Many years ago, Dr. Valpy, a well-known English scholar, wrote a little four-line verse as the longing of his heart and the confession of his faith. Some time afterward, he gave a copy of the words to his friend, Dr. Marsh, a Church of England clergyman, and the verse became a great blessing to him.
Dr. Marsh gave the lines to his friend, Lord Roden, who was so impressed with them that he asked Dr. Marsh to write them out, and then fastened the paper over the mantelpiece in his study; and there, yellow with age, they hung for many years, a memorial of the beloved hand.
Some time after this, an old friend, General Taylor, one of the heroes of Waterloo, came to visit him at Tollymore Park. Lord Roden noticed that the eyes of the old veteran were often fixed for a few moments on the motto over the mantelpiece. “Why, General,” he said, “you will soon know the verse by heart.”
“I know it now by heart,” replied the general with feeling, and those simple lines were the means of bringing him to know the way of salvation.
Some two years afterwards, the physician who had been with the old general while he lay dying, wrote to Lord Roden to say that his friend had departed in peace, and that the last words which fell from his lips were some words he had learned to love in his lifetime–
In peace let me resign my breath,
And Thy salvation see;
My sins deserve eternal death,
But Jesus died for me.
Years afterwards, at the house of a neighbor, Lord Roden happened to tell the story of the old general and these lines, and among those who heard it was a young officer in the British Army who had recently returned from the Crimea. He listened carelessly enough, and no impression seemed to be made at the time. A few months later, however, Lord Roden received a message from the officer that he wanted to see him, as he was in a rapid decline.
As the earl entered the sick-room, the dying officer extended both his hands to welcome him, repeating the lines–
In peace let me resign my breath,
And Thy salvation see;
My sins deserve eternal death,
But Jesus died for me.
And then he added, “These simple words have been God’s message of peace and comfort to my heart in this illness, and they have been brought to my memory by the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, after days of darkness and distress.”
I was once telling this story in a sermon, and as I began I noticed that an old gentleman, who was sitting in a pew just in front of me, was being overcome with extraordinary emotion. His whole frame seemed to quiver with some unwonted excitement, and his eyes looked bright with a strange light.
I thought for the moment that it was a passing attack of some kind. But as I went on telling the story there was no doubt that it had in some way seized on the very soul of the listener and touched his feeling with some strange and indescribable suggestion. When at last I came to the part about the Crimean officer, I thought that the old gentleman would have almost cried out, so deeply was he affected. The story ended the sermon.
After the singing of the hymn, I went into the vestry. I had scarcely got there when a knock was heard at the door, and the old gentleman, with emotion still evident, came and said, “Where did you get that story?”
I told him I had read it in the work of a modern author whose books are widely read.
He said, “I do not know whether you saw that I was very much touched by it, but it almost overcame me.” And then, with tears streaming from his eyes, he told me this story.
Years ago, when he was a young man, careless and indifferent in matters of religion, he sauntered one day in his walk into an old churchyard at Starr’s Point near Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in the land of Evangeline, and, seeing a fallen gravestone, he overturned it out of pure curiosity. And there he read at the foot, engraved in the stone, a verse of four lines that took such hold upon him, and so clearly explained to him the way of salvation, that they were the means of his conversion. And from that day, nearly fifty years before, he had, by God’s grace, led a consecrated life for Christ. The lines were–
In peace let me resign my breath,
And Thy salvation see;
My sins deserve eternal death,
But Jesus died for me.
“You can imagine,” said he, “my amazement, as well as my delight, when I heard you tell the story about the lines. You brought back to me the wonderful story in which God was pleased to save my soul.”
It was not long after that I was sent for, in order to visit this old gentleman whose sickness gradually grew more serious. One of the last things he did before he died was to take my hand affectionately and ask me to do him a favor: that at his funeral and over his coffin I would tell the story of the lines in the hope that the prayer of a dying man might be answered, and that they might be a blessing to many more souls. Soon afterwards he died.
At his funeral, which was attended by a large and representative body of prominent men, I told over his coffin, amidst the most profound and interested silence, the story of the stanza that had transformed so many lives. I ended by saying that it was the wish of the dear old man on his dying bed that the words, which would be distributed as his last memorial to all present, might become a blessing to their souls. And as each one passed from the house of mourning he received a card, printed with the name and age and burial date of that old saint of God, and on the other side the never-to-be-forgotten words–
In peace let me resign my breath,
And Thy salvation see;
My sins deserve eternal death,
But Jesus died for me.
The secret of the wonderful power that resides in these lines cannot be told. It may be that they were written in prayer, and watered by tears of love. I only know that when I told this story in a vacation service in one of the charming hotels in the White Mountains, New Hampshire, one summer, an American gentleman, a prominent New Yorker, was so deeply impressed that he said after hearing the words, “I have rarely heard anything that made such an impression upon me. Never before in my life have I so clearly grasped the way of salvation through faith in the Crucified.”