“IF you go back to that mission home and bring any more of these tracts into this house, I will throw you outside the door. Mind, I have said it, and I mean it, so you had better make up your mind what you are going to do. Let some of these ‘Christians,’ as they call themselves, find you your bed and board, and they’ll show how far their religion has got into them.” Then stamping his foot in a rage, the angry man turned to his newspaper, and his sorrowful little daughter quietly withdrew to a neighbor’s house until his anger would subside.
Nancy’s father was a professed infidel, but really he was nothing at all, except a man of the world. He was a salmon fisherman and fairly well off, but he drank and gambled away a good part of his earnings. His wife was very delicate, and seldom able to be out. Nancy, a bright girl of twelve, was their only child.
One of her father’s employees was a godly young Christian man. He had opened a little Sunday school in a mission hall for the fishermen’s children and others in that out-of-the-way place, where no one seemed to care for the souls of the people, or teach their children the truth of God. It was in that simple gospel service that Nancy learned her need of a Saviour, and heard of Jesus and His power to save. Her young and tender heart was won for Christ, and with her lips she confessed Him as her saviour. Her invalid mother was glad to see her child taken up with what she knew was right, although she herself was a stranger to Christ and His salvation. But when the father heard of Nancy going to Sunday school, and especially when she sang hymns and read her Testament at home, he was very angry and threatened to stop her going. His angry words to Nancy showed that he was wicked enough to carry out his threat.
But there is a God in heaven above who overturns at His decree the plans of men, and causes even their wrath to praise Him. Nancy went with some other girls to the Sunday school as usual, not without some fear, however, but she remembered the Lord’s own words, “He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.” Matthew 10:3737He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:37).
On the way home, accompanied by the young man who conducted the class, Nancy met her father on his way to look at his nets. He was not angry as she feared he would be, but spoke kindly to her, asking if she had been able to repeat her memory verse correctly. God had spoken to him and softened his heart.
A few Sunday nights after, he sat in the mission hall, listened to the gospel preached by a Christian man with whom he did business, and God in grace saved his soul. O what a triumph of God’s grace that was! What joy and happiness there was in the home from then on!
Nancy is now a devoted young Christian lady, the joy of her father’s heart, and her mother, stronger in body, is also saved and happy.
What wonders grace can work, and the first and best in you, dear reader, will be your own salvation. If you know your need, trust yourself to Jesus. He is mighty to save.
If you do not yet know yourself a sinner, lost, guilty and condemned already, let the Word of God convince you of it. There is no other way of learning it. And then, that Word says, “Christ died for the ungodly.” Romans 5:66For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6).
ML-07/19/1964