It was a beautiful night, and the stars twinkled in the sky. Two little girls were on the way borne from a meeting, where the subject of address had been “The Glories of Heaven.” The speaker had sought to impress upon his young hearers the beautiful description given of the New Jerusalem, the home of the redeemed, as recorded in the twenty-first chapter of the book of the Revelation. That fair holy city, with its street of pure gold and transparent walls, having “the glory of God.” Then in order to impress upon them the need of being saved ere they could reach that city, he read to them the dark description given by God of the unconverted, undegenerated sinner, in the third chapter of Romans, ending up with the words,
“All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
A story was told of a little boy who was so happy after he received Jesus as he, Saviour, and knew himself made ready for that glorious heaven where a little brother of his had already gone, that he often went out at nights and looked up the stars, wondering what his brother Willie would be doing away up in home beyond them. He said to his mother one night that he thought the stars we “like nail-holes in the floor of heaven, let little rays of the glory shine. out.”
This strange idea of the little boy seemed to take possession of the minds of the two children as they walked along the road, and several times they stood looking up to the twinkling stars, and saying to each other,
“What a bright place heaven must be, when the light shines out like that through the nail-holes in the floor.”
“I’d like to go there,” said the eldest of the two, “I wish I was ready.”
“Me too,’’ said her little cousin, “but I’ve done lots of naughty things, and teacher says it’s only white ones and pure ones that go there.”
“But he said, ‘the blood of Jesus makes us white, and if we believe on Him, we get all our sins cleansed away,’” said the other girl.
“Then I’ll just believe in Him just now, and get mine,” said the younger girl. “Teacher says we have nothing to do, because Jesus did it all, long, long, ago. The hymn says—
‘It is finished, yes, indeed,
Finished every jot;
Sinner, this is all you need,
Tell me is it not?’”
The two children walked together, talking of the things of the Lord, and from that night onward, they knew and confessed the Lord Jesus as their personal Saviour. There was no deep awakening, no alarm of coming wrath in their case. They heard the blessed gospel message of God’s love to guilty sinners, and how Jesus died to fit them for His holy, happy heaven above. They simply believed what God said; took it in as the very word of the eternal God; without question, they accepted His testimony, and they were saved. Their young hearts were won for Christ and heaven. They were saved, converted; and, reader, there is no other way of it for young or old.
Only one way—God’s own choice. If you, like these two children, will believe. Gad, you will know and rejoice in His salvation. But if you trifle with the gospel message, if you prefer the sins and follies of this present world to Christ, then remember as you live you must die, and according as your choice on earth has been, so will your destiny be in eternity. As the dear child said,
“Only white ones and pure ones go to heaven, and if you lack the fitness, you can never fill a place in God’s holy, happy heaven.”
ML 07/30/1939