I SAW a tiny leaf torn from the branch on which it grew, blown over the fence, driven to and fro, until at last it found a sheltered corner and lay at rest.
I stood on a country railway station waiting for the train, when a constable came up with a young man in charge, handcuff’s on. I learned on inquiry that he had misbehaved himself the previous evening, and was now to pay the penalty of his folly. As we stood there, I noticed a tear start from under his eyelid and trickle down his sunburnt face, and my heart went out in pity for him; and I thought perhaps he was not always homeless, unloved, uncared for, unkempt; he was not always friendless; a mother’s hand has swept across that brow so troubled with sorrow and despair. Maybe she’s gone to heaven. Oh, may he meet her there.
A leaf driven to and fro. Job asks the question, “Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro?” Ah, the world would break it; the world will keep a man down when once he is down. Go to the public-houses or the corner of the streets in any city, and you will find numbers of young fellows driven to and fro―no resting-place―at the mercy of the wind. Go to the police courts and the prison gates, see the leaves driven to and fro.
And what will the world do? Only break them.
But put the question to my precious Saviour: “Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro?” Hear the answer: “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”
Are you driven to and fro? There is refuge in Jesus.
You have read how the Pharisees brought to Him a poor woman taken in adultery. She was a leaf driven to and fro, and they wanted to break her; they wanted to stone her; but Jesus, so full of love, rebukes them, and tells the poor trembling soul to go her way and sin no more. Praise Him!
There hung at the Saviour’s side on a cross at Calvary a dying thief—he had been a leaf driven to and fro—and now, man would crush and break him; but with his latest breath he asks, as it were, “Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro?” and Jesus in mighty love comforts him and says, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
Reader, young man, are you a leaf thus driven? Seek refuge from the coming storm in Jesus. “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.”
Comrades mine, ye who are the Lord’s and seek to serve Him from the home of love and comfort, step up with me to the edge of the forest of human life, and see the tender leaves snatched from their branches and hurled by the whirlwind of folly out into the ocean of sin and vice. Wilt thou break them? Hear them call. Carry the gospel to them; they are crushed by the tempter; let us seek to bring them to Christ, who came into the world to save sinners.
“Why unbelieving thou canst be blest;
Jesus will pardon, He’ll give thee rest.
Why wilt thou longer wait?
Haste to the open gate,
Come, ere it be too late,
To Jesus come!”
W. B.―N. Z.