WHEN the negroes of the south were liberated, great efforts were made to educate them, and for this purpose schools and colleges were founded and built, and many capable of teaching, soon volunteered to carry the work on. The freed negroes showed an aptitude for learning, and the work went on rapidly. The gospel had been joyfully received many a year before, and the hard task and the still harder task-master could not beat out the love of God which had cheered the heart of many a poor slave.
Amongst the rest of the learners at one school, an old negress of upwards of seventy presented herself, for she wand to read in the Word of God herself about Jesus. The teacher had to take his aged scholar through the alphabet, and a difficult lesson it was; but at last A B C was mastered, and D E F conquered sooner than the teacher expected. After much patient plodding on the scholar’s part, and much and loving patience on the teacher’s, X Y Z, was at last reached, to the satisfaction of both parties.
Then came the spelling lesson, whereupon the old lady said, “The first word I should like to spell is ‘Jesus.’ When I can spell that, all the rest will be easy enough.”
What a lesson might be learned from the simple hearted negro to begin with Jesus. Now I for one am sure that when we begin with Him, all the rest does become easy. We can trust Him for the salvation of our souls, yet often distrust Him in everyday matters. No wonder, then, that the lesson of the wilderness is so hard, because we keep Him out of the question. We put matters together as letters are put together to form words, but if the morning lesson began with Him, how differently we should bear ourselves all the rest of the day, whether in business or in the household, at school or at play, and how blessedly and calmly we should glide into the evening lesson—the X Y Z of one daily experience. He is worthy of every pulsation of our hearts; every affection of the heart should be centered on Him, and how right and how sweetly goes everything else when it is so. Whatever the lesson we have to learn in the school of God, “pleasing or painful, dark or bright,” let us begin with that name that is extolled and honored above every name—JESUS!
ML 10/15/1899