TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
An Atheist and Fabian
MUSGRAVE REID, whose conversion is related in his booklet From A theism to Christ, had been baptized and confirmed in the Anglican Church. Through the advent of a Ritualistic Clergyman to the Church he attended he became unsettled in his religious beliefs, and ultimately became a disciple of Charles Bradlaugh, the atheistical lecturer. Afterwards he became secretary of the “Manchester Fabian Society,” secretary of the first “Socialist Association” in Lancashire, and General Secretary of the “Independent Labour Party.” For twenty years he continued in the maze of unbelief.
The crisis of his life came about thus. His employers, Messrs. D. Ryland & Sons, Manchester, sent him on a business trip to the United States of America. He travelled 16,000 miles, and visited sixty-two cities and towns of the Republic, from Maine to California.
How he was led to renounce his infidelity is told as follows: “I was in the railway car, slowly climbing the wonderful Rocky Mountains. We had reached an altitude of 15,000 feet. We had left Colorado 90 degrees in the shade, and here we were passing through snow-capped pinnacles, where eagles were sweeping past us as the train slowly laboured up the heights. The panorama to a city man, brought up amidst the bricks and mortar of Manchester, was overwhelming. Here I beheld a wonderful cataclysm of nature. The ‘Royal Gorge,’ some three miles deep, lay on one side of the rails over which we were passing and we were now on the edge of a precipice, and again mounting up to another peak, until we reached the highest point. At this altitude the train climbed so slowly that all the passengers left the car, and I was alone. I sat in a reverie, gazing at the spectacle, whilst I began instinctively feeling about, so to speak, in my mind for an explanation of these wonders. The first definite thought was, Surely all this is not the result of fortuitous circumstances, blind chance, matter and force, or as we glibly say, ‘a fortuitous concourse of atoms.’ Something else than the atomic theory must account for all these wonders. Could evolution’ explain it all? Evolution can give a plausible case for us while we are studying nature in our chamber amongst our books, but the immediate contact with nature herself in all her rugged beauty speaks to us of the existence of a higher power than ourselves.
“Insensibly I found my mind was undergoing a change, an irresistible feeling of wonder came, and reverence crept into my thoughts. I had ever been an honest seeker after truth, and the thought suddenly flashed into my mind, ‘Might I, after all, have been mistaken ?’ I fell on my knees, and cried, ‘Oh, God, if Thou dost exist, reveal Thyself.’ I asked for light, and it came like a flood. The whole car seemed full of light. It was the veil torn off my mind by the Spirit of God. I felt I was in the presence of God, and I capitulated without a struggle. I who had so long resisted His gracious pleadings, who had rebelled against His authority so many years, was at last brought into submission. I arose from my knees filled with joy, saying, ‘God is.’ There had come to me the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world’ (John 1. 9). There could be no ‘association of ideas,’ as some would say, to account for this, for as I fell on my knees I had in my hand one of Ingersoll’s books which I had been reading. The sudden change simply meant that the Spirit of God had come into my life in spite of my resistance, without my seeking, and without the help of man or books, and I knew that I beheld the glory of God and all His wondrous works. Oh, what a revelation, what a revolution of ideas, what joy and peace to know the unfathomable love of God! Was I dreaming, or ill with the fever? Nay, neither, for I never felt better in health than at that moment. It was my first realisation of the personal presence of God.”
On reaching home he told his friends that he now believed in the existence of God. He so spoke of his discovery that his old infidel friends left him severely alone. But it is one thing to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, and it is another and a very different thing to know Him as He is revealed at the Cross of Calvary. Mr. Reid became awakened to an apprehension of his guilt and danger. His past life of sin and unbelief, of ingratitude and rebellion against God, made him tremble. The arch-enemy of souls suggested that he had been guilty of the “unpardonable sin,” and the thought so laid hold of him that he could not sleep. He bought a Bible, and night after night, when his wife was in bed, pored over the sacred page, longing to know if there was Salvation for such a sinner as he. He commenced at the first chapter of Genesis, and read the whole of the Old Testament without obtaining peace or comfort. Beginning at the New Testament, he read till he reached the marvellous words of John 3. 16: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son , that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” In that glorious Scripture he learned that God loved the “world,” therefore He loved him; that He so loved it as to give the Lord Jesus, His only begotten Son, to die for his crimson sins that he might not perish but have everlasting life. The word “WHOSOEVER” included him, and by believing on the Saviour he had the assurance of Salvation, and could truthfully say:
“I do believe it, I will believe it,
I am saved through the blood of the Lamb;
My happy soul is free, for the Lord has pardoned me,
Hallelujah to Jesus’ Name!”
Mr. Reid made known to others wherever he went what God had done for him. Yielding himself unreservedly to Christ, he devoted himself to making known God’s way of peace.