HOW HE FOUND GOD | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 17, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 11.

HOW HE FOUND GOD.

MORE than a hundred years have passed since a young lad in England, who belonged to a pious family, but was himself far from God, was to find God by strange means. He had been the child of many prayers, but to all the entreaties of his mother and others, he answered by inwardly resolving not to become a Christian.

In the good providence of God, however, he happened with his good mother to be on a visit to Ireland, and one day they went to a place where a good man was to preach. This good man was that day very earnest in his sermon; he put the question to the unsaved present, whether they would give themselves to Christ or remain rebels. Every time the preacher repeated the question the young man said in his heart, "No, I will not yield." His heart was hardened against God. At the close of the sermon it seemed to be harder than ever it had been. But when the sermon was finished the minister gave out a hymn. It begins,—

"Come ye, sinners, poor and needy, Weak and wounded, sick and sore."

The congregation, stirred by the earnest sermon, sang the hymn with their whole heart. And what the sermon could not do the singing of the hymn did. It broke the hard, unyielding heart. It forced a way into the very center of the heart. It was the voice of God calling him through the hundreds of voices that day praising God. His pride, his hardness of heart, everything that stood in his way to God, gave way. And that day the son who was in the far land found God, and gave himself to be a loyal soldier for God evermore. And he lived himself to be an honored preacher of the gospel, and the writer of a hymn that has opened a way to God in thousands of hearts. He was Augustus Toplady, the author of the great hymn,

"Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee."

—From Children's Sermons.