AN old lady, whom I met when visiting a pretty watering place in the South of England, and whom I soon learned to know and love, told me the following story of her conversion:
“I was such a little girl, and it is now seventy years since I gave my heart to the Lord Jesus; and, blessed be God He has kept me and preserved me up to the present moment. How well I remember the place, the time, and the circumstances connected with my early conversion. I was only four years old, and my brother was eight. We were walking together, hand in hand, up the garden path in the home of our childhood. There were gooseberry bushes on either side of the walk, and I can even remember pulling my little white muslin frock aside that it should not get torn by the thorns.
“All at once my brother said: ‘Lottie! Do you know that there is a beautiful land up in the sky, where a beautiful gentleman lives; and he keeps a big book, and every time you and I do a good deed he puts down a white mark, but when we do something naughty he puts down a black mark?’
“I conclude that someone must have told my brother this, and it troubled him. Yes, and it made me very unhappy. For a little time we were both silent; then I turned to my brother and said, ‘But how can we get the black marks out now?’ for, child as I was, I had been disturbed with a sense of sin.
“My brother answered, ‘We must be good and do good, Lottie;’ and we walked up and down the garden path. Then I said, ‘Let us go into the barn at the top of the garden, and pray to God’; so we went, and knelt together in the old outhouse, and earnestly repeated this simple hymn―
“‘Lord, look upon a little child
By nature sinful, rude, and wild.
Oh! put Thy gracious hand on me
And make me all I ought to be.
“‘Make me Thy child, a child of God,
Washed in my Saviour’s precious blood;
And my whole heart from sin set free,
A little vessel full of Thee.’”
“Our hands were clasped together and God’s Spirit showed me my own sinfulness. We rose up, and the old barn seemed to be filled with a glory light for me, for I came to Jesus and trusted in Him to save me, and He filled me with joy and peace, which have never departed from me. As I grew older I searched His Word and trusted His promises, and by His grace I have never doubted my salvation through the blood of Jesus, God s dear Son. My brother, too, became the Lord’s, and in after years spent his time as a gospel preacher. He was taken to be ‘with Christ’ many years ago, whilst I have been left here to tread the wilderness journey over seventy years, and proving His love, and goodness, and mercy all the days of my life.”
Dear children, I could tell you many stories of interest about this dear old lady, which I used to love to listen to as we walked together by the seashore, but I have only told you of her conversion. I wonder if any of my little readers have learnt their own sinfulness, like my aged friend did, when only a child of four years old. You cannot be happy without Jesus; you cannot be saved apart from Him and His precious blood, for that alone can blot out the “black marks” which sin has made on your souls. Then come to Jesus as this dear child did.