A New Creature

Jake Benton was a member of Mount Olivet Church and had been for twenty-seven years. Jake was a man of ordinary natural intelligence, but like most of his neighbors was utterly ignorant as far as literary training is concerned. He naturally had deep religious sentiments. Under proper teaching he doubtless would have pressed his way into a genuine experience of salvation and would have lived a consistent Christian life, but under the unwholesome teachings of Mount Olivet he had given himself over to a mighty religious drift and had drifted far away from God and was completely destitute of redeeming grace. Oh, to be sure, he testified regularly at the church services and gave of his limited means toward the church’s support, but he was a man of uncontrollable temper and was well versed in the art of old-fashioned fistfighting. But his profession had become a burden to him, and he had often wondered if there were no possibility of extracting some joy out of the juiceless lemon of his profession.

Now, it so happened one summer that Deacon Gramps had a large drove of cattle ranging on the hills about thirty miles to the southeast of Mount Olivet community. This drove of cattle consisted of a thousand head, and it became necessary that the Deacon employ some trustworthy person to herd the cattle and prevent them from scattering, or being stolen by cattle-thieves who sometimes visited that section. Since Jake Benton was known as an upright man and was a brother in the church, Deacon Gramps offered him the position. Out of pure financial necessity Jake accepted.

This was some years before the rubber-tired automobile had invaded the flint hills of this section and thirty miles meant hours of toilsome travel. Thus it was necessary that Jake take along a camping outfit and remain all summer. This he decided to do. Many and long were the hours that Jake spent in this lonely mountain retreat. For miles around there was little sign of human activity. No sound of woodman’s ax was heard. The stillness of the long summer afternoons was broken only by the tinkling of the bells on the hillsides. A lone log cabin lifted its mud-chinked walls from the brow of a hill from under which flowed a babbling stream of clear water. In the attic of this lone cabin Jake Benton was regularly lulled to sleep by the evening lullabies of the katydids as they sang in the tops of the postoak trees with which the cabin was surrounded.

One August afternoon when Jake returned from his regular roundup of the cattle, he found, seated on a log near the spring, two men. At the sight of the men Jake’s heart leaped into his mouth. For two months he had not laid his eyes on a human form. He had heard no human voice save his own. Needless to say, he was as much pleased as surprised to find companions in his lonely abode. Jake neared the log where the men sat. One of them arose and advanced toward him. “I trust,” he remarked, “that you will not think we are trespassing on your premises. We have been traveling all day; our horses were tired and we were thirsty, and the spring invited us to be refreshed.” For a moment Jake stood speechless, and then in almost forgotten terms he made his unexpected visitors feel welcome.

The three men conversed for some time, and in the course of the conversation Jake explained to them the reason for his lonely life and the circumstances that caused him to be thus engaged. The strangers explained that they were driving across the State, and that, in order to make their journey fifty miles shorter, they had been instructed to take this untraveled road through this expanse of wooded hills.

“I should think,” remarked one of the men, “that this would be a splendid place to meditate on the goodness of God. Loneliness often begets meditation, and God loves to be the companion of the companionless. Then, too, there is all this nature with which you are surrounded. These flowers and trees and birds all speak of the goodness of God. I was remarking to my fellow traveler of how these beautiful scenes remind us of God’s goodness. Pardon a frank question, but may I ask, are you saved?”

This was all new language to Jake and he scarcely knew how to answer this rather blunt question. “W—w—well, ye—yes,” he answered. “I try to be a Christian. I belong to the church and have belonged for twenty-seven years and accordin’ to the preachin’ we have I think I’ll get to heaven. I s’pose you fellers must be preachers.”

“Yes, we are preachers,” remarked the other. “We have consecrated our lives to the blessed service of Christ, and our greatest delight is in preaching His gospel and telling others of the wonders of His grace. There can be no higher calling than that of telling of the saving grace of God. For fifteen years I was a cold professor of religion, but I lacked vital salvation. I belonged to the church and paid the preacher, and somehow I thought I would get through all right. I sinned more or less every day and did not know that I could be saved from sin. In fact, I never had been converted. I tried to live a Christian life, but I was powerless. After fifteen years of this miserable existence I got a new vision of things. God removed the scales from my eyes and I saw my lost condition. I saw myself in an entirely new light. I wept before God because of my sins. I was made very conscious that unless I was saved from my sins they would damn me in hell forever. My churchianity and my self-righteousness and my morality looked ridiculous when I saw myself a sinner in the sight of God. I came to God and poured out my soul in bitter repentance, and said, ‘Save me, or I perish.’ I promised Him that I would forsake my sins, make my wrongs right, and walk in the light. I read, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’* (1 John 1:9) Well, I confessed my sins and forsook them, and God for Christ’s sake pardoned all my sins. Praise His name. The joy and peace that filled my soul were unspeakable. I was a new man. I loved everybody, even my bitter enemies. Christ, in all His blessed reality, came into my heart as an abiding companion. Some time after my conversion, through a holiness paper, which fell into my hands, and through reading the Bible, which had become a new book to me, I learned that it was possible for me to be wholly sanctified and to have the Holy Spirit as an abiding comforter. Oh, the joy of this blessed life. Its glories are untold.”

Poor Jake stood amazed. He had never heard anything like this before. He burst out, “If that’s religion, I confess I hain’t got none; and to be plain, I ain’t much inclined to believe such stuff as that. I have been a member of Mount Olivet Church for twenty-seven years and I never heard such preaching as that. That must be some new religion that’s goin’ around. Talk about bein’ saved from sin, why there’s our dear old Brother Simms, who was our last pastor at Mount Olivet. He died last March and since then we ain’t had no pastor—why I heard him say more’n once from the pulpit that folks can’t be saved from sin till they get to heaven.”

All this Jake said and a great deal more. He talked himself hoarse and used up all his choicest terms in extolling the name of Mount Olivet Church and all the pastors she had had since he had been a member. All his arguments were quietly and lovingly answered by the ministers, who read to him many passages of Scripture.

By this time the large elm cast a lengthy shadow eastward. The sun was well-nigh set, and it was evident to the ministers that they should have to prevail on their new acquaintance to lodge them overnight.

“Well, my dear brother,” remarked one of the ministers, “we are far apart in faith, but I trust we are all honest in our views and I pray that God may lead us all in the way we should go. The day is gone, and to get out of these hills tonight is unthinkable. I wonder if you could arrange to keep us overnight, Mr. Benton—I believe that’s the name? If you will, we shall be a hundred times obliged and shall be glad to pay you whatever you suggest.”

Jake was bighearted, if he was a sinner. “Sure, I’ll keep ye; think I’d turn anybody out in these woods at night? Not me. I’ve kept preachers all my life, but I confess I never kept sanctified ones before.”

The three men went up the hill to Jake’s cabin, and the two ministers busied themselves writing letters while Jake prepared the evening meal from his scant pantry. When they had gathered around the large goods-box that served as a dining table, one of the preachers thanked God for the food and asked His blessings upon it. When the evening meal was finished, the three men sat in front of Jake’s cabin until a late hour. The preachers expounded the Scriptures to poor, ignorant Jake and told him of the wonders of God’s grace. Finally, when the big silvery moon stood in mid-heaven and the sound of cow-bells on the hill had died away, Jake suggested that they retire for the night. By the light of the moon one of the ministers read his Bible. It so happened that he opened it at the 12th chapter of Hebrews. These words, as they fell from this man’s pious lips, affected Jake deeply. He surely had read that same chapter himself many times, and doubtless during the twenty-seven years he had been a member of Mount Olivet Church he had heard his pastor read it. But there was one verse that sank right to the center of Jake’s heart. It was the 14th: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”* (Hebrews 12:14) Jake had always had a hope in his breast that he should someday see the Lord. He had had more than his allotted share of troubles in life, and deep in his heart he had a longing to go where “the wicked cease from troubling; and… the weary be at rest.”* (Job 3:17)

Soon all was silence in the cabin attic, where the three men lay. The restless surgings of man’s inner soul are invisible to all eyes, save God’s, and silence is not always a proof that everyone is asleep. Jake lay on a bag of dried leaves, having given his own bunk to his guests. But his eyes refused to sleep. The music of the katydids had lost its power to soothe his troubled breast and bring him sweet repose. His mind took a voyage over the past. Memory, according to her wonted ways carried him again to his mother’s knee. He recalled the sound of her voice as she sang, “And I shall see Him face to face, and tell the story—Saved by grace.”* But that scripture, “Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord,”* (Hebrews 12:14) took the sweetness out of that long-remembered song. Jake knew he was not holy. His heart was defiled by sin. His lips were unclean with blaspheming God’s name. He remembered all the good resolutions he had made and broken the past quarter of a century. And during these midnight musings he seemed to see two lily-white hands beckoning him to come somewhere; he knew not where. These hands he readily recognized as the hands of his own baby Rose, who had gone from him one day near the close of her fifth summer. Mentally he found himself again at the bedside of his darling Rose. He saw again her ruddy cheeks glow with fever and heard the tremble of her voice as she said, “Daddy’s Rose is going to heaven. Daddy come some day.” Again he saw the death-glare in the sky-blue eyes when the little soul flitted away. He saw himself again as he sat and looked into the sweet and lifeless face of his darling girl, and he remembered how he resolved on that day to live in such a way as to be reunited with his child. But his resolves had all been unfilled, and he saw the path of his past strewn with broken vows. In reality, God was speaking to the man’s soul. Jake saw himself in his true condition, a lost sinner. His sins seemed like horrid black mountains rearing themselves eternally between him and his child. His profession of religion and his church-membership seemed to mock him rather than to comfort him.

But Jake was silent. He said not a word with his lips; but how his bleeding heart did talk to God. Hot tears flowed from his sleepless eyes and dampened the dry leaves that formed his pillow. He supposed the two ministers asleep. And they thought the same of him. Finally Jake was astonished to see, in the glimmering light of the moon that stole through the cracks in the clapboard roof, the two preachers slip from their bed and kneel on the floor. His ear caught their whispering prayers that were heard in heaven. As nearly as he could hear, the prayers ran something like this: “0 Lord, Thou didst have a purpose in sending us through these wooded hills. May we be instrumental in bringing light and salvation to this lonely cabin. Lord, talk to the heart of this Mr. Benton, who sleeps on his bag of leaves. Bring something before his mind that will break up his heart; disturb him even in his sleep, Lord.”

Jake’s emotions overwhelmed him and he could keep silent no longer. He bounded from his bed, crying, “0 my God, save me, save me, save me! Oh, do pray for me now! I am lost! lost! lost!”

Needless to say, the preachers were somewhat shocked, as people often are when their prayers are answered sooner than they expect. The convicted herdsman prostrated himself on the floor before the preachers and poured out bitter tears of repentance. He wept and groaned, and begged God to save him. But he seemed slow to grasp God’s promises. He prayed till the morning dawned. The preachers prayed with him. Finally, just as the first grey streaks of the new day began to creep between the logs, Jake’s faith was anchored in God’s promises, and the glory of heaven flooded his soul. In the twinkling of an eye he was made a new man. His joy knew no bounds. He leaped and shouted, sang and whistled, and laughed and cried, all for the joy of his new-found treasure.

When breakfast was over and the two ministers had bidden their new convert a happy farewell, Jake sat down to read his Bible, which the preachers had given him. His eyes fell upon these words, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”* (Psalm 30:5)