Jamie was the brightest and the most mischievous boy in our Sunday school. Everybody loved him, and he seemed to love everybody. More than once I had visited in his home, and had tried to urge his father to come to the gospel meeting, but he always said, “It ain’t, no use beginning if you can’t stick to it.” He was ashamed to say what it was that he feared wouldn’t let him “stick to it,” but everyone m town knew that Jamie’s poor father was a man who loved to drink.
It was a cold winter night, and I was thinking about Jamie and his father. Just once more, I thought, I must go and visit that home and see if I can bring them to Jesus. Their home was one of a long row of houses, all built the same. When I reached the place there was no light to be seen from any of the windows, and I began to think my long walk was all for nothing. However, I didn’t like to go back without knocking, and no sooner had I done so than the door opened. But it way so dark inside that I couldn’t see anyone. Then I heard the voice of Jamie my scholar, saying, “Good evening. Ma’am, glad to see you.”
And I was glad to find Jamie at home, for I knew a chat with him. would be interesting. Though brimful of fun, Jamie seemed quite harmless except in the bird-nesting season when to tell the truth, he robbed so many nests, that it was a wonder there were any birds left to sing in our neighboood.
“We always like Jamie to go with us. He knows where all the nests are!” said a boy to me one day.
I have myself taken whole pocket fulls of poor little yellow-beaked, half-naked birds from him, and I think the sorrow I showed for the poor little captives used to puzzle him a great deal.
In spite of all this, Jamie was the best scholar in his class, as well as the best singer in the school.
So when I found Jamie was at home I said, “May I come in for a while? “Yes, Ma’am.”
“Are you all alone, Jamie?”
“No, Sarah Ann’s in.”
I stepped inside, and Jamie had to direct me to a chair, for it, was so dark I still couldn’t see at all “Aren’t your father and mother at home, Jamie?”
“No, father went out last night and hasn’t come back, and mother has gone out to look for him.”
I found that Sarah Ann, who was just four years old, had fallen asleep sitting in her chair. She soon wakened as we began to chat, and so I suggested that we should sing a hymn together. Sarah Ann immediately asked for,
“Jesus loves me, this I know.”
When we had finished singing, I talked to them about those two lines.
“He will wash away my sin,
Let a little child come in.”
“Now can you tell me what that means? In where?”
“Heaven,” said little Sarah Ann promptly.
Then I told them, as well as I could, what the Bible said about heaven, and how nothing would be allowed in there but what was pure and holy. So that no boy or girl would be let in whose sins were not washed away in the blood of Jesus.
“And do you remember,” I asked Jamie, “what gives them light in that glorious place?”
“God’s face,” he answered.
“Yes, Jamie. God is light, and would you like to go there?”
“No.”
“Why not, Jamie?”
“Because my sins ain’t washed away.”
Poor Jamie! I was glad to know that he was truthful about it, and I tried again and again to warn him that he must have those sins washed away, or be lost forever.
I stayed as long as I could with the poor lonely little ones, and when I had to go, it was with a sad heart. They were too young to be left to sit up for a drunken father. I heard later that neither father nor mother came home at all that night, and they slept all alone in the house.
Soon after this Jamie’s father took him away from school to work with him at his own occupation, and I lost track of him and Sarah Ann. I do hope that they both learned to know Jesus as their Saviour and had their sins washed away in His pcecious blood.
And I hope that, you too, dear young reader, will remember that you cannot stand before the light of “God’s face” with your sins upon you.
ML 08/12/1951