the dark lane alone,
that the Spirit of God revealed to my soul the finished work of Christ.
Then it was that I saw that which I was vainly trying to do, had been done by
my precious Substitute on the cross. I do not remember that I saw beyond
this; but, like Israel in Egypt, I found shelter and safety beneath the
precious blood. And as I rose from the ground, I do not doubt I was a new
creature in Christ Jesus; but though born of the Spirit, how much had I yet to
learn as to what the flesh was.
When I was converted, I began at once to long for the
fellowship of Christians. Fifteen to twenty minutes preaching once a
week, was all we got. Nothing could have been more lifeless.
Indeed, I do not remember that there were any who attended the village church
that knew their sins were for given. I attended other preachings a few
times, was greatly impressed, and enjoyed their hymns and prayers; but felt
their preaching was not the finished work of Christ, through which God had
spoken peace to my own soul. I had, moreover, in my conversion and ever
since, a deep sense of the sovereignty of God, and I soon felt that this was
set aside too much in the preaching.
I can see now, that what the new nature longed for, was the
fellowship of saints in separation from the world. There was a little
meeting begun in the neighbourhood, and the preaching was much in keeping with
what the Holy Ghost had taught me in that dark lane. There was a gracious
work of God, and a good many souls were converted to God. This was at Laughton,
in Yorkshire, in the year 1835. In that year, when I was 14 years of age,
it so happened that the preacher, one day, failed to come. The Lord then,
for the first time, opened my mouth to tell of His wondrous love, to a world
lost in sin. I remember the text was John iii.16. In visiting the
village more than forty years after, I happened to call on a man who well
remembered the sermon, and the text. It is very interesting to me at this
long distance of time, now fifty-three years ago, to remember that in that
first preaching, it was what God is to us: “God so loved.” It was not, it
is not, what we are to God. Oh, if this were the case, I should have been
lost a thousand times since then, No, if that were the case, I for one
have found, that if my salvation depends on what I have been to God, I am lost
for ever. In my case, nothing short of an infinite Saviour could have met
my sins and need.
Here I would just name how God had educated and prepared me,
as a vessel of mercy for His future work. Left an orphan at the age of
four, I had been brought up by a grandfather, a man of the strictest
integrity. I believe I was brought to know the Lord at the time of which
I have just spoken. From the age of about seven, I had partly to earn my
bread, by working in the fields in summer; and in winter I went to the village
school. At the age of eleven, a gentleman took me to his house, and for
two years I had the most remarkable instruction from this gentleman. I
had little book education, but he made me learn everything that could be learnt
by observation; the garden, the stables, the duty of the butler, with all this
he made me perfectly familiar. One day he would say, “Charles, I give
thee three hours to catch a crow.” Another, he would give me a covey of
partridges to bring up. Sometimes he would require an answer at once to a
difficult question, such as this: once before company, he asked me, What was
the cause of an eclipse of the sun? I replied, “If I place my head
between this lamp, sir, and your head, you will not see it, just like when the
moon is between us and the sun.” Amongst other things, I had at times, to
act as chaplain, and read a sermon in the drawing-room: and this was done with
great solemnity, though a child, when God had begun to work in my soul.
It would take up too much space to tell of many interesting
particulars, and why and how I left that gentleman. It seems like
yesterday since he gave me his long and last address. His last words
were: “Charles, thou wilt ether be a curse or a blessing to mankind.”
Sure I am, if it had not been for the grace of God, I should have been the
former; and if, in the least measure, it has been the latter, to God be all the
praise! I am quite sure God used this kind man, during these two years,
to the benefit of the while of my after life.
I left him, and walked over two fields, and then sat down on
a stone stile, and wept; and I saw him no more. Thirty years after this, I felt
led to go into the neighbourhood, to see the aged butler, now with the
Lord. We had never met during those years. He said, turning quite
pale, “How strange, I have just been reading your tract “Mephibosheth,” the
same which my master gave me before he died, saying to me, “Thomas, take this,
and keep it. God has shewn me by it, that I have been wrong all my
life. I thought I had a great deal to do for God. I see it is all
the kindness of God, for Christ’s sake, and what He has done for me.” I
am thankful to be able to add, that aged Thomas was also brought to the Lord,
and to rest in His finished work.
After my conversion I removed to Sheffield, then a town of
70 to 80 thousand inhabitants. Here I was apprenticed to a gentleman who
kept a steel, iron, and general hardware store. He was also a file
manufacturer. I thus became acquainted with the Sheffield trade, and all
classes of its people. My various occupations had given me a wide
acquaintance with human nature. But in those years God was pleased to
shew me the utter corruption of my own evil nature. It is a terrible
lesson, but it must be learnt. “For I know that in me (that is, in my
flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform
that which is good I find not!” This must be learnt.
The full truthful history of the two natures, would be like the history of two
distinct persons. The history of the flesh, with its lusts, would not be
to the profit of any: to the individual believer, he learns, by its history,
that salvation is wholly of God. What will be recorded then in the
following pages, will be the dealings of God in perfect and amazing grace.
In looking back on those years, I am struck with one fact,
that is, I made no advance in divine knowledge. I was greatly interested
in eloquent preaching, but learnt, nothing. Indeed, I was in a sate of
self-satisfaction, and felt as if I knew all there was to be known. In
one word, I had no idea of my own ignorance. This was not so in reference
to any branch of secular knowledge; but in divine things there was no
advance. Indeed, there was the most astonishing ignorance of the true
meaning of the Word of God. I thought the world (that world which had
rejected and killed the Lord Jesus) was rapidly getting better, and that we
were the people who would gradually mend it, until it was a converted world!
I will now tell how all this self-satisfaction, and
delusion, was broken in upon. I should be about 23 years of age, and at this
time was keeping a little store of material for the Sheffield trades. A
neighbour came in one afternoon, looking very serious, and said to me, “Have
you heard the news?” “No,” I said: “what news?” He replied, “There are two men
lecturing at the Assembly Room, and they declare that the world will be at an
end, and Christ will come at four o’clock to-morrow morning!” I turned round,
for I could not keep from laughing. He begged me to go and hear the
lecture that night. I went. The lecturer said nothing about the
world coming to an end the next morning; but he went over Matthew xxiv., and
shewed, from that chapter, the impossib8ility of the world being converted
before the coming of the Lord. Now, though this man held much false
doctrine, and probably was not a Christian, yet God was pleas4d, by this
lecture, to awaken in my soul an earnest desire to know the truth as to the
Lord’s coming again.
I was amazed at my own ignorance of Scripture, and could
scarcely sleep. About eight or ten others were also awakened to enquire.
We met at five in the morning, to search the Word. We had no idea,
either, as to what the Church was, or the coming of Christ to take away His
saints; but we were occupied with the coming of Christ, to set up the kingdom
on earth.