ONE sultry day a little girl, about nine years of age, was walking along one of the fine terraces in the west-end. For some time a storm had been gathering over the sky, and at this moment began to discharge itself with flashes of lightning, peals of thunder, and torrents of rain. The little, girl’s thin dress could not resist all this. What was she to do? There was no place of public shelter near. On one side was a large garden; on the other side beautiful mansions.
“Well,” she thought, “I must not stay here. I must go up to one of these large houses, although I daresay very rich people live here; and I must ask them to let me in till the storm is past.”
So she summoned up all her courage, and, mounting a flight of steps, knocked at one of the doors. It was instantly opened by a gentleman. He had seen her from the window, and now he very kindly asked her to come in, and sit down. She did so, and he began to talk. She stayed till the storm was quite past and was thanking him as well as she could for the shelter he had given her with such politeness, when he said he, “was very much pleased to see that she was not afraid to come up and ask admittance; and his prayer for her was that she might he led to take refuge from the coming storms of judgment in the blood of Jesus Christ.”
Much else that he said has since passed from her memory; but those words which we have quoted have never been forgotten, and they have been blessed by God to her soul’s eternal good.
Like the children of Israel in Egypt, as related for us in Exodus 12, she became happy through the knowledge by faith of being under the shelter of the blood of God’s Lamb, from the fierce storm, of divine judgment. (See Rom. 3:23-2623For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:23‑26)).
ML 10/12/1924