I THINK very likely, very few of those who read the stories in “The Messages of Love,” have ever seen a pagoda, but I daresay many of you have seen a picture of one, and know that it is a tall, stone building, looking very much like the steeple of a church.
Pagodas do not all look alike. Some are just a solid tower, with no opening. Others have small rooms inside them, one above another, and you can go to the top, by means of stone steps. I remember one pagoda of this kind with idols on each of the three floors, but I was surprised to find them with heads and arms broken off. I was afterwards told the reason of this. These idols were supposed to protect the city in the valley beneath them, for a pagoda always stands on a hill, but an army of soldiers had come, and captured the city, and the inhabitants blamed the idols, and revenged themselves upon them. Surely what the Bible says about idols is true.
“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands, . . they that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.” Psa. 115:4-8.
Some years ago, in the north of China, there lived in a pagoda, such as I have told you about, a woman who was considered by her neighbors very holy. She was what is known as a Buddhist nun, and she had devoted her life to the service of Buddha. She had vowed to eat no meat, nor drink wine, to possess no gold or silver; to go to no places of amusement; to take the life of no living thing. And why, do you ask, did she do all this? If you had questioned her, she would have told you it was “to obtain merit.” She knew she was a sinner, and she feared the future, so she thought if she did many good works, it would be well with her when she came to die.
Could you, dear children, have told her differently? Could you have told her that the Bible says, “Not of works,” (Eph. 2:9), and that “the gift of God is eternal life”? (Rom. 6:23).
But this woman had not read the Bible, and as the years went on, she felt more and more satisfied with the pile of good works she was collecting.
Alas! one day a very sad thing happened. She committed a great sin. You could never guess what she did, so I must tell you. She had an old cat and several kittens, and accidentally she stepped on one of the little kittens and killed it.
What was to be done! She had broken her vow, and she felt she must bear the punishment. So she told her friends to brick up the little windows in the pagoda, only leaving one hole, large enough to pass in a bowl of rice, and here she lived for three years and six months. She had just one bowl of rice and one bowl of tea every day, and she never once went out of her prison. Of course, she could not get out if she had wanted to. At the end of the time she came out, very pale and weak and thin, but well satisfied with herself and what she had done.
A short time afterwards, a white lady gave her a copy of the Gospel of Luke. She read it all through, and then she said,
“It is very beautiful, and if I had not accumulated so much merit, I would try to believe in Jesus, but I could not let all those good works go for nothing,” and at the last I heard of her she was clinging to her own doings, and despising the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Nineteen hundred years ago, upon the cross. He cried out, “It is finished.” What was finished? The work of redemption. In the 53rd of Isaiah we read,
“The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all”, and again,
“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities,. . . with His stripes we are healed.” Yes, He has done it all; the work is finished; we cannot add to it.
You can see the foolishness of this poor woman, priding herself on her own good works, but are you like her, thinking to commend yourself to God by any thing you can do? Peter tells us in the 4th chapter of Acts,
“There is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.” So making a name for yourself. by doing good works, can be of no avail.
Jesus paid it all, All that I was due,” Nothing either great or small, Remains for me to do.”
But does not the Bible tell us to do good works? Yes, indeed, but not to gain salvation, but because we have salvation.
“I may not work my soul to save,
For that’s already done,
But I may work like any slave,
For love to God’s dear Son.”
ML 09/14/1924