When I was a small girl, a missionary, who had spent many years in China, visited our little village, and came to our Sunday school. He told us stories about the Chinese children, how hard their lives were compared with ours, how they had no happy Sunday schools, no bright gospel hymns, and no Bibles or Testaments. He told us about a boy and a girl who had saved enough money to send six copies of the Chinese Testament to poor Chinese boys and girls. This is how they did it.
They had a number of pretty rabbits as pets. These rabbits were of a rare species, so they got good money for their young ones, and this money was laid aside to buy Testaments for poor children. Said the speaker: “This would be a good work for some of you boys and girls, and I hope you will begin to serve God in this way in your early years.”
He forgot to tell us that we would need to be converted to God ourselves first, before we could serve Him acceptably. Maybe he did not know that himself, for I have learned since then that there are many missionaries in foreign lands, as well as preachers and Sunday school teachers at home, who are preaching to others but who, themselves, know not the Saviour.
When my sister and I got home, we told our mother the story, and resolved that we would “begin to serve the Lord” by making “missionary rabbits” of our own bunnies. So we began right off. We had good success too, and we were not a little flattered when it was told out publicly to the whole Sunday school that Margaret and Kathleen had earned a dollar and a quarter for foreign missions with their missionary rabbits.
All this, simple as it may seem, was used by the great adversary of our souls—Satan—to instill into our young minds the terrible lie that we could serve the Lord before we were converted. And with this small beginning, we started on a course of religious works which increased as we grew older, until we were the two principal “workers” in the “congregation.” Both were teachers in the Sunday school; yet all the time we were “without Christ,” for we had not seen our true place as sinners in the sight of God — “without strength,” and “condemned already.” (Rom. 5:66For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6); John 3:1818He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18)).
However, the Lord in His mercy aroused Margaret and me soon after this, to see that we needed to be “born again” before we could serve the Lord, or do anything else to please Him. Missionary rabbits, good deeds, moral lives, church work, and all the rest of our religious profession, had to be let go as “filthy rags” (Isa. 64:66But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6)), which is just what God esteems our own righteousness to be. And when we were stripped of all this, we came as lost sinners, just as we were, the Lord Jesus received us and saved us, as He does every sinner who thus comes to Him now.
What a change it was to know we were saved and on our way to heaven, not because of “works of righteousness” which we had done (Titus 3:55Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; (Titus 3:5)), but saved by grace alone, because of what Jesus had done for us. We did not cease our work. Oh no! But instead of working for salvation, and to gain a place in the favor of God, we labored because we were saved, constrained by love to Him who saved is. Often we sing that little hymn:
“I do not work my soul to save,
For that my Lord has done;
But I would work like any slave,
From love for God’s dear Son.
ML 03/21/1965