p. 2 | THE INFIDEL’S WAGER by G. B. Cheever

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 13, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 28.

THE INFIDEL’S WAGER.

By G. B. Cheever

A young man named Thorpe, who afterwards became an effective minister of that Gospel which he at first ridiculed, was one of Mr. Whitefield’s most insulting opposers; and, possessing an unusual talent for mimicry, he not only interrupted his sermons in public, but ridiculed them in private in convivial theatrical circles.

On one occasion, at such a gathering for revelry and wit, he and three of his companions laid a wager for the most effective imitation and ridicule of Whitefield’s preaching. Each was to open the Bible at random, and deliver an extempore harangue from the first verse that presented itself, and the audience, after the profane exhibition, were to adjudge the prize.

Thorpe’s three competitors each went through the game with impious buffoonery and then it came to his turn. They had a table for their rostrum; and as he was about to step upon it, confident of his superior ability, Thorpe exclaimed, “I shall beat you all.” They handed him the Bible, and when he opened it the invisible providence of God directed his eye at the first glance to the third verse in the thirteenth of Luke’s Gospel, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

He read the words, but the moment he had uttered them he began to see and to feel their full import. The sword of the Spirit in that passage went through his soul as a flash of lightning. An instantaneous conviction of his own guilt as a sinner before God seized hold upon him, and his conscience was fearfully aroused. The retribution in that passage he felt was for himself, its terrors glared upon him; and out of that rapid and overwhelming conviction he preached. His fervor and fire increased as he went on, the sympathetic gloom of his audience deepened the convictions in his own soul, and the sentences fell from his lips with such intense and burning imagery, and with such point and power of language, that, as he afterwards stated, it seemed to him as if his own hair would stand erect with terror at their awfulness. Yet no man interrupted him, for all felt and saw, from the solemnity of his manner, what an overwhelming impression there was upon him; and, tho their astonishment gradually deepened into anger, yet they sat spell-bound, listening and gazing at him. And when he had finished a profound silence reigned in the whole circle, and not one word concerning the wager was uttered.

Thorpe instantly withdrew from the company, without speaking a word, and never returned to that society; but, after a season of the deepest distress and conflict, passed into the full light of the Gospel, and at length became a most successful preacher of its grace.—G. B. Cheever.