DURING a visit in 1904 to a rather remote part of the Transvaal, I was lodging at a small house on the veldt.
On retiring to rest at night, I could not help noticing the extremely dirty state of the bedroom floor. It looked as if it had not been cleaned for months. I determined that the following day I would call the landlady's attention to it, and ask her to have it scrubbed.
The next morning, however, I saw what had escaped my notice the evening before. The floor was of such a nature that no scrubbing could possibly make it any cleaner. It was made of big clods of dirt, dried and hardened in the sun, and trodden down till a solid surface was formed, as level and smooth as any ordinary floor.
Of course I gave up my idea of asking the landlady to scrub it. The more such a floor were scrubbed the worse it would become. No amount of soap and water would do it any good.
Will you be surprised, reader, if I tell you that that bedroom floor aptly sets forth your condition in the sight of God?
I wonder if you are prepared to acknowledge that in God's sight you are so bad, so unclean, so corrupt, that you can no more improve yourself, or do anything to amend your condition, than the bedroom floor in the house on the veldt could be made clean by scrubbing it?
This is a truth that many are very slow to learn. They labor under the delusion that if only they try hard enough, and persevere long enough, they can make themselves more fit for God's presence. They might as well imagine that if only they could get a good scrubbing-brush, and plenty of soap and water, they would at last succeed in improving the condition of the bedroom floor.
Multitudes of men and women are engaged in a hopeless task of this sort, and many are the various kinds of scrubbing-brushes that they use.
There is, for instance, the scrubbing-brush of Self-Restraint. Have you not sometimes used this brush? You have tried to control your temper, and put a curb upon your unruly tongue. You have kept a strict watch over your actions, and have endeavored to restrain your passions. In this way you have been scrubbing away at the dirty floor. But you have utterly failed to effect any real improvement. You are as far from God as ever. Your heart is just as bad as it was when you began.
Perhaps it is the scrubbing-brush of Moral Living that you are trying. You do not swear or cheat, or get drunk. No impure speech ever soils your lips. You never do anything that men would call wicked. But all this makes no difference in your condition before God. Your moral living has not changed the evil character of your heart.
Some try the scrubbing-brush of Education. But education never yet changed a sinner into a child of God. A man may have passed through all the standards or the elementary schools; he may go successfully through a college course, and may learn all that the leading universities of Europe can teach him; but he is still a guilty, unclean sinner. In his heart of hearts he hates God, and loves sin just as much as the most depraved man on earth.
A young lady, cultured, refined, and admired by a large circle of acquaintances, became anxious about.her soul. The Holy Spirit was dealing with her, and one day she was heard to sigh
" I don't want to say it, but it seems to me that I hate God."
She was discovering that, though refined, amiable, and well educated, she was just as bad, just as much a lover of sin as a hater of God, as a coarse, disagreeable, ignorant person is.
Many fancy that where other scrubbing-brushes fail, the brush of Religion will succeed. So they go in for the outward forms of religion, whilst all the time their hearts are unchanged like the Pharisees of old. But all this leaves their carnal nature unchanged. Their religious garb serves but to cover up the uncleanness within.
If the scrubbing-brush of Religion could make any one clean, it should have made Saul of Tarsus so. Zealous beyond all his contemporaries, rigid in his observance of ceremonies and ordinances, devoted in his obedience to the priests; he might well have claimed to be the most religious man of his day.
But all the while there raged in his heart a bitter hatred against Christ. When at last his eyes were opened, and he found how terribly mistaken he had been, he confessed that he was the chief of sinners. In spite of all his religiousness he had to acknowledge, " In me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing " (Rom. 7. 18).
Do not, then, make a scrubbing-brush of religion. Not that I would say a word against real religion. It is a grand thing. I am sorry for the man who has none of it. But religion, of itself, can never make the sinner clean. It can never wash away his sin. Yet it is a thing greatly to be desired.
But if neither self-restraint, nor moral living, nor education, nor religion, nor any other scrubbing-brush of a similar kind can make you clean, there is One who can. The LORD JESUS CHRIST is the only Savior. There is power in His precious blood to wash all your foul stains away.
" Ye must be born again," are the words that confront every Christless soul. They were addressed to a most religious man. And they are as true to-day as ever. What you need, reader, is to be born again. Nothing short of that will do.
But you cannot bring about this new birth. What, then, must you do?
First of all, lay aside every scrubbing-brush! Give up all hope of improving the state of the dirty bedroom floor. In other words, own your exceeding sinfulness. Bow in self-loathing at the Savior's feet. Pass sentence upon yourself sternly and unsparingly.
Then look away from yourself altogether. Christ stands ready to save. His love is infinite. His blood can cleanse from all sin.