It was of God that at this susceptible age I was under the influence of Mr. McCall, this wise Christian teacher. I owe him much. He taught but did not force his pupils. There were examinations, but he had little belief in them; he considered “cramming” for them to be injurious and the passing of examinations by this means to be fallacious as a test of knowledge and ability. He said it was like stuffing string into a box and getting it out again, if you could. There is something in this simile, for if knowledge so gained is recovered by the memory it is too often like tangled string, confused and troublesome.

The virtue of punctuality had been formed by us children having to be at the breakfast table at 6.30 a.m., summer and winter, and by the example of our dear father who left at 7.10 to catch the 7.20 train to London (never without reading a Scripture and praying with us), so as to be at his office by 8.30 to open the heavy mail of the wholesale house where he was chief of the counting house. The habits of far too many young people today are deplorable. At school, at college, in one of the services, they are compelled to be punctual; but the moment holidays or furloughs start they lapse into complete disregard of time and of the courtesy due to others, and waste hours of the morning in bed. It shows an absence of morals in doing what is wise and right; they are in time only so long as they must be so, not at all because it is good and right. Yet of all the things we use time is easily the most valuable, for some of it must be expended on every other act. Some words of Gladstone to the students of St. Andrews University made in me a lasting impression. I give them from memory: “Gentlemen, let me recommend to you thrift of time. It will repay you with a usury beyond your utmost expectations.”

I was recovering from an illness, scarlatina I think. My mother sat by my bed and talked with me, quietly and simply; and as she spoke the Spirit of Truth spoke by her and made the truth effective. She said nothing more than I had heard from infancy, but what new and powerful influence it exerted! She spoke of sin: I felt myself the veriest sinner under the sun. No particular sins were mentioned, but there rose before me childish falsehoods, petty pilferings, anger, disobedience. I saw these as guilt, as wickedness, as making me obnoxious to the holy God and His holy wrath. I had not been brought up in a morbid, prudish, restrained manner, constantly checked, reproved, restricted, but in a simple, healthy, happy atmosphere. There can be no accounting for this sudden, intelligent, overwhelming perception of the true nature of sin by a child of seven but as a fulfilment of the words of the Son of God, “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come He shall convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8).

My mother spoke of God, His holiness, His anger against sin, and the coming judgment. Her words were few, but oh, the solemnity they caused to settle upon my heart. She went on to remind me of His infinite love, love so mighty that He sent into the world His only and beloved Son on purpose to save sinners, for though He hates sin He loves the sinner. And I thought and felt what a wonderful, amazing thing it is that the great and holy God, who made the stars and this great earth, loved a naughty, sinful little boy like me. If I but shut my eyes, and lean back in my chair in thought, again I feel the hot tears that trickled down my cheeks as the sense of this overwhelming love of God melted my heart.

She said a little about the cross of Christ; how the Son of God in love to me took my place and bore my sin and its divinely appointed punishment, death. I saw this CLEARLY. It was made spiritually plain to my mind, as by a divine illumination. In the intervening years I have reflected upon the doctrine of the atonement, have read Dale, Denny, and others, have precisionized some ideas, have theorized somewhat, and, as a consequence, can talk about the subject as on that day on my bed would naturally have been impossible: but as regards spiritual apprehension of the death of Christ and its value to the sinner I have learned nothing further, for I learned then all one needs to know, perhaps all a finite being can know, and it is all in this word: “Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. . . He loved me, and gave Himself up [to justice] for me” (1 Cor. 15:3; Gal. 2:20).

My mother added that if only I was truly sorry that I had sinned God would forgive me for Christ’s sake. I could not doubt this; I saw the worthiness of Christ and the sufficiency of His death, as the meritorious cause, the only cause, the adequate cause, why God should pardon me. As a little child can do, I gratefully accepted the promised pardon. I knew I was truly sorry, and I was only too thankful to think that the dreadful doom of the sinner, which I so richly deserved, would never be my fate, for God had loved me, Christ had delivered me by dying for me, I was saved!

Yes, I was saved, and I knew it. There stole over my troubled heart a quiet, solemn, happy peace: I had “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1), my heart had been “sprinkled from a consciousness of evil” (Heb. 10: 22); that is to say, the Holy Spirit had enabled me, by faith in what God says on the matter, to see that the blood Christ shed, the life He surrendered, had met fully the claims of the law of God against me on account of my sins. God was satisfied; I was satisfied.

In the long intervening years I have met many spiritual dangers and had many spiritual vicissitudes. It was years before I learned that Christ saves His people from their sins as well as from the punishment of them. My experience of heart holiness came long after, and my moral life was long a secret sorrow to me. Also, I have faced atheistic and other doubts by meeting with infidels, higher critics, and the like, and by reading their writings, so as to master their position, and be able to help them. But not for one moment has that deep, settled peace through the blood of Christ been disturbed. I have grown in intelligence, but not in confidence. At that first moment I rested the whole weight of my salvation from wrath upon Christ, and therefore found complete rest; I am still doing this at this moment, and therefore still have that complete rest. It is in leaning the entire weight upon the bed that the body finds rest; Christ said, “Come unto Me, and I will rest you.”