IN my early school days, long before I reached my teens, such an inordinate love of fun was in me that my dear father often told me I should one day get myself into sad disgrace.
My father’s fears were only too well grounded, as the following incident shows. In going to school I had each morning to pass a neighbor’s house, the inmates of which were notoriously late risers. One morning, when passing their house with two of my schoolfellows, one of them threw a stone upon the roof, and then we all ran off as fast as possible around the corner, not being discovered we thought. A little while after, when passing the house in company with two other boys, the window blinds being still down, I imitated the example of the boys, and then, upon turning the corner, related our fun to an older schoolfellow.
The next time I saw this boy he came towards me with a very serious manner, and said, “Ah! you are going to be summoned!” and I found that the neighbors I had disturbed had looked out just as he was passing by, and that he had “told on me.” He seemed to delight in the prospect then before me, but I was horror-struck at the thought of being “summoned.”
The news spread like wildfire among the boys that I was to be summoned, and I did my utmost to conceal my fears by forcing a laugh or by saying something droll. I succeeded so far that I overheard two boys in conversation saying, “A. is going to be summoned, but he doesn’t care a bit.”
Could they but have seen me weeping when alone, they would have been fully convinced that A. did care, and that he was more alarmed than they gave him credit for. Lest the truth should come out, I dared not venture one word of explanation at home why the frolicsome schoolboy had suddenly become melancholy and without appetite.
Some days having passed by, my fears gradually diminished, and I began to hope that all would blow over. My surprise and confusion can therefore be better imagined than described, when one thy, before all at my home, my father suddenly taxed me with the mischief. Yet what a relief it was to me to find that, though he knew all the story, he loved his little son just the same. He did not tell me that he had pleaded for me with the neighbor, but his manner set my mind at rest.
This little incident of early days seemed to foreshadow a really great event in my life: a few years after the occurrence just related, I found myself in danger of being summoned before a tribunal where I must needs answer for my many sins. Oh! how I dreaded to meet the Judge. I knew that He had a perfect knowledge of all my thoughts, and words and ways, and that before Him I should be utterly unable to attempt any sort of defense. The knowledge of this so terrified me that even now I can remember my knees knocking together with fear, lest I should be suddenly called into His presence, to await the dread moment when I should receive my just condemnation.
I knew not then what a joyful surprise was in store for me, but the report reached me that He, who had been hitherto the special object of my fear and dread, loved me with an everlasting love, and that He had given His own Son to die to save me from the consequences of my sin and folly. I am sorry to add that at first I esteemed the news too good to be true, but He who loved me was very patient, and eventually I believed and received the truth as it is in Jesus, and now I rejoice in the assurance that there is “no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”
Youthful or aged reader, sooner or later you will be summoned before your Creator. Will it be to receive a reward―a “Well done, good and faithful servant”? or will it be to receive a sentence of condemnation? He who knows all, even to your secret thoughts, loves you notwithstanding all, and is willing to save your guilty soul.
“He 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.” A. J.