Unknown Author....

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me... "When once we recognized God, and realized the fact that we were his creatures, there came into our startled conscience the remembrance of the universality of law. I recollect that experience, and how I thought of what was said of the old Roman empire that, under the rule of Caesar, if a man once broke the law of Rome, he was in prison everywhere. The whole world was one vast prison to him, for he could not get out of the reach of the imperial power; and so did it come to be in my aroused conscience. Wherever I went, the law had a demand upon my thoughts, upon my words, upon my rising, upon my resting. What I did, and what I did not do, all came under the cognizance of the law; and then I found that this law so surrounded me that I was always running against it, I was always breaking it. I seemed as if I was a sinner, and nothing else but a sinner. If I opened my mouth, I spoke amiss. If I sat still, there was sin in my silence. I remember that, when the Spirit of God was thus dealing with me, I used to feel myself to be a sinner even when I was in the house of God. I thought that, when I sang, I was mocking the Lord with a solemn sound upon a false tongue; and if I prayed, I feared that I was sinning in my prayers, insulting him by uttering confessions which I did not feel, and asking for mercies with a faith that was not true at all, but only another form of unbelief. Oh, yes, some of us know what it is to be given into custody to the law! Perhaps some here are now in this condition without quite understanding it."

"At that time, when I was in the custody of the law, I did not take any pleasure in sin! Alas, I did sin; but my sense of the law of God kept me back from a great many sins. I could not, as others did, plunge into profligacy, or indulge in any of the grosser vices, for that law had me well in hand. I sinned enough without acting like that. Oh, I used to tremble to put one foot before another, for fear I should do wrong! I felt that my old sins seemed to be so many, that it were well to die rather than commit any more. The law of God, when it gets a man into its charge, makes him feel just like that."

"Then, I could not find any rest while under the custody of the law. If I wanted to sleep a little, or to be a little indifferent and careless, then some one or other of those ten commandments roughly aroused me, and looking on me with a frowning face, said, 'You have broken me.' I thought I would do some good works; but, somehow, the law always broke my good works in the making. I fancied that, if my tears flowed freely, I might make some recompense for my wrong-doing; but the law held up the looking-glass, and I soon saw my face all smeared and made more unhandsome by my tears. So that law shut me up in all directions, and would not let me rest anywhere when I was under its custody."

"Then, also, the law seemed to blight all my hopes. I hoped this, and I hoped that; but then the law said, 'Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them,' and I knew I had not continued in all those things, so I saw myself accursed, turn which was I might. I had offended against the justice of God; I was impure and polluted; and I used to say, 'If God does not send me to hell, he ought to do it.' I sat in judgment upon myself, and pronounced the sentence that I felt would be just. I could not have gone to heaven with my sin unpardoned, even if I had had the offer to do it, for I knew that it would not be right that I should do so, and I justified God in my own conscience while I condemned myself."

"One thing I found concerning the law, that it would not even let me despair. If I thought I would give up all desire to do right, and just go and drown my conscience in sin, the law said, 'No, you cannot do that; there is no rest for you in sinning. You know the law too well to be able to sin in the blindness of a seared conscience.' So the law worried and troubled me at all points; it shut me up as in an iron cage, and every way of escape was effectually blocked up."

"I am talking now, not only of my own experience, but also of the experience of many another child of God. I will tell you one or two of the things that shut me up dreadfully; and one was, when I knew the spirituality of the law. If the law said, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' I said to myself, 'Well, I have never committed adultery.' Then the law, as interpreted by Christ, said, 'Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.' The law said, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and I said, 'Well, I never stole anything;' but then I found that even the desire to possess what was not my own was guilt. The spirituality of the law astounded me; what hope could I have of escaping from such a law as this which every way surrounded me with an atmosphere from which I could not possibly escape?"

"Then, as I have already reminded you, the law informed me that I was cursed unless I continued in all things that were written in the book of the law; so that, if I had not committed one sin, that made no difference if I had committed another sin, for I was under the curse. What if I had never blasphemed God with my tongue? Yet, if I had coveted, I had broken the law. He who breaks a chain might say, 'I did not break that link, and the other link.' No, but if you break one link, you have broken the chain. Ah me, how I seemed shut up then."

"Then I remembered that, even if I kept the law perfectly, and kept it for ten, twenty, or thirty years, without a fault, yet if, at the end of that time, I should then break it, I must suffer its dread penalty. Those words spoken by the Lord to the prophet Ezekiel came to my mind: 'If he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it.' So I saw that I was, as the text says, 'shut up'. I had hoped to escape this way, or that way, or some other way. Was I not 'christened' when I was a child? Had I not been taken to a place of worship? Had I not been brought up to say my prayers regularly? Had I not been an honest, upright, moral youth? Was all this nothing? 'Nothing,' said the law, as it drew its sword of fire. 'Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.' So there was no rest for my spirit, nay, not even for a moment. What was I to do? I was in the custody of one that showed no mercy whatever, for Moses never said, 'Mercy.' The law has nothing to do with mercy. That comes from another mouth, and under another dispensation; but before I turn to that other point, I would like to say that, if any of you are passing through all that I have been describing, do not be all discouraged. I rejoice that it is so with you, for this breaking down of the idols is the way to set up the true God in your heart. This cleaning out of your refuges of lies is a blessed work of God who loves you, though he seems now to be dealing out to you the blows of a cruel one. This is the way in which he is severing you from your deceptions, freeing you from your delusions, that he may bring you to the truth and to himself."

"Now let me tell the story. It was on a day, never to be forgotten, when I first understood that salvation was in and through Another, that my salvation could not be of myself, but must be through One better and stronger than I. And I heard, — and oh, what music it was! — that the Son of God had taken upon himself our human nature, and had, by his life and death, wrought out a perfect salvation, finished from top to bottom, which he was ready to give to every soul that was willing to have it, and that salvation was all of grace from first to last, the free gift of God through his blessed Son, Jesus Christ. Oh, the melody of that doctrine! 'But I have heard that lots of time,' says one. Have you ever heard it at all? 'Why, I heard you say it just now!' Again I put the question — Have you heard it? It has passed your ears, but have you ever heard it? Have you ever caught the meaning of it?"

"Then I had this vision, — not a vision to my eyes, but to my heart. I saw what a Saviour Christ was, divine as well as human. I saw what sufferings his were, what a righteousness his was. I saw the fulness of Christ, the glory of Christ, the love of Christ, the power of Christ to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him."

"Now I can never tell you how it was, but I no sooner saw whom I was to believe than I also understood what it was to believe, and I did believe in one moment. As much as if it had never been revealed to any mortal man, or written in this blessed Book, it was revealed to me by the Spirit of God that I, guilty wretch as I was, was there and then to fall at those dear feet that once were nailed to the cross, and to take Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Saviour, and that the moment I did so, I should be saved."

"I did take him as my Saviour, and I am saved; and I come to tell you again tonight, the reason why I took him for my Saviour. To my own humiliation, I must confess that I did it because I could not help it; I was shut up to it. That law-work, of which I told you, had hammered me into such a condition that, if there had been fifty other saviours, I could not have thought of them, I was driven to this One. I wanted a Divine Saviour, I wanted One who was made a curse for me to expiate my guilt. I wanted One who had died, for I deserved to die. I wanted One who had risen again, who was able by his life to make me live. I wanted the exact Saviour that stood before me in the Word, revealed to my heart; and I could not help having him."

"And, what is more, I cannot help having him still as my Saviour, I am shut up to it. I think I have told you of an American brother, who sat in one of the pews behind me, one Sunday night. When I went out, I said to him, 'What! you here again?' He said, 'Yes, it is twenty years since I sat in this pew; I wonder that you remember me.' I said, 'Oh, yes; I do remember your face right well!' He said, 'You are hitched in the old place still, I see.' 'Yes,' I replied, 'and if God spares you to come in twenty years' time, and I have not gone to heaven meanwhile, you will find that I am hitched in the same old place then.' I have nothing to tell you but Christ crucified, nothing to say to the sinner but, 'Away, away, away from all other confidences to him whom God has set forth to be a propitiation for sin!' "

"I want the law to shut you right up to this one course. If a man were to ask, 'Why do you go out of the Tabernacle by the righthand door?' it would be a very good answer if you had to say, 'Because all the rest are bricked up.' That would be a valid reason, would it not? You had no choice in the matter; and that is the reason why we come to Christ, because we have tried, and proved, and known that other salvation there is none: for 'there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.' The law has shut us up to this one road, stopped up every other opening and gangway, and we are driven just to stand here, and say, —

'Thou, O Christ, art all I want; More than all in thee I find.' "

"Now, if there is any one of you that has got into that cleft stick, I am right glad of it. This proves that you are God's man, he has chosen you, he loves you, he has given his Son to save you; take the Lord Jesus Christ to be everything to you, and go on your way rejoicing. 'Before faith came,' you were shut up, but you were shut up to faith in Christ; and now you have that faith, you are shut up no longer, you have received the liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free. Go home and enjoy it; and if you meet any other poor soul shut up as you were, tell how you came out to liberty. Do not be satisfied to go tonight to your bed without having told somebody of how the Lord Jesus came, dressed in garments dipped in blood, and with his pierced hands broke the bars of brass, and cut the doors of iron in sunder, and set your soul at liberty, and said, 'I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins. God bless you, for his dear Son's sake! AMEN."