ONE Sunday afternoon, a great many children were gathered together for a children’s service, and many grown-up people had come with them to hear of God’s love.
Let us look at a small group in the large hall. It is a nurse and two little children. The eldest is between five and six years old. Her large, bright eyes light up a most endearing face, with a very unusual look of intelligence upon it. As the child shakes back her fair, curling hair from her face, her fragile look makes us feel that she will need tender care and love to enable her to pass through this rough world.
The speaker arrives, and few of his young hearers pay more eager attention than our darling little F. With flushed cheeks, she listens to the story, how that the Lord Jesus left His glory, and came down here, becoming a little child, and growing up in this world, and at last dying on the cross for sinners. She listens to the message how that old and young may have all their sins forgiven, and be ready to go to be with the Lord when He calls His loved ones home, and how that they all should be really on the Lord’s side.
Little F.’s heart was full of joy. Young as she was, she had known and trusted the Lord for many months. When, in closing his address, the speaker asked all the little ones who were “on the Lord’s side” to come and speak to him, little F. slipped down from her seat, and stole gently up the room, and then clasped her little hands in those of the speaker.
Many a grown-up person’s heart was stirred at the sight! The little child, forgetting herself and the crowds around her, and thinking only of the Lord, whom she had already learned to love!
After the meeting was over, and the children had gone to their homes, little F.’s first greeting to one who dearly loved her, and had taught her about the Lord Jesus, was this: “Oh, auntie dear, I am so happy! I danced nearly all the way home. I am so happy I am on the Lord’s side.” Her auntie knew that this joy was not the work of a moment, for, when only four years old, F. had learned for the first time that the Lord loved her, and that He had died for her, and her intelligence in understanding the truth was most marked. Her heart entered into it, and she learned by God’s teaching that she had a sinful nature, as well as that she needed forgiveness of her sins. But little F. saw in Jesus all that she needed, and often said, “I do believe on the Lord Jesus, and I am saved, for He died for me.”
The dear child was anxious for her friends to know Him too, and would ask them all if they were saved, telling them that Jesus the Lord had died to save sinners. Many a time she would leave her dolls and toys to talk to her aunt about the Lord, and when she had learned to read, it was her joy to spell out the chapters she loved so much, chiefly those commencing— “Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem,” and “Now on the first day of the week.”
Our little F. also loved to hear of the Lord’s coming to call all who love Him to meet Him in the air, and to be forever with Him, and she knew she would be one of the happy children who would be called then. Dear little readers, will you meet our darling F. there in the glory?
L. T.