TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A World-Renowned Expositor
DR. ALEX. McLAREN, of Manchester, one cut the greatest preachers of all time, whose sermons have been issued in 32 volumes, thus describes his new birth in a letter to Rev. David Russell.
“GLASGOW, 2nd June, 1840.
“MY DEAR SIR,—According to your request, I now commence to give you a statement of the working of my mind since the New Year. It was a sermon from Mr. Alexander that first led me to think. That night I went back to Uncle James’s, the impression was very slight, but it gradually increased. When I came home I got by accident a copy of Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion. I thought that was just what I needed. I read until I came to the chapter in which he tells the way of salvation. I read a little of that chapter, but the words of the 13ible, ‘A savour of death unto death,’ as well as a remark I had often heard that every fresh offer of salvation which was refused was so much additional guilt, rushed in to my mind, I got afraid that I would refuse this otter, too. I laid down the book.
“For a considerable time I was very much impressed, but I one day began to think in this way. God has from all eternity elected those who are to be received among His people, and if I am one of those I will be received among them, and if not, I can do nothing to alter His resolution. Although I thus seemed even to myself to be thinking that this excused me for not accepting His offered mercy, still my conscience was always telling me that it did not excuse me.
“After that I began again to become careless, and I had become quite so, when one Sabbath evening in the class you read an account of the revivals in Dr. Reid’s Chapel, and advised us all to think for an hour on the passage: “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” (Heb. 2. 3). I went home. I could not arrange my thoughts, but the passage continued constantly in my mind. I continued praying that God would compel me to believe, but I read nothing about salvation. I continued thus gradually losing one by one of the impressions which had been made upon me, until I saw your revival meetings advertised. I said nothing about them at home, lest I should be asked to go; but one night my mother was going, and asked me to go. I came away quite unimpressed, and thought no more about it. on the Sabbath evening I went down with my mother and sister. I was as it were, prepared to hear something peculiarly suited to myself. The sermon went on, and when you quoted the passage in 1 John 5. 10, as to ‘making God a liar,’ all my sin rushed upon me as I had never before seen it. I sat trembling. Then when you said that before we ruse off our seats we might be saved for time and Eternity, I felt hope beginning to rise in my mind. I saw all my guilt and that it was by looking to Christ, and to His finished work alone, that I could hope to be saved. I remembered the passage, ‘repentance toward God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ’
(Acts 20. 21). My sins appeared in all their enormity, and I found peace and pardon in believing that Christ is the Saviour. Since then I have found that peace increasing every day, and have found in reading the Bible and in prayer great joy and pleasure such as I never felt before.”