Steve P. Holcombe, the Converted Gambler: His Life and Work

2. But they were to remember God's goodness to them also (see verses 3 and 4). He had fed them Himself with manna and kept their clothes from wearing out and their feet from swelling. And so you are to remember the goodness of God to you during the past year and during your past life. Remember how He has spared you in the midst of your wickedness as He spared me in my neglect of Him for forty years, and how He has furnished you many blessings and would have given you more, but you would not. And if He has allowed your wickedness to bring you into trouble and distress, it is to cause you to stop and reflect upon your ways and turn from them unto Him for deliverance and true happiness. Thus you are to recall, from the past year and from your past life, your sins and sorrows, and God's manifold mercies to you.

II. But, just entering upon this new year, you are to look ahead also, even as the Israelites were to look ahead to the goodly land into which the Lord was going to bring them (see verses 7, 8 and 9).

1. God promises you much, my brother, on condition that you follow Him and obey Him. He promises to bless you temporally and spiritually, and to give you happiness – a goodly possession – if you, for your part, give yourself up, unreservedly to His directions. He has done much for me, since I began to follow and obey Him years ago.

2. Moses ends his discourse with a solemn warning (verse 11). Beware that you forget not the Lord your God, and go at any time to trusting to yourself or any earthly help.

ON AFFLICTION AND SUFFERINGLAMENTATIONS, III: 32-33

"32. But though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.

"33. For He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men."

There is a vast deal of suffering and of sorrow in the world, and the most of it, if not all, is due directly or indirectly to sin as the cause. Sin is followed by suffering, as for example, intemperance ruins the health and brings on a slavery worse in some cases than death; and sensuality is often followed by loathsome and painful diseases. Thus God declares His feeling towards sin in these sufferings that result from it. He has set up a barrier to keep men from the practice of it. But we will consider how afflictions and sufferings may all be overruled to the good of the sufferer and his deliverance from the evil of sin.

1. Sufferings which are the direct effect of sin have a tendency to make us turn away from sin. For example, the poverty and distress of the Prodigal son were the cause of his returning to his Father. So it was with Jack Harrington and others whom we know.

2. But sufferings and misfortunes which are not the direct effect of sin stir up the memory to a recollection of past sins, and excite a remorse for them. For example, a lady who is the wife of a whisky dealer told her husband she believed that their losses and misfortunes were judgments sent on them for being in that business.

3. Sometimes it takes the greatest and most prolonged suffering to conquer man's stubbornness and independence of God. But suffering humbles him, and, his pride being out of the way, he has no more trouble.

4. Sorrow that is too great for any earthly consolation leads the sorrowing one to seek comfort in God. One of the greatest and best preachers of Germany was thus led to God by the loss of his young wife. So parents are brought to God by the death of children and children by the death of parents.

5. Sometimes suffering is necessary to wean us from some idol which we would not otherwise be willing to give up.

6. Sometimes when we forget God and become absorbed in the world, nothing but some affliction will make us come to ourselves and turn again to God with repentance and consecration. Read Psalm cxix., 67-75.

The case of Sister P – , at Portland, was one of this kind. She was a backslider and put off her return to God and kept putting it off. But she had a great sorrow. Her son left home under a cloud, her son's wife lost her mind and then died, and her son was put in prison. To this was added her own bad health. These things broke the spell of the world, woke her up from her apathy and made her seek God with all her heart and she found Him again, and died in great peace and triumph.

7. Then suffering purifies us and develops us and prepares us for work we could not otherwise do. "Tribulation worketh patience." What excellent training I got when I rubbed the engine for a dollar and a half a day. It brought patience and resignation and a better preparation for the work I am doing than any other sort of experience, perhaps, could have given me.

REVELATIONS XXI: 3

"And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God."

The subject suggested by the text is, the future and final conquest of the world by the Church of Christ, and the rest and reward of that church in Heaven.

And the Scriptures do teach that, in time, all nations shall learn righteousness. The time is coming when neighbor shall not say to neighbor, "Know ye the Lord," but when all shall know Him, from the least to the greatest; and the knowledge of God shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the deep. When this blessed time is to be, and what are to be the signs of its approach, are not questions for us to attempt to discuss here to-day, though we may be allowed to say that the Gospel is being preached to more people to-day that at any former period in the history of the church. There is a missionary zeal in the church to-day that has not been paralleled in all her history. There is not only a readiness among heathen people to hear the Gospel, but there seems to be a positive hunger for it, and within the last few years the Gospel has penetrated to the interior of nations and continents that were previously inaccessible. Certainly the church is more aggressive and bold in her plans and operations to-day than ever before. And if it be a prophecy of the not distant conquest of the world to the reign of Christ, we take courage, and say: "God speed the day!" It is well for us to pause now, and to reflect upon the reward promised to us in the end of our course. We do not give enough attention to this. To study about it; to learn what we do not know concerning it; to realize the unspeakable blessedness of that state would make us more patient in waiting, more cheerful in suffering, more earnest and active and untiring in our efforts to help others to the attainment and enjoyment of it.

Heaven, then, is represented in the Bible as a place of perfect beauty, perfect security, perfect rest and perfect joy.

It is so represented as to appeal to the desires and longings of all classes of people. To the inhabitant of the city, what could be more pleasing than the freedom and freshness and beauty of the country? So heaven is described as having its landscapes, with its fruit-bearing trees, its crystal rivers and gurgling fountains. But for the rustic peasant, it is said to be a resplendent city, with walls of sapphire and gates of pearl and streets of gold.

But in some respects we are all alike.

We want to be free from sin and danger.

To a Christian heart, sin is the most abhorred and dreadful of all things. It gives more pain and causes more darkness than any other cause; and the fear of it causes more suspense than the fear of all bodily suffering.

But in heaven we shall be free from sin, and free from all fear of sin and all liability to sin. For nothing that defileth or maketh a lie can ever enter there; and they who are so happy as to gain heaven shall go out no more forever.

We all dread sorrow and grief and pain. And truly we all have our share of it in this life. "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." "Man is of few days and full of trouble," but we leave it all behind when we go in at the gate of the City of God. "And there shall be no more sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away." Christians in this world feel that they are pilgrims and strangers in a foreign land, away from their home and their Father's house. Their hearts have been so changed, and they have tasted of the powers of the world to come, and have come into communion with God, so that neither the pleasures of the world nor the friendships of earth can content them – their hearts are not here, but away in heaven.

I heard a Christian man say, not long ago (though he has a sweet family and many friends), that he felt that day an unutterable loneliness, as if he were an exile. His heart had such a longing for his Father and his kindred and his home beyond the skies. Oh, the sympathy and love and tenderness we know we shall get at home! It makes us all feel a thrill that responds to the poet's immortal lines:

"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

And all the sympathy and tenderness of father, mother, brother and sister are transcended by the sympathy and tenderness of God, for marvelous to tell it is said that "God Himself shall wipe away all tears from our eyes."

And how we thirst for knowledge here. We know nothing now. We are surrounded on all sides by things we do not understand. If we undertake to investigate, we soon reach the limit of our capacity and have to stop before we have learned anything. "But then we shall know as also we are known."

What it means, when it says we shall "sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb" we know not, nor what it implies when it says we are to "enter into the joy of our Lord;" nor do we understand that wonderful saying, "Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things." No, no; now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face, and "it doth not yet appear what we shall be." But we know that "if we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him." The suffering comes first, the humiliation first, the toil and weariness, the cross first, and then the crown. Peter the Great, of Russia, during one of his wars, was separated from his army and lost, and, to escape detection, took off his royal apparel and dressed in common garb. In his wanderings he came to a humble cottage, and was kindly received and ministered unto by the peasant woman, who knew not who he was. She gave him a home until danger was passed, and then helped him to get back to his capital. When the war was ended, Peter sent for this poor peasant woman, brought her to his splendid court, and, marrying her, made her the partner of his throne and his empire. She who had ministered to him in his sufferings now reigned with him as Queen Catherine, of Russia.

So, my brethren, see that you serve Christ, suffer for Him; spend and be spent for His cause, and then, oh, then, how sweet to rest and reign forevermore.

ECCLESIASTES XII: 13

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Now, boys, here is a piece of advice given by the wisest of men. Can any of you tell me who was the wisest man? (Solomon.) Well this Solomon was the son of a king. Can any of you tell me whose son Solomon was? (David's.) And, of course, Solomon had all that money could buy from his childhood up; and when his father died, he became king in his place. He lived to be an old man and he had a wide experience of life. In other words he tried everything that he thought he could get happiness from and his experience is given in the book of Ecclesiastes. He tried all sorts of pleasures and he tried them fully, because there was nothing to hinder or to check him. He denied himself nothing that his heart desired. He knew fully the effects of all sorts of enjoyment and when he had passed through it all he wrote it down as the lesson of his experience for all boys and young men to read. And what was it? Does he say "Young man, you have a long life before you. Now you must enjoy the pleasures of life while you are young?" Does he say you must run off from your father's house and presence like the Prodigal son did, so you can have a good time in the enjoyment of the pleasures of the world and then in your after life, when you get more settled, you can think about your Creator and death and heaven and hell and eternity? Was that the lesson which his long and extended experience taught him? Ah, no. It was a far different one. He would say this: "Young men, boys, I have been all over the road you are traveling now. I have had your feelings, your hopes, your ambitions, your passions, your temptations. And in one part of my life I concluded I would give myself up to the enjoyment of pleasure of every kind and I did so. And I know all about it and this is what I would say to you all just starting out. Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth and give your hearts and lives to Him, if you want to be happy."

1. In the first place by so doing you will avoid wretched poverty. For a man whose heart and life are given to God can not be a spendthrift. But just look at some young men how they spend their money or that of their fathers. However large a fortune they may have, they soon come to poverty.

And a man whose life is given to God is industrious and loves to work. He can not bear to be idle, for he knows and feels it to be a great sin. Besides all this God promises to see that those who live for Him shall not want what is best for them. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount declares that if God provides for sparrows and clothes lilies, He will be sure to see to the needs of His own children. So the way to get the best assurance that you will be blessed with things needful in this life is to give yourself up to God to be His, through thick and thin.

2. If you give your heart to God now, you will be kept from the sins which bring men into disgrace. "A good name is rather to be chosen than riches." Ah! you know not into what awful sins your passions will plunge you, if you do not get the control of yourself, which only religion can give. You may be led along little by little, almost without knowing it, till you may wake up to find that you can not, can not, break off from your sins – your hated and ruinous sins. But if you give God your heart to be changed, renewed, purified now, you will avoid all these awful dangers.

3. But this verse says "the years will draw nigh in which thou shalt take no pleasure in these things that relate to God." My dear young friend, that is terribly true. The longer you live away from God the less and less will be your care for Him and for your soul. How few old men ever turn to God! Yes, very few, forty years of age and over, ever do so. I heard Dr. Munhall ask once, in a large congregation, that all who were converted after seventy years of age would stand up. Not one stood up. Then he asked that all who had been converted after they were sixty years of age would stand up. Not one stood up. Then he asked all who were converted after fifty years to stand up. Only one, I believe, did so. When he asked all who were converted after forty years to stand up, only three or four did so. When he asked all converted after thirty years to stand up, perhaps eight or ten did so. A few more had been converted after twenty years of age; but when he asked all who were converted under twenty years to stand, most of the congregation arose.

True, I was converted after I was forty years of age, but it was a bare chance. And oh, how hard it was for me. And if I had not had the most patient of friends to sympathize with me, encourage me and guide me, I should never have gotten along. I beg you do not follow my example in putting off your return to God.

Look at the men whom you know. How little interest they take in religion and their interest grows less and less all the time. The years have already come when they have no pleasure in the things of God. They have encouraged all their feelings, desires and ambitions but this, and this has almost died out. They have devoted all their thought and affections to making money and enjoying it, to seeking pleasure and enjoying it, to acquiring fame and enjoying it, and so their hearts are completely hardened and insensible to the religion which they cast aside ten, twenty or thirty years ago. And they will probably never feel the all-absorbing interest in religion which is necessary to obtain it. Hence, they will go on blinder and blinder, colder and colder, more and more hardened down to old age and to the grave and to a hopeless eternity. I beg you, my young friends, all who hear me to put off your return to God not one day longer.

Note. – The address, of which this is the outline, was delivered on a Sunday-school occasion and is a specimen of Mr. Holcombe's talks to young people. – Ed.

MARK II: 15

"And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him."

1. This class of persons feel that they are outcast, and not recognized by those who are esteemed the good. Hence, they feel backward, and will not make advances toward the good for fear of being slighted.

2. If those who are looked upon and honored as good and pious and pure, will show that they want to be friendly and sociable, it will take these persons by surprise, and will win their feelings – and this is nearly half the battle.

3. Besides, if the good, instead of waiting for these sinners to make advances, which they will not do, will take pains to show their interest in the welfare of these, their unfortunate brothers, it will make them believe that the pious are sincere, and not hypocritical, and that religion is a reality and not a mere profession. This is a great step toward gaining them. Most of this class believe in the Gospel in some vague sense, but it is too vague to amount to anything. But when they see the grand principle of the Gospel —Love– embodied in the Christian, and coming after them in their lost condition, it makes an impression, and it moves them to action. You can not drive men, nor can you convince them by abusing them and by shutting them out as too vile to be your associates. This only drives them further away. But all men have a chord in their natures that can be touched by love and kindness. It was this gentleness and sympathy that drew the thousands around John Wesley. It was this wonderful tenderness that made the publicans and sinners and harlots, the outcast and the low and the vile seek the company of the loving Jesus and press into His presence, even when He was the guest of the great and noble of His day. They knew Jesus would never repulse them – they knew He would love them, help them, save them.

"Down in the human heartCrushed by the Tempter,Feelings lie buried that grace can restore;Touched by a loving hand, wakened by kindness,Chords that were broken will vibrate once more."

4. There has to be such an interest felt for those of this class as will make you cease to care for what people will say about your going among them and working with them. This was the sort of interest Jesus had for them.

5. Imagine your own dear son to be one of this number, and see what feelings you would have, what earnestness and what planning. These are some of the ways and means of getting at this class of persons. For we have to use means and reason in all things.

6. But the agent, the only one who can accomplish anything is God's Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes only in answer to prayer and trust. Prayer is to be first and second and third and everywhere and always, and then we may hope that our plans will succeed.

PREPARATION FOR WINNING SOULS

I am sure, my dear brethren, that in the discussion of this topic we are to be allowed some liberty and some latitude; and, if I shall speak in a general way, I trust I shall not be counted out of order. And, not to detain you with preliminaries, I say that, to be a winner of souls, a man must have the anointing of the Holy One, reproducing the mind that was in Christ, who "though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich," and who "being in the form of God, thought it not a usurpation to be equal with God, but He emptied Himself and took upon Him the form of a servant; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient as far as unto death, even death on a cross."

A sympathy that arises from any other motive, or comes from any other source, than His divine and supernatural anointing, will fall short of the mark, and will be found too shallow and weak to bear with the hardheartedness, the perversity and the ingratitude of sinful men.

This anointing, on the other hand, brings with it a yearning love and a profound sympathy for those who are in the blindness and bondage of sin, which impels one to seek out the lost, to be at patient pains to save them, and to bear with all their dullness, slothfulness, selfishness, perverseness and thanklessness, while they are under training, so to speak.

It makes a man as ready and anxious to save the soul of a solitary sinner, however humble and degraded he may be, as to preach with power to the great congregations. It was this that made John Wesley as willing and careful and patient in talking to a negro servant girl as to a multitude. And it was this which lead a greater than John Wesley to lead with patient love along, the poor Samaritan adulteress whom He met at the well of Jacob.

But what is more important and imperative for the immediate work of getting a dead soul to a living Saviour, this divine anointing imparts that peculiar and energetic pungency which pierces to the heart and conscience of a sinner, rouses his fears, and prepares him for the reception of Christ.

Not only so, this unction from the Holy One is accompanied with a practical wisdom and insight which discerns, if not all things, yet, at least, many practical things. It enables a man to see that the first thing to be done in the way of saving a sinner is to convict him of sin. To get him to admit theoretically that he is a sinner, is equal to zero, amounts to nothing. But, in a way not to repel him, he must be made to feel that he is sinful, and so, wretched. It is wonderful what tact some men have in this respect. Here lies, undoubtedly, the secret of Sam Jones' power. He turns all classes of men, Pharisees in the church and sinners out of it, inside out, and makes them see, in spite of all spiritual apathy and all self-deception, what they are. He shows them secrets which they thought nobody knew but themselves.

But a greater than he did the same thing – Jesus touched the sore spot in the conscience of the Samaritan woman and compelled her to say: "He told me all things that I have done." This revealing the secrets of the heart is a thing that fascinates and attracts and wins a sinner; and he feels, if you know so well without being told, all the particulars of his inner life and all the desperate trouble of his case, you surely can not make a mistake in pointing out the way of escape. Just as a patient yields immediate and unquestioning confidence to the physician who can tell him all his symptoms and describe his feelings better than he himself can do it.

If preaching the love of Christ without convicting of sin would have saved people, then most people in the United States would have been saved long ago, for the love of Christ has been told and retold and preached and re-preached, and it does not bring sinners to repentance. To be sure there are some sinners who have found, by bitter experience, the ripe fruits of sin, and these may be already prepared to accept a deliverer and a deliverance as soon as offered to them.

The possession of this unction presupposes that a man is correct, upright, holy in his life; for God would not give it to one who was not so. I believe Mr. Moody was right when he said: "If a man's life is not above reproach, the less he says the better." A friend of mine says he knows a minister who, though no doubt a good man and a fine talker, will lie now and then. Of course, he would not call it lying, nor would his admirers call it lying, but lying it is; and so he has no power. His preaching is like a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.