GRANDMOTHER said, "To-day I have a new book, which you shall all read, one page at a time."
Winnie said, "I can only read a very little." Mary and Helen said, “We can't read one bit."
Grandmother said, “You can all read my new book; even little children who don't know A B C, can read my book just as well as if they had learnt reading."
Then grandmother opened her little book at page one. Winnie and Mary and Helen would all be glad if it was a picture book without any reading at all—perhaps it was.
No! it was quite true it had no reading at all, but then it had no pictures either. It had only two black pages—quite black all over.
“Is it black all through, grandmother? If you turned over the page would there be nothing but black? Oh what an ugly book!“
Grandmother said, “To-day I shall not turn over the page; we shall only read these two black pages. What do they tell you? You don't know. They tell you what your three little hearts are like, unless God has made you all new. You know you did not like to hear the other day that our hearts are all bad. I am sorry to have to tell it you, and to show you such a very ugly picture of your three hems. But I want you to understand how I know that it is true. I cannot see your hearts, so. I could not have told they are all bad. It is God who sees them, and He has said so. Now let me hear you all say these words, which God made a man say long ago: ‘I know that in me dwelleth no good thing.' Say them six times."
Mary and Winnie and Helen said these sad words six times.
“Now," said grandmother,” there are some more sad words God has said about men, women, and children: ‘They are altogether become filthy!' Say those words six times, too."
Mary and Winnie and Helen said these words six times also. They thought this was not a very nice lesson.
Grandmother had one more little verse for them to say: "There is none that doeth good, no not one." They said these words six times. It would be a good plan for all little children to learn these words, for it is much better to know and believe what God has said about us, than to have our own thong his about ourselves. What mistakes we make! But God makes no mistakes.
Mary and Winnie and Helen could not understand why God said this. "Sometimes I am good," Winnie said. And they all thought that they had sometimes done very good things. Sometimes they had been obedient, and sometimes kind, and often for whole days they had never screamed, nor stamped, nor fought, nor said "I won't!”
“Why does God say we are all bad?”
Grandmother said, " God does not mean that there are no nice pleasant things in you; there are nice pleasant things even in dogs and birds; they get very fond of people who feed them and pat them, and dogs are often very obedient and useful.
“But they do not know about God, and cannot love him. Children can be taught about God, and when they hear of His love, and of all that the Lord Jesus has done for them, God looks into their little hearts to see whether they love Him, and whether they are kind and obedient to please Him.
“If they loved God, and were doing everything to please Him, that would be quite a different thing from being only nice and pleasant.
“Then they would give up their own way, because they loved the Lord Jesus more than themselves; they would obey at once when they are told to do things they don't like; they would love people who are unkind to them. Children can love people who are kind to them, when their hearts are all bad; I mean when their hearts are quite, guile empty of love to God. They can love even their birds and kittens, and rabbits, and dolls. But no one loves God till God has made them quite new. No one loves God in the very least till then. And I want you to understand that a heart that has no love to God in it, is a bad, black heart. Look again at the little book, and ask God to make you believe you are like that black, black page.”
Helen said, “I know I don't love Jesus. I would like better to hear stories about animals. But sometimes I like stories about Jesus just for a little bit., Still I would like to please myself much more than' to please Him. Do you know how the little children sit in the infant school? They have seats going up, up, like the staircase, 'and the big little children sit on the top seat. Now if I had seats like that for all the people I love, and I put the people I love most at the top, who do you think would sit on the top seat?”
Grandmother said, "Would I sit there?”
But Helen said, "No, I'm afraid only one person would sit there all alone, and that would be I, myself.”
Then grandmother said, "I think Helen has told the truth about us all, till God has made us all new. And when we think of myself' sitting all alone at the top, I am sure we may believe that God has told the truth about our bad, black hearts.”