A Parable.
A BOY was once bidden by his father to clean a shop-window. The weather was frosty, and the boy knew, for his father had told him often, that at such times glass is more than usually brittle (Rom. 7:14, 1814For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. (Romans 7:14)
18For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. (Romans 7:18)); he was therefore afraid that he should break the window in his attempts to polish it, and said so. “Well,” replied his father, “I shall be very sorry if you do, and trust you will be very careful (1 John 2:11My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (1 John 2:1)) but if, notwithstanding all your care, you should have the misfortune to do so, you have my forgiveness, only come and confess it” (1 John 1:99If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)).
The boy set to work, and hard work it was (Phil. 2:1212Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. (Philippians 2:12)), for the breath of persons who had looked in at the shop window, and the dust together, were in some places congealed upon the glass, and presently snap went a large pane! “There now!” exclaimed the boy, “I knew how it would be;” and his first thought was to run and tell his father; “But then,” thought he again, “if I go and tell him so readily it will look as if I thought lightly of it. Such a large pane as this is a serious matter; and so soon, too, after he told me to be careful! I had better wait a little while and try to make some amends by doing the rest of the work right. I know that won’t mend the window, but it will at least show how careful I have tried to be, and how sorry I am, and that I think a good deal of my fault, and feel I ought to do something more to get forgiveness than by merely confessing it, as if it was a little matter.” Poor boy! what a many great I’s there were in all this! Well, while thinking thus he continued his work, but now the trouble he was in unfitted him for his difficult task, and with his mind full of the broken window, he had once or twice nearly cracked another; and, at last, in a momentary fit of absence of mind, pressing a little too hard on the last pane, he starred it in the middle. Poor fellow! he would fain have wept at his untoward accident, but somehow he could not (Psa. 32:33When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. (Psalm 32:3)). Into the shop He went, full of sorrow. His father was in the back parlor, and he could hear his brothers and sisters talking cheerfully and happily with him, while he felt like an outcast. Sitting down behind the counter in the cold solitude of the shop, he tried to recall his father’s kind words: “Only come and confess it.” “Ah!” thought he, “if I had but done as he told me I should not perhaps have broken the other pane. The first was an accident; I tried all I could not to break the window, and father’s telling me only come and confess it’ made me more anxious not to break it (John 14:1515If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15)), but the second was all through not doing as he told me. O dear! how sorry I am! how cold it is here, too; and how the warm fire-light glows through the glass door where they’re all so cheerful and happy! Ah, I see now why dear father said ‘only come and confess it.’ It was not because he thought little of a broken window — those panes are large, and cost him a good deal to put in — but he knew it would keep things right between us; it would keep me right anyhow (John 13:1010Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all. (John 13:10)), I can understand that by what I feel now. I can’t go in there and be happy with my brothers and sisters; I feel as if I did not belong to them! How kind of him to say ‘only come and confess it.’ It was because, however much he might think of a broken window, he thought more of me. Yes! to have me right with him, that so I might be happy in his company, was the great thing with him; while I, thinking only of myself, wanted to show how sorry I was, and so making a fuss about my sorrow, I wanted somehow to deserve forgiveness; and father didn’t want me to deserve it, not he.” Then another thought struck him, “No; and confessing wouldn’t get it either (Heb. 9:2222And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. (Hebrews 9:22)). Confessing would have set me right with myself — I can feel that sharp enough now! —and I suppose,” said the boy to himself, trying to understand the matter, “I suppose it’s like putting away (Job 1:88And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? (Job 1:8)) from oneself something that is disagreeable to another — something that has come between us; but as to its getting or deserving forgiveness, that’s quite another thing. No, no; it would have kept me right, but it couldn’t of itself have set me right with father; that he could only do himself (1 John 4:9, 149In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9)
14And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. (1 John 4:14)). And hadn’t he done (John 19:3030When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:30)) that already? Didn’t he say, ‘You have my forgiveness’? (Eph. 1:77In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; (Ephesians 1:7); Heb. 9:12, 10:14; Acts 13:38, 3938Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: 39And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. (Acts 13:38‑39).) O how blind I have been I was already forgiven and didn’t see it! If I had only kept in memory what father said, and believed him all along, I shouldn’t have stopped away, and then I shouldn’t have had all this to bear, and another broken pane besides my disobedience to confess.”
How long the poor boy might have sat there in the cold reproaching himself, it is impossible to say, for although he seemed to see matters in their true light now, he still remained where he was. But his kind father had heard the window crack, and guessed how things stood; he therefore sent one of the boy’s brothers to fetch him into the parlor, and there in the father’s presence (Psa. 16:1111Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. (Psalm 16:11)) all was soon set right.
Dear Christian reader, can you see anything in this little parable at all resembling some of your past experiences, and the mistakes most of us have made at one time or another? Do you still suffer from them? If so, look through the “Broken Window” carefully, and listen to the plaint of him who did the damage.
Or, better still, consider prayerfully the fourth chapter of Hebrews, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth verse, and the tenth chapter of the same epistle, from the nineteenth to the twenty-third verse; and may the gracious words therein spoken by the HOLY GHOST come with power to your heart and understanding, that so at once and forever you may shake yourself free from a net with which Satan has often enthralled those dear to God, and kept them “in the cold” for days, for weeks, sometimes for months to their own great sorrow, dishonoring him who bought them with his precious blood, casting doubt upon his all-accomplished work, questioning the love of him who sent him, and almost making grace itself incompetent to meet their need! Till he that troubleth you can prove that Christ is not risen, ought you to be so easily persuaded that “you are yet in your sins”? Depend upon it the “Slough of Despond.” and the “Castle of Giant Despair” exist only in Egypt.
“Heir of glory,
What is that to thee and me?”
In the regions of unbelief the Christian is surely never called to tread. Having crossed the Jordan, stay there.