ONE bright day I was walking in the country when I came upon a plow-boy, who was endeavoring to clean his boots and leggings of the mud that clung to them.
I went up to him, and, offering him a little book, said, “Your muddy boots make me think of your sins and mine; they cling to us till we find the way to get rid of them.” The boy willingly took the book, put it into his pocket, and then looked up at me with a surprised expression.
“You have sins, have you not?”
“O, yes.”
“Do you know how to get rid of them?”
“Yes; by prayer.”
“You don’t pray for what is offered to you as a free gift! You didn’t pray for that book I offered you; you took it.” I then told him how God, in the Gospel, was offering salvation to lost sinners through the precious blood of Christ, and warned him that if he went into the presence of God in his sins, he would be cast out in judgment into the lake of fire.
“You don’t want to go to hell, do you?” The boy, with an anxious, earnest look, said, “No, sir!”
“Well, God’s Word says, ‘How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation.’ I was talking to a man lately, and I said to him, ‘R—, are you going down into that lake of fire?’
“‘No, sir; He won’t let me,’ he replied. “‘Who will not let you?’ I asked.
“‘Jesus Christ.’
“‘Why, what about your sins?’
“‘Gone!’ he said.
“‘Gone where? How’s that?’
“‘Precious blood!’ sweetly sounded from his lips.”
I parted from the boy, saying, “Take care, my boy! don’t neglect God’s salvation; God’s way of taking away sins. You may have difficulty in getting those boots and leggings clean, but if you take God at His word, the precious blood will wash away all your sins, and make you quite clean in His sight. ‘The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.’”
Dear reader, are you still praying, while a “finished” work is presented before you as God’s remedy for all sin? God calls Himself, in His Word, “God our Saviour,” adding, “who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” And again we read, He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Are you still praying, when God says, by His Apostle, “The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach: that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead thou shalt be saved?”
ML 09/09/1917