I AM going to tell you a little story of Susie and Willie. Susie is six-years old and Willie four, and they are very great friends. They play together and learn their lessons together, and share their little pleasures. Susie cannot bear to have a toy unless her brother has one like it, or otherwise he must share hers. They are inseparable companions; in fact, they protect one another in difficulty and danger; and if Willie cries Susie is sure to cry, too, from sympathy. Susie is a black-eyed, merry, thoughtless little girl, wild and restless, though very affectionate. I am sorry to say it is most difficult to persuade her to be quiet enough even to listen to the most simple and beautiful of Bible stories, for her eyes, head, and feet Ire never still for a moment, and her restless little mind is busy only with what surrounds her. Very different is it with Willie: he is a quiet, solid looking boy, and he ponders over what he hears, and tries to work out his difficulties by questioning his mother. Willie most certainly loves the Lord Jesus, and knows that he will go to heaven, and, as he is devoted to Susie, of course he wants her to go, too.
One day Willie asked her, “Shall you go to heaven by-and-by, Susie?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied, in a careless tone; “and shall you go there, Willie?”
He answered, very seriously, “Yes.”
“But why shall you go to heaven?” Susie inquired.
“Because I love ‘em both: Jesus, because He died, and God, because He let Him.”
How thankful Willie’s mother was to hear this answer from the lips of her child, for she was sure that it must be the Spirit of God who had taught her little boy. You know that He teaches very little children, and opens their understandings just the same as He does the understandings of those who are older in years.
Dear children, can you say with Willie, from your heart, that you love both the Lord Jesus and God His Father? I hope you can, but, at any rate, let me tell you that it is quite certain that God loves you, and that Jesus bids you come to Him. God loved you so much that He sent. His only Son to die for your sins, and the Lord Jesus was willing to come and bear all the punishment our sins deserved. He was spit upon, scourged, and cruelly treated by men, and upon the cross God turned His face away from Him, because “He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Jesus loved us so much that He bore all these things for us, and now, if you believe in the great love wherewith He has loved us, you will love Him in return, and say with Willie, “I love them both: the Lord Jesus, because He died, and God, His Father, because He sent Him.” “We love Him because He first loved us.” M. W.