SHALL I tell you, dear children, a pretty story I heard lately? It made me think of Jesus, the Lamb of God, who laid down His life to save sinners; perhaps it will make you do so, too, and God likes us to think about Him.
They tell me there is an old church, far away in a part of Germany, called the Black Forest. I have never been there, but I am sure if I did go it would strike me as a very strange thing to see over its doorway the carving of a little lamb, lying stretched out dead. When you have heard how it came to be put there, I think you will say it is a touching story.
Now, some years ago, it happened that the tower of this church, which, as I told you, is very ancient, seemed to be getting quite unsafe, and likely to fall into ruins. You may be sure the people of the place did not wish this to happen, for they were proud of the old building, that had held its head up so high among them for so many, many years. They sent for a man, who was known to be clever, both as an architect and a sculptor, and he undertook to have the old tower properly repaired. The first thing he did, was to have a very high scaffolding put up all round it, for the masons to stand upon while they worked, and each day he went up amongst them to direct their work.
One day he came as usual to see how they were getting on. He mounted the scaffold, and went from one of the masons to another. He had so often been up before, that I fear he had grown rather careless of danger, and went along without thinking where he was. Suddenly his foot slipped, and with a loud cry he fell. Oh! how terrible it must have been for those about him to see him disappear; and how powerless they were to give him any help!
Can you not picture to yourselves how terrified he would feel, as he came downwards.? I am sure he must have thought there was nothing but death before him; and if he did not know Jesus, as his Saviour, how terrible that death would be, with the judgment to follow!
Though it did not take him so long to reach the ground as it has taken me to tell you about it, yet he had plenty of time to think of all this, for people's minds work very quickly when death seems near.
As fast as they could, the workmen hurried to where their master lay, apparently lifeless at the foot of the old tower. They feared they were raising from the ground a dead body, but what was their surprise to find he was only a little stunned by his fall, and in no way really hurt!
The secret of his wonderful escape was soon made evident, for there, on the spot where he had lain, was stretched, lifeless and crushed, a lamb! It had been feeding beneath the tower, and God had mercifully allowed that it should stand just where it could break the fall of the poor sculptor—and so the lamb had died instead of him. Do you not think it must have touched his heart very much, as he stood and looked at the little innocent victim that had been sacrificed to save him? I am sure it did, for he felt so grateful that he asked leave to carve the image of the dead lamb over the doorway, and there it is to this day, just as the sculptor carved it many years ago.
I wonder did he think, as he worked at the carving, of another Lamb, who had died for him—Jesus the Lamb of God? I cannot say, but I hope others may think of Him when they look at it and hear the story. It would, indeed, be well if the sculptured lamb made their thoughts turn to Jesus, that precious Saviour, who laid down His life that poor, fallen, helpless ones might be saved. You see, dear children, it was a very bad thing to fall from that tower down on to the grass below, but do you know we have all had a far greater fall? Yes, we have; for God long ago made man innocent and upright, but he listened to the devil's lie, and so he fell—he fell from God, and now we are all sinners, "none righteous, no, not one"; and if God, "in His great love wherewith He loved us," had not given His son to save us, we should have fallen down, down, down, into hell forever.
And how did Jesus save us? He died for us on the cross. There the Lamb of God came under all the weight of the wrath that we deserved, so that now God says, "Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
But I want to tell you something more of the Lamb of God, that makes God's story about Him so much more beautiful than my story about the sculptor's lamb. Many years after Jesus had laid down His life on the cross for us, one of His disciples had a vision of things in heaven. You may be sure there were many beautiful and wonderful things to see there, but I think nothing was so beautiful to him as what I am now going to tell you. He saw the throne of God, and in the midst of the throne "stood a Lamb as it had been slain"—there was Jesus, God's Lamb I How happy it must have made John to see Him living there—not an image only of a dead lamb, like the sculptor's over the doorway, but a living person, who loved him, and was on God's throne for him, for "He ever liveth to make intercession" for His blood-bought ones, and. He says, "because I live, ye shall live also.”
But there is yet something more about the Lamb of God that I must tell you before I stop. It is very solemn and terrible, and it is nearly the last thing God tells us about His Lamb.
In the same wonderful book, in which we are told how happy those are, who have "washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," God tells us that there is an awful day coming, when all, who will not now come to Jesus to be washed in that precious blood, will have to meet Him as their Judge, and to bear then "the wrath of the Lamb.”
Oh, dear children, how terrible this sounds! Only think of the meek, patient, long-suffering Jesus corning at last in wrath to those who refused His love, and would not come to Him to save them. I do pray that none of you, who know how He came to die for sinners, may be among the number of those who will have to face "the wrath of the Lamb." How good it is that "to-day is the day of salvation," and that to-day I may once again point you to Jesus, as, long ago, John the Baptist did his disciples, when he saw Jesus coming unto him, and said, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." D. & A. C.