Personal Recollections: Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great BritainCharlotte Elizabeth
Religion
Personal Recollections: Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great Britain
Charlotte Elizabeth
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Charlotte Elizabeth, 1790-1846
His sublime idea of the "red hand" was ever present. He had told me some
years before, that when he had lain a good while in the grave, God would
call aloud, "Jack!" and he would start, and say, "Yes, me Jack." Then he
would rise, and see multitudes standing together, and God sitting on a
cloud with a very large book in his hand--he called it "Bible book"--and
would beckon him to stand before him while he opened the book, and
looked at the top of the pages, till he came to the name of John B----.
In that page he told me, God had written all his "bads," every sin he
had ever done: and the page was full. So God would look, and strive to
read it, and hold it to the sun for light, but it was all "no, no
nothing, none." I asked him in some alarm if he had done no bad. He said
yes, much bads; but when he first prayed to Jesus Christ _he_ had
taken the book out of God's hand, found that page, and pulling from his
palm something which he described as filling up the hole made by the
nail, had allowed the wound to bleed a little, passing his hand down the
page so that, as he beautifully said, God could see none of Jack's bads,
only Jesus Christ's blood. Nothing being thus found against him, God
would shut the book, and there he would remain standing before him, till
the Lord Jesus came, and saying to God, "My Jack," would put his arm
around him, draw him aside, and bid him stand with the angels till the
rest were judged.
All this he told me with the placid but animated look of one who is
relating a delightful fact: I stood amazed, for rarely had the plan of a
sinner's ransom, appropriation, and justification, been so perspicuously
set forth in a pulpit, as here it was by a poor deaf and dumb peasant
boy, whose broken language was eked out by signs. He often told it to
others, always making himself understood, and often have I seen the
tears starting from a rough man's eye as he followed the glowing
representation. Jack used to sit silent and thoughtful for a long time
together in his easy-chair, when too weak to move about, and then
catching my eye, to say with a look of infinite satisfaction, "Good red
hand." I am persuaded that it was his sole and solid support; he never
doubted, never feared, because his view of Christ's all-sufficiency was
so exceedingly clear and realizing. It certainly never entered his head
to question God's love to him. One night a servant went to his room,
long after he had gone to bed: he was on his knees at the window, his
hands and face held up towards a beautiful starlight sky. He did not
perceive the servant's entrance: and next morning when I asked him about
it, he told me that God was walking above, upon the stars; and that he
went to the window and held up his head that God might look down into it
and see how very much he loved Jesus Christ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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