William Hone was an atheist lecturer who traveled around the country speaking against the teachings of God’s holy Word. One day he was taking a walk in the country and lost his way. He came upon a poor, tumble-down cottage, in front of which a little girl was reading a book.
After getting directions to his road, he picked up the book the child was reading. To his surprise he found it was a copy of the New Testament. Throwing it on the ground, he said to the girl, “You foolish little thing! Why do you read stupid books like this?”
The child looked at him in shocked surprise and cried, “Oh, please don’t talk that way about my Book. My mother is sick in bed, and this Book is such a comfort.”
The simple words spoken by the child set William Hone thinking: “Those poor, simple people,” he said to himself, “are in trouble. The mother is sick, the child young, and yet they have found something real in that Book; they have found something on which to live and die. What could I give them that would be a comfort now or a support in death? All I do is take away people’s hopes. No God, no Christ, no heaven, no hell. And what have I for myself? Nothing! I need something real-something something lasting.”
William Hone began to study that same wonderful Book. He learned that “Christ died for our sins....He was buried, and that He rose again” (1 Cor. 15:3-43For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: (1 Corinthians 15:3‑4)). He was saved with an everlasting salvation. It became his greatest joy to tell others what great things God had done for him. On the flyleaf of his Bible he wrote this: “The proudest heart that ever beat has been subdued in me!”
Have you ever carefully read and thought about God’s Word, the Bible? Do you take time when alone to see in it what God’s thoughts of sin and salvation are? He loves you, and He wants to save you and to satisfy your heart forever.