GREENLAND is a very cold country. For three months the sun is never seen; and for nearly nine months the ground is covered with snow. We have plenty of nice fruit in summer, and many good things all the year round; but the poor Greenlanders live mostly on seal’s flesh, blubber and oil. Poor, poor Greenlanders, they live so miserably; and what is much worse, many of them know nothing whatever of Jesus and His love! But God loves them, for He so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life, so that if a Greenlander hears of Jesus and believes in Him, he will be saved.
Some missionaries went there to tell them of Jesus, and labored there eight years without any apparent success, and thought about returning home. They had suffered a great deal from cold and hunger, and the people only laughed at them and mocked them. But these dear missionaries had made a great mistake; they thought to begin with proving that God lives, and that He made all things, instead of telling them about Jesus and His love. Sinners need to know that “God is love,” and that Jesus died.
One day a party of heathen Greenlanders led by a cruel and wicked native, named Kajarnak, came to the missionary’s hut where the missionary was writing. He was finishing his final correction of the four Gospels, and was just then at that part of John’s Gospel relating to the sufferings and death of Christ. Karnak was surprised at seeing the missionary writing, and at once asked him what he was doing.
“Writing.” “Writing!” said Karnak, “what is writing?” The missionary tried to explain it to him and then said, “I will read you what I have been writing?” Turning to Luke 22nd and 23rd chapters he read the account of Christ’s agony in the garden, and then upon the cross, with the story of His being crowned, scourged, and spit upon. As he read on Kajarnak became deeply interested. “And why,” he asked, “did they treat the man so? —What had He done?”
“Oh!” said the missionary, “this man did nothing amiss, but Kajarnak did. Kajarnak filled the land with wickedness; and Kajarnak deserved to go to hell for it. But this man suffered, all this to bear Kajarnak’s punishment, that Kajarnak might not go to hell.” And then the missionary went on to tell about God’s love, man’s sin, and Christ’s work for sinners, till the big tears were seen to roll down the poor heathen’s cheeks, and, unable any longer to restrain his feelings, he rose from his seat and cried, “Oh, tell it all over again, for I, too, would like to be saved.”
He was told it all over again—it was such a precious story, and Kajarnak believed the good news. His, heart was drawn to Christ. He believed in Him. Kajarnak was saved.
Are you saved, dear reader? You have often heard and often read of Jesus and of His sufferings. The blood of Jesus alone cleanses from sin. Poor Karnak, from “Greenland’s icy mountains,” with a heart colder than the ice and darker than the darkest night in his country, yet came to Jesus, believed in God’s love and was saved.—Selected.
ML 09/17/1899