I WAS conducting a series of meetings in Aberdeen, Scotland. After dismissing the large audience one evening I noticed that I was being closely followed by a little girl, who kept at my heels like a dog. Finally I turned to her and asked, a little sharply—"Lassie, what do you want? Why are you not away home with the rest of the folk?”
Then, for the first time, I scanned her a little more carefully. First I was attracted by her face: there were evidences that tears had been running down her cheeks. Her eyes were large and hungry-looking, and still filled with tears. She was bare-footed, and bare-legged half-way up to her knees, and her clothes were of the poorest.
When I asked her what she wanted I had fully expected that she would ask for money. "Lassie, what do you want?" I said.
Then the little lassie reached up on her tiptoes and whispered in my ear, "I want to be saved.”
Surprised and startled at the intensity of her words, I drew back.
“You want to get saved?”
“Ay, sir, I do"—oh E so pathetically, and still in a whisper.
“And why do you want to get saved?" Again on her tiptoes she reached up, and whispered in my ear—"Because I am a sinner.”
This was so satisfactory a reason, and by this time the child had so interested me, that I drew her to a seat by my side.
“How do you know you are a sinner? Who told you so?”
“Because God says so in the Book, and I feel it right here"—laying her hand on her breast, as the publican did.
“Well," I said, "do you think I can save you?”
Hitherto she had spoken in whispers, but now, drawing away from me, her words rang out short and clear: “Na, na, man, you canna save me; no man can save a sinner. Only Jesus can save me.”
“Yes, my dear, you are quite right. Only Jesus can save you. What has He done to save you?”
Again her lips to my ear—"Oh! sir, He died for me.”
I do not know why I made answer as I did. "Then He is dead, is He? How can He save you if He is dead?”
The little thing sprang up from her seat. No whisper now, no timid putting of lips to my ear, but her voice ringing out as before: “Man, Jesus is no deid. He died for me but He is no a deid man; He is God's Son Man, did ye no tell us this vera nicht that Go raised Him from the deid? He was deid, but He's no deid noo. Oh! man, I want to get saved." Her voice dropped into the old pathetic tones. “Dinna fash me, but tell me a' about it, and how I can get saved.”
I had preached that night from the text, “Who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification." Here was a little theologian who had grasped the Gospel with a clearness that I have only seen among, children all of whom, however poor, have been 'taught the Scriptures from their youth. She knew that she was a sinner—she knew that only Jesus could save her. He had died, but God had raised Him from the dead, and now He was able to save.
I need not say that the little one soon went away saved and happy.
“He's no deid. He died for me; but He's no deid." How often these words have come back to me, presenting as they do a living, loving Savior for every sinner on the face of the earth!