Or, “Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out.”
Dick lived with an uncle on a small farm. He was a bright, intelligent boy, and, from his early childhood, had been a by and a comfort to his Christian aunt, who had adopted him as her son when his mother died, leaving her baby boy three days old.
“Dickie,” as he was called, was a general favorite among his school-mates, and never failed to secure the chief prize in his class. A godly farmer kept a Sunday school not far from where Dick lived, and from the day that he entered it, when five years old, he never missed being present, or failed to have his “Memory Text” and “Bible Answers”—which in these days were the principal items of Sunday-school instruction—entirely to his teacher’s satisfaction.
“The story of Achan,” who stole the gold and the garment, and hid them in his tent in Israel (Joshua, ch. 7), was the lesson one afternoon, and the Memory Text was,
The earnest, teacher pressed home upon his class of boys the solemn fact, that sin, however well hid from the eyes of men, was ever before the Lord, whose eyes like a flame of fire, searcheth all hearts, and sooner or later, will bring the hidden deeds of all to light. Dick felt the power of the Word, and, no doubt, the Spirit of God carried it home to his conscience.
There was no special sin that be bad been guiltv of, such as Achan’s, yet the light of God shining upon his conscience, rentinded him of much that he had done, which he knew and felt was only sin in the sight of a holy God.
That afternoon, Dick was about to accept Christ as his own Saviour, but, alas! his convictions passed away, and left him less concerned about his state before God than he had been before.
Years passed by, and Dick was now a boy of sixteen. He assisted his uncle on the farm, and during the summer months, when part of the house was rented to vitors, he took them boating on the lake, or driving among the hills. A merchant and his family were in the house one summer, and on Sunday evenings, the city mehant, being an earnest Christian, preached the Gospel in the school. God blessed the Word, and several were truly converted. Dick was again awakened, and one of the Christian merchant’s daughters several times spoke to him personally and faithfully about his soul.
Dick became very uneasy. He saw that he must either yield to Christ aind be saved; or cease to go to the meetings. In fact, it came to this, that he would not go out boating with certain of the merchant’s family, lest he should be spoken to about his soul.
One afternoon, he disappeared, and could not be found when the party wanted to go for a sail. Hid among the trees, on the side of the lake, he could see all their movements, without being observed, and when night fell, Dick kept his hiding-place. He was in great misery of soul. All his sins seemed to pass before his mind, and again and again the text shot like an arrow through his memory,
“Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Unable to endure it longer, he left his hiding-place, crept up to the door of the house, while his uncle was conducting he evening reading of the Word. Dick listened outside the door with more eageess to the chapter read, than he had ever done. It was the story of Zaccheus in Luke 19, ending with the text,
“The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
That just met Dick’s need. He believed it, and, with the tears gushing down his cheeks, entered, confessing he was saved.
ML 04/19/1942