A poor man had been drafted for service in the Civil War. He had a wife and six children, who, of course, were very dear to him. What made his situation the more sorely distressing was the fact that his wife had been sick for some time. The children were not old enough to care for their mother, nor to look after the farm.

This man had a neighbor who was also a very dear friend. During their pioneer life, these men had become greatly attached to each other, often spending their evenings together, and interchanging work.

The morning this drafted man had to leave home, he was sitting at the table with his wife and children, talking over the future. There was much weeping. Even the children entered sympathetically into the sorrow of the parents. The wife said: “O husband, I shall never see you again. I feel that if you go to the war, this is the last time we shall ever eat together. What will become of our poor, fatherless children?”

The man tried to cheer his wife, and assured her that he would be back in a little while. “When I return,” he said, “you will be well, and we shall be happy for many years.”

While they were lingering at the table, talking over their troubles, and planning what to do, this neighbor drove into the yard, unhitched his cow from behind the wagon, and opened the crates in which he had his chickens and pigs. He turned his oxen into the pasture, came into the house, and said, “Well, John, when do you have to go down to the county seat?”

“I must be there at noon.”

Then the friend said, “Let me see the paper demanding your presence.”

When it was handed to him, he looked at it a little, then put it into his pocket, and said: “John, I am going to take your name now. I am going over to the county seat myself, in your place. I shall register in the name of John Smith. I am going to be John Smith in the army. I have turned my cattle into your pasture, and put my pigs and chickens in with yours. If I never come back, you can have all. I cannot see you separated from your family, leaving this sick wife and these helpless children, while I remain at home, and have neither wife nor children to care whether I am living or dead.”

So that man went into the army. He registered as John Smith; and to all intents and purposes, he was John Smith. Every morning, he answered to the roll call when John Smith’s name was read. When he went to the front, he was shot dead in the very first engagement. This man gave his life as a substitute for John Smith. He died for him, that Smith might escape death.

That is exactly what Jesus Christ has done for the poor sinner.

By I. H. Evans, Signs of the Times, April 3, 1917 With permission from Dale Galusha dalgal@pacificpress.com