What is it to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? It is to believe that Jesus Christ can do what He claims to do and what He has promised to do and to depend on Him to do it. Mr. Moody tells us how that he was in his cellar one day when he looked up and saw his little girl making an effort to see him. She could not because it was dark in the cellar. "Jump," said Mr. Moody, "Daddy will catch you." And instantly the little girl jumped. Now, that was faith. That was believing on her father. So the jailer believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. He depended upon Him then and there for salvation.
And what happened? He was saved. That very moment Christ came into the man's heart and he became a new creation. He became possessed of a new joy. He became possessed of a new tenderness.
Did you notice what he did? He took water and washed the stripes of the preachers. Paul and Silas were bleeding when they came to the prison but the jailer did not care. But now that he had found Christ he has already begun to be a partaker of the divine nature. A new love has come to him. He has become tender where he was cruel before. Even so does the power of Jesus Christ make men over.
Now, this question: do you want to be saved? If you do you can be. It's the surest thing in all the world. It is as sure as the fact that night follows day. It is more sure than the fact that if you sow wheat you will reap it, that if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you shall be saved. Test the matter now and you will know the blessed fact in your own experience.
It is thoroughly refreshing to come upon this exquisite bit of literature called "Ruth." It follows, as you know, immediately after the bloodstained stories we read in Judges. It shows that while there was war and confusion and hate there was also friendship and love and romance. It is a bit of exquisite beauty elbowed on either side by ugliness. This delightful story comes to us like a glad surprise. It is like finding a spring bubbling up in the desert. It is like plucking roses amidst ice bergs. It is like finding a violet in the very crater of a volcano.
I hope you have read the Book of Ruth and are familiar with it. If you haven't you have slighted one of the sweetest and tenderest stories ever told. If you haven't you have neglected about the most delicate and winsome idyl to be found in ancient or modern literature. I have read some good literature, first and last. I have read poetry that lifted the heart and "set the soul to dreaming." I have read prose strong as granite and songful as a mountain brook. But I confess to you, if I wanted to find a finer piece of literature than the book of Ruth, I would be at a great loss to know where to search.
The author sets you down at once amidst strange scenery. And the characters, while genuinely human, are also full of the witchery of romance and poetry.
Here is the story. The rains have failed in the Bethlehem country and the harvests have been exceedingly meager. A certain little family composed of husband, wife and two children, is having a hard fight to keep the wolf from the door. Elimelech, the husband, can find no work and Naomi, the wife and mother, "kneads hunger in an empty bread tray," and goes through the daily torture of being asked for bread that she is not able to supply.
Then one dark day the husband comes home utterly discouraged. He takes up the discussion where it was left off the day before. "Yes," he says, "there is nothing else to do. There is no bread in the land. There has been rain in Moab. We can go there. I do not know how they will receive us, but at any rate, they can only kill us and that is better than starvation."
And Naomi's sad face becomes a shade sadder and she says, "The will of the Lord be done. But I had so hoped that we might be able to remain in the land of our fathers. You see, my dear, it is not of myself that I am thinking. We have two boys. We do not want to rear them in Moab. Moab, I know, is not far off physically, but it is a long way morally. If we go there we may lose our children. The time may even come when they will break the law of Moses and marry among the Moabites."
But, hard as it was for her to consent, at last she was driven into it by sheer starvation. And we see the pathetic little family scourged by hollow-eyed hunger from the land of their fathers into the land of the heathen Moabites. Just what their reception was there we are not told. However, I am quite sure that they were received more kindly than they had expected. Their want and their own kindness seemed to have opened the hearts of the strangers among whom they went to live. Certain it is that the husband and father was able to find sufficient work to keep from actual starvation. By and by times grew better. The pinch of poverty let up, and they began to feel somewhat at home in the land of their adoption.
But the boys were playing with the children of the Moabites. Of course they were. All children are alike. They know no barriers of kindred, of class or of religion. A child is the true democrat. Sad to say, we soon train him out of this. But he is a thorough democrat by nature. He plays as gladly with the son of a scrub woman as with the son of a queen. He lavishes his love as freely upon a pickaninny as upon a prince. So these Jewish boys were playing with the heathen children.
Then a few years went by and the pious father and mother came to realize with horror that their two boys were actually in love with two Moabitish girls. Not only did they love them, but they even wanted to marry them. This was a calamity indeed. I can hear the protests of the father and mother. They warn them of the danger of such marriages. They plead the law of Moses. But all in vain. And we are not surprised. You might as well get in front of Niagara Falls and say "Boo!" and expect it to flow back the other way, as to try to reason with the average young fellow who is in love. Both boys married Moabitish women.
And then what did this wise and godly father and mother do? They did not do what is so usual in cases of an unwelcome marriage. Our boy or our girl makes what seems to us a foolish and ruinous marriage. Then what do we do? We declare that we will never speak to them again, that they shall never darken our doors. And we thereby help on a disaster that might never have come. Naomi and her husband had better sense. They took the wives of their two sons, heathens though they were, into their home and into their hearts. They felt sure that that was the one way that promised a remedy.
Then one day disaster came to the little home of the strangers. The husband and father died, and Naomi was left with the whole responsibility of the family upon her lone shoulders. Her daughters-in-law had seen her in her joy. They marked her also in her sorrow. They were impressed, no doubt, by her calmness and her strength. She walked with the sure and quiet step of one who felt underneath her and round about her the Everlasting Arm.
Then the final disaster came. Both the boys died. Naomi was not only a widow, but she was childless. There were now no bonds that held her longer from the land of her fathers. She decides, therefore, to return. Her two daughters-in-law are to accompany her as far as the border of Moab. There they are to bid her farewell and then go each her own way. They make the journey, these three women, to the borders of Moab. Here Orpah tells Naomi good-bye. She parts from her with real grief and regret, for she loves her genuinely. I think I can hear her sobbing as she takes her lone way back to her own people.
Then it is Ruth's time to say good-bye. I see her as she flings her arms about the neck of Naomi and there she clings. "There, there," says the older woman, "you must be gone now. Your sister is going. She will turn the bend of the road in a minute. Go after her and God grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband."
But Ruth clings only the tighter. And then she makes a confession. It is a confession of love. And nothing finer in point of tenderness and beauty was ever uttered by human lips. I hope you are not too old to thrill over a love story. John Ridd's devotion to Lorna Doone still stirs my heart. And there is the confession of a heroine in another story that we can never forget. "Tell him I never nursed a thought that was not his; that daily and nightly on his wandering way pour a woman's tears. Tell him that even now I'd rather work for him, beg with him, walk by his side as an outcast, live on the light of one kind smile from him, than wear the crown that Bourbon lost."
That is a beautiful confession. It is made by a woman to a man. But this was made by a woman to a woman. And strangest of all, it was made by a daughter-in-law to a mother-in-law. Ruth has this distinction, if none other, that she loved her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law, mind you, that creature who has been the butt of evil jokes in all languages; the one who has proved the dynamite for the wrecking of not a few homes. This confession is the confession of a daughter-in-law to a mother-in-law.
It is the confession of youth to age. It is spring-time clinging to winter. It is June flinging its arms in a passionate tenderness around the neck of November. "It is time you were going," said Naomi. And Ruth's arms clung all the closer and this exquisite bit of poetry fell from her lips, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."
You cannot beat that. No confession of love has ever surpassed it. But it is more than a confession of love. It is also a confession of faith. It is the declaration of a strong woman's choice. As Ruth clings to the woman she loves she announces her decision, a decision to which she remained true through all the future years. "Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God."
And the people of the little village of Bethlehem had something interesting to talk about a few days later. Two strange women had come their way, women who were poverty-stricken and homeless. One of them was a Jewess. The other was a Gentile. Neither of them was welcome. Naomi had lost her place in the life of the community. Ruth, the Moabitess had never had any place.
The days that immediately followed their arrival were sad and bitter days. But the younger woman, with a fine courage, refuses to be a burden. Instead, she will be the support of the mother of her dead husband. So she takes upon herself the menial task of a gleaner. It is harvest time and she goes out into the fields to glean.
Now, it happens in the good providence of God, that the field in which she went to glean belonged to a very rich and prosperous man named Boaz. And to that very field where Ruth was gleaning Boaz came that day. He was a young, vigorous, and positive man. He was accustomed to command. There was a dignity about him that made him seem older than his years. Everybody respected him. He was just and generous and religious.
No sooner was he among the workers than his attention was attracted by the winsome young stranger from Moab. I do not know why he should notice her at once, but I have a fancy that Ruth was attractive, that she had personality and charm. I feel confident that she had that superior beauty that is born of superior character. Anyway, the great landlord saw her and was interested. And he spoke kindly to her, and when Ruth got home that evening she had an interesting story to tell.
And Naomi—wasn't she interested? I can see the flush of her face and the sparkle of her eye across the centuries. She is a woman, too, every ounce of her. And being a woman, she is by instinct and by nature a match maker. She guesses at once what is going on in the hearts of these two young people. And she sets about with delicate good sense to help them to understand each other. By her wise advice things turn out just as they ought to turn out, and . . . "they lived happy ever after."
Who is the heroine of this exquisite story? I know that first place is given to Ruth. And I am in no sense disposed to try to put her in an inferior position. She cannot be honored too highly. She is so absolutely lovable. But I am going to give first place to Naomi. I do not do this because she is more winsome than Ruth. I do it because she accounts for Ruth. If it had not have been for Naomi, Ruth would have lived and died a heathen in the land of Moab.
Now, what are some of the lessons that we learn from the beautiful life of this ancient woman, Naomi? Were we privileged to sit down beside her in the Father's house to-day, she could teach us many wonderful lessons. But one truth she would impress upon us would be this: that life's greatest losses may, through the grace of God, become its richest gains. She would tell you then of the black despair of those days when she was being driven from her home by the cruel hand of poverty. She would not hesitate to say that it was very difficult for her to keep up faith in God in those dark days. "But the Lord was sending me then to find Ruth. You know He had to have her. The world could not keep house without her at all. Yet I would never have found her but for my terrible poverty."
Then, I think she would tell how she was beginning to feel at home in Moab. "My life was taking root in that foreign soil. I was about making up my mind to live my life there. Then death came. One by one I buried my loved ones till not one of my own flesh and blood was left. Then it was that I resolved to come back home. It was my bitter loss that sent me back. I would never have come back but for that. And had I not come back the marriage of Ruth with its blessed outcome would never have been possible."
This woman learned the fine art of capitalizing her calamities. In the midst of all her poverty and heartache she kept firm her faith in God. And she came thus to realize the sufficiency of His grace. She came to know, even in that distant day, the truth of Paul's great word, "All things work together for good to them that love God." There are times, I know, that it is hard for us to believe this, just as there were times when it was hard for Naomi to believe it. But there came a day when she was privileged to know the truth of it in her own experience. And if you cling to your faith you, too, will come to know, if not here, then by and by.
Then we learn from Naomi, as another has pointed out, the power for blessing that may be in one consecrated life. Naomi was a very hidden and obscure woman. Had you walked by her side as, hunger driven, she left her native land, she would not have told you anything of the great destiny that was ahead. She never dreamed of enriching the world as she did. It never occurred to her that she was to be one of the great light bringers of all the centuries. And yet such was to be the case. The world simply could not get on without Naomi. It could not for the simple reason that Naomi led Ruth into the knowledge of God and into the fellowship of the people of God.
"Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God." That is Ruth's confession of faith. How did she come to make it? How did this lovely heathen ever come to fall in love with Naomi's people? She had never even seen them. She made up her mind, however, that they were the people, of all others, that were most worth knowing. She made up her mind that they must be very winsome and very lovable people. How did she come to that conclusion? Answer: By association with her mother-in-law. That is also how she came to fall in love with God. She was led to the realization of the charm of Him through the God-possessed personality of Naomi.
So it was Naomi who won Ruth to God. It was Naomi who made possible Ruth's successful marriage. Then one day the sweet angel of suffering came to the home where the one-time-stranger lived and Ruth held her first-born in her arms. And the years went by and there was another child born among the Judean hills and the sunshine was tangled in his hair and countless songs were pent up in his heart. And he so sang and battled and sinned and repented that everybody loved him and we thank God still for David. And David was Ruth's grandbaby.
Then other years went by and there was a burst of light upon those Judean hills. And there was music from a choir that came from that country where everybody sings. "There were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid. And the angel said, 'Fear not, ye, for behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people; for there is born unto you this day, in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord.'" And that Savior was another one of Ruth's grandbabies.
But in the purpose of God, neither David nor David's Greater Son would have been possible without Naomi. And so one woman remaining true to God became a roadway along which the Almighty walked to the accomplishment of His great purpose, even the salvation of the world.
1 Kings 20:40
In 1 Kings 20:40 you will find the text. "As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone." This is part of a parable that was spoken by a certain prophet to King Ahab. This prophet was seeking to rebuke the king for his leniency in dealing with Benhadad, whom he had overcome in battle. It is not our purpose, however, to discuss this parable in relation to its context. We are going to consider it altogether apart from its surroundings. We will rather study it as it is related to ourselves. Here then, is the story of this man's failure from his own lips. "Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone."
I imagine I meet this soldier immediately after he has been put in charge of his important captive. He walks with the purposeful stride of one who knows his task and who is setting seriously about doing it. He seems to appreciate the honor that has been conferred upon him. He seems also to have a sense of the serious responsibilities involved. And when he takes his position before the cell of his prisoner he watches with all diligence.
But when I pass his way again next day I am greatly shocked. My soldier is no longer on guard. Another had taken his place. And when I look about for the important prisoner that has been captured at the price of blood and conflict he is no longer to be seen. Upon inquiry I find that he has escaped. In his place, bowed down with shame and dressed in chains, is the man who yesterday was a guardsman.
I cannot pass him by without a question. "How did this come about?" I ask. "Were you surprised and overcome? Did your fellow soldiers allow a strong company to break through their lines and to overpower you and take your prisoner from you? Did a strong hand strike you down from behind in the dark? How is it that your prisoner had escaped?"
And the man, without being able to look me in the eye, answers, "No, he did not escape because I was overpowered. He did not escape because I was surprised. He escaped because I was too busy to watch him." "Too busy," I answer in amazement, "too busy doing what? What task did you find more important than saving your country and saving your own home and saving your own honor?" "Oh, no task in particular," he answers. "I was just busy here and there." That is his confession. "As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone."
And the man is sentenced to death. And we must admit that the sentence is just. Not that he has committed any aggressive crime. He has not cut anybody's throat. He has not stabbed anybody in the back. He has not stolen anything. He is not being punished for what he has done. He is being punished for what he has failed to do.
And that kind of sin, let me warn you, is just as dangerous and just as killing as positive and aggressive sin. How foolish are they who think they are pious simply because they do no wrong. How absurd it is to get it into your minds that a man is a Christian by virtue of what he does not do instead of by virtue of what he does. Now, I know that there are certain sins that are damaging and damning, but in order to be lost now and ever more it is not necessary to be guilty of any of them. All that is necessary is that you do what this man did, and that is fail in your duty.
This is what our Lord taught us again and again. What was wrong with the fig tree that He cursed it? It was not loaded with poison. It simply had nothing but leaves. What charge is brought against Dives? No charge at all. We are simply made to see him neglect the man at his gate who needed his help. He does not drive the man away. He simply lets him alone. And over his neglected duty he stumbles out into a Christless eternity. What was wrong with the five foolish virgins? It was not that they had water in their lamps. It was simply the fact that they had no oil. What was the matter with those to whom the judge said, "Depart from me"? Only this, they had failed in their duty. The charge is, "Inasmuch as ye did it not."
So this man failed in his duty. That is what wrecked him. Why did he fail? First, he did not fail through ignorance. He did not fail because he did not know his duty. He understood perfectly what he was to do. He understood also the great importance of his doing it. He knew it was a life and death business with him. I know that he failed. He failed miserably. He failed to his own ruin. But it was not because of his ignorance. And that is not the secret of your failure. We need to know more, all of us, but our greatest need in the moral realm is not for more knowledge. Our greatest need is the will to live up to what we already know. The reason you are selfish, the reason you are unclean, the reason you are godless is not because you do not know better. You have known better through all these years. It is because you are unwilling to do better.
There is not a man here that does not know enough to do his duty. It may be that you do not know the exact niche that the Lord wants you to fill. It may be that you do not know the exact task to which He is calling you. But you do know this, you know that there is an absolute difference between right and wrong, and that you ought to be enlisted on the side of the right. You know that it is your part to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, to lift up and not to drag down.
And while you may not know your particular task, yet it is your privilege to know even that. I am confident that God has a particular task for every single soul of us. And I am equally confident that He will let us know what that task is if we will only make it possible for Him to do so. He tells us how we may know. "In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy path."
There are many misfits in the world, and you know a misfit is the cheapest and most useless thing known. If you want a cheap suit of clothes go to the misfit establishment. I remember when I was a young fellow just getting grown I decided to quit wearing the crude hand-me-down suits such as I could purchase at the village store. I decided that I must have a genuine tailored suit.
So with this idea in mind I wrote for the catalogue of Montgomery Ward & Company. I might have used Sears Roebuck, but I liked Montgomery Ward better. I found the suit I wanted, read his directions, took my own measure and ordered the suit. In due time it came. And I pledge you my word that you might have tried that suit on every form of man and beast that the whole Roman Empire could furnish and it would not have fit a single one of them. The legs of the pants were large enough to keep house in. They would have made admirable wheat sacks, but as trousers they were a failure. To me the suit was worthless because it was a misfit.
And there are many men just as worthless to-day. But they need not have been so. If they did not know their task they might have known it. They did not fail, as this man did not fail, through ignorance.
Second, this man did not fail for lack of ability. If he could have said that he was overpowered, if he could have told that superior numbers came upon him and took his prisoner in spite of himself we could have pardoned him. Or if he could have shown us a scarred breast and a face that had been hacked by a sword, and said, "I won these wounds trying to keep my prisoner," we would have respected him. We would have sympathized with him. But he had no scars to show. He had made no fight at all. Therefore he could not say, "I failed, 'tis true, but I could not help it." Neither can you say that. No man here is failing for lack of ability.
Now, I do not mean by that that you can do anything that you want to do. When I was a boy people used to come to our school and tell us such rubbish as that. But it is all false. Suppose I were to take a notion to be a great painter, not one after the fashion of the ordinary sixteen year old girl of to-day, but a painter like Turner. Why, I might work at it a thousand years and never accomplish anything.
Suppose some of you were to take a notion to be great singers. Is there any use for me to tell you that if you persist you will succeed? Not a bit of it. You might succeed in ruining the nerves of your teacher. You might easily make those who hear you practise "want to gnaw a file and flee into the wilderness." But you would never learn to sing. There is no hope for some of us till we get to Heaven.
No, we cannot do anything that we might want to do. But we can do something infinitely better. We can do everything that God wants us to do. I cannot do your task, and you cannot do mine. I am glad that that is true. I am glad that we all do not have the same aptitudes. I am glad that we all cannot do successfully the same things. I am glad that we do not all have the same tastes. But while that is so, every man has the ability, through grace, to perform the task to which he is called.
In the third place, this man did not fail because of idleness. He did not fail because he was lazy. Of course idleness will wreck anybody. Laziness is a deadly sin unless it is overcome. I know something about it because I have had to fight it all my life. But this man was not an idler. This man was a worker. He failed, but he did not fail because he refused to put his hand to any task or to bend his back under any load.
Why then did this man fail? Not from ignorance, not from inability, not from idleness. He was busy. That is his word about himself. And nobody denies it. "As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone." What, I repeat, was the secret of his failure? Just this, that though he was busy, he was not busy at his own task. He was simply busy here and there. He was one of those unfortunate souls that has so many things to do and so many engagements to keep and so many functions to attend and so many burdens to carry that he cannot do his own duty.
Do you know of anybody like that? "Did you keep your prisoner?" I ask. "No, I was too busy." "Busy at what, in Heaven's name! Do you know of anything more important than obeying the orders of your king? Do you know of anything more important than helping to save your nation? Do you know of anything of more importance than saving your own life, your own honor, your own soul."
You can see his trouble. He allowed the secondary to so absorb him that he neglected the primary. Those things that he was working at here and there, those unnamed tasks that he was performing, there is no hint that they were vicious things. I am sure that they were altogether harmless. They may have been altogether good and useful. But the trouble with that good was that it robbed him of the privilege of doing the best. The trouble with the Prodigal in the Far Country was not simply the fact that he was in a hog pen. He might have been in a palace and been quite as bad off. It was the fact that he was missing the privilege of being in his Father's house.
The sin that I fear most for many of you is not the sin of vicious wrong-doing. It is the sin of this man, the sin of choosing the second best. I read recently of an insane man who spent all his time in an endeavor to sew two pieces of cloth together. But the thread he used had no knot in the end of it. So nothing was ever accomplished. Now, there is no harm in such sewing. But the tragedy of it is that if we spend all our time doing such trivial things we rob ourselves of the privilege of doing something better. And that is just the trouble of much of our life to-day. Many of us are engaged in a great, stressful, straining life of trivialities. Some of these are not especially harmful. But the calamity of it all is that they so absorb us that we have no time left for the highest.
Down in Tennessee near where I used to live a house was burned one day. The mother was out at the well doing the week's washing. The flames were not discovered till they were well under way. Of course when they were discovered the woman was seized with terror. She rushed into the house and brought out a feather bed and a few quilts. But in her madness she forgot her own baby and the child was burned to death. Now, I submit to you that there was absolutely no harm in saving a feather bed. There was no harm in saving a few old quilts. The tragedy was that in the absorption of saving all these half worthless things she lost the primary. In her interest in the good she became utterly blind to the best.
I wonder if that is not your folly. You are busy here and there. You go to work six days in the week. You are passionately in earnest about amusing yourself. You do a thousand and one decent and respectable things. But while you are busy here and there the peace of God slips out of your life. While you are busy here and there you neglect the Sunday School and the Church. While you are busy here and there you lose your interest in the Word of God and you forget "the secret stairway that leads into the Upper Room." "Busy here and there" you lose the sense of God out of your life. "Busy here and there" you allow the altar in your home to fall down. "Busy here and there" you allow your sons and daughters to stumble over that broken down altar into lives of Christless indifference.
Oh, men and women, there is but one remedy for us if we would avoid the rock upon which this condemned guardsman wrecked himself. We must put first things first. Let us listen once more to the voice of the sanest man that ever lived. This is His message: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." If you fail to do this, however noble may be the task at which you toil, life for you will end in tragedy. If you do this, however mean and obscure may be your task, life for you will end in eternal joy and victory.
Exodus 2:9
"Take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give thee thy wages." This text refers to one of the big events of human history. This is one of the most stupendous happenings that was ever recorded. I doubt if there was ever a battle fought that was so far reaching in its influence. I doubt if all the fifteen decisive battles of the world taken together were of greater importance than this event that took place here on the banks of the Nile.
It is a simple story. An Egyptian princess, with her attendants, has come to the riverside for a bath. To her amazement she discovers a strange vessel lying at anchor upon the waters of the river. Her curiosity is aroused. When the vessel is brought to land its cargo is discovered. And what a cargo it is. It is so wonderful, it is so amazingly great that we marvel that any ship should be large enough to hold it. We are amazed that any sea should be vast enough to float such a vessel.
What was this cargo? It was a baby, a baby boy. He is waving dimpled hands and kicking chubby feet, and he is crying. And the vessel upon which he sails becomes a battleship. He at once begins to lay siege to the heart of the princess. He pelts her with his tears. He pierces her through and through with his winsome weakness. He cannonades her with his lovely helplessness till she capitulates and gathers him in her arms. And this princess is no wicked woman, I am sure of that. She had a mother heart. I think I can hear her across the centuries talking to this little waif. She hugs him close. "Yes, yes," she said. "You shall be my baby. The big, old soldiers shan't have you. They shan't kill mother's little boy." And she loved him as her own.
Now, two bright eyes had been witnessing this wonderful scene. There was a little girl hidden nearby and she watched all that happened. And when she saw the princess take her little baby brother to her heart she understood. She felt sure at once that the baby was safe. And a glad and daring thought took possession of her and she hurried from her place of hiding and approached the princess. And this is her word, "My lady, may I get a nurse for your baby?"
And the princess did not despise the little girl. I feel perfectly confident that the spirit of God was moving upon the heart of this princess. She listened to the child and accepted her services. And I can see that little girl as with flying feet she hurries to her mother with the good news. "Mother, they have found Little Brother, but they are not going to kill him. The Princess found him and I told her that I would get somebody to nurse him for her. Come, and we may have him for our own again."
Now, I take it that it was an important event when the Princess decided that the child was to live. The death sentence had gone out against him. You know that. The death sentence had been pronounced against every son of the Hebrews. But an even more important event took place when the Princess decided who should be the baby's nurse. When she decided who should have the training of the child, then she decided what the child was to be. Suppose, for instance, she had determined to train him herself, she would have made him like herself. Moses would have become a heathen in spite of the blood in his veins. He was destined to be a genius, but his genius might have been very far from being the helpful something that it was. Wrongly trained it might have been as brilliant as the lightning's flash, but also as destructive.
But this woman chose, all unwittingly, it is true, to give her baby to be nursed by his own mother. And this Jewish woman was not a heathen. She was a faithful servant of the Lord. I can see her as she hurries down to the banks of the Nile. And as she goes there's a wonderful light in her eyes. And her lips are moving, and she is saying, "Blessed be the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Israel, who has heard the prayer of His servant and who has granted the desire of her heart."
And I love to look again upon this scene. The Egyptian princess is handing over the precious little bundle of immortality into the arms of a Jewish slave. And that Jewish slave is hugging her own child to her hungry heart. And the princess is talking to her proudly, haughtily, as becomes her rank, "Take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give thee thy wages." And away goes this mother, the happiest mother, I think, in all the world.
Now, had you met this mother with her child so wonderfully restored to her and had asked her whose was the child and for whom she was nursing it, I wonder what she would have said. I know what the attendants of the princess thought. I know what they would have said. They would have said that she was nursing the child for the Princess. They would have said that the Princess was her employer. They would have said that Moses was the Princess's baby. But this mother never thought of it in any such way. She laughed in the secret depths of her heart at the idea of her being employed by the Princess. Who was her employer? I know what she thought. She believed that God was. She had a pious fancy that God was speaking through the lips of that Princess and that He was saying, "Take the child and nurse him for me and I will give thee thy wages." She thought her child was God's child. Therefore, she believed that it was to God, and not to the Egyptian Princess, that she was to account at the last for the way in which she trained and played the mother's part by her boy.
Yes, I feel confident that this mother believed that God was her real employer. She believed that she was His minister. She believed that she had been chosen for the task that was now engaging her. And she was right in her belief. When God, who had great plans for Moses, sought for some one who was to make it possible for Him to realize His plans, whom did He choose? To whom did He commit this precious treasure, from whose life such infinite blessings should come to the world? He did not commit him to a heathen. He did not commit him to a mere hired servant. He committed him to his mother. When God wants to train a child for the achieving of the best and the highest in life He sends him to school to a godly mother.
Now, when God chose the mother of Moses for his nurse and his teacher He made a wise choice. The choice was wise, in the first place, because this mother of Moses was eager for her task. She was a willing mother. Whatever glad days may have come in her life history, I am sure no gladder time ever came than that time when she realized that to her was going to be given the matchless privilege of mothering her own child. I know there are some mothers who do not agree with her. I know there are some that look upon the responsibilities of motherhood as building a kind of prison, but not so this immortal mother. She looked upon her duty as her highest privilege. She entered upon her task with an eagerness born of a quenchless love.
The choice was fortunate, in the second place, because she was a woman of faith. In the letter to the Hebrews we read that Moses was bidden by faith. Both the father and the mother of Moses were pious people. They were people of consecration, of devotion to God, of faith in God. It is true they were slaves. It is true they had a poor chance. It is true they lived in a dark day when the light was dim, but they lived up to their light. And their home was a pious home and its breath was sweet and fragrant with the breath of prayer.
And I have little hope for the rearing of a great Christian leader in any other type of home. I have no hope of rearing a new and better civilization in any other type of home. Our national life is discordant and hate-torn to-day. We are living in a time of intense bitterness and selfishness and sordid greed. But what civilization is to-day, the home life of yesterday has made it. And what civilization will be to-morrow the home life of to-day will make it. If we do not have Christian homes, believe me, we will never have a Christian civilization.
"I know Abraham," God said, "that he will command his children and his household after him." And there are two remarkable assertions made of Abraham in this text. First, He said, "I know that Abraham will command; I know Abraham will control his own household. I know that Abraham will control his children." And God considered that as highly important. Of course we are too wise to agree with Him to-day. We believe it best to let our children run wild and do largely as they please. We believe that Solomon was an old fogey when he spoke of "sparing the rod and spoiling the child." And I am not here this morning to tell you just how you are to control your child. But what I do say is that you cannot commit a greater blunder than to fail to control it. A child is better unborn than untrained.
Then God said of Abraham next, not only that he would command his children and his household, but that he would command them after him. He would not only exercise the right kind of authority, but he would exert the right kind of influence. He would set the right kind of example. He knew that Abraham would be in some measure what he desired his children to be, that by authority and by right living he would Christianize his own home.
And so when God wanted to raise up a man Moses who was to remake the world, He put him in a pious home. He gave him a godly father and mother. And the dominant influence in the life of Moses was his mother. No woman ever did a greater work. But it was a work that she accomplished not because of her high social standing. Nor was it accomplished because of her great culture. It was accomplished because of her great faith.
And while I am not in any sense a pessimist, I cannot but tremble in some measure for the future because of the decay of home religion. And this decay, while traceable in some measure to the madness for money and pleasure among men, is traceable even more to this same madness among women. The woman of to-day is in a state of transition. She has not yet fully found herself. There has come to her a new sense of freedom, and this freedom has not made her better. She has become in considerable measure an imitator of man. And sad to say, she imitates his vices instead of his virtues. She often patterns after what is worst in him instead of what is best.
I am told that in the Woman's Club of this city the handsomest room in the building is the smoking room. Now, a woman has a right to smoke. Who says that she has not? A woman has a right to swear, and that right she is exercising with growing frequency. I am not going to deny her right to do that. But what I do say is this, that I have absolutely no hope for the rearing of a right generation at the hands of a flippant cigarette-smoking mother. The child of such a mother is, in my candid opinion, half damned in its birth. Remember, the mother of Moses was a pious mother. If she had not been I am persuaded that the Moses who has been one of the supreme makers of history, might never have been known.
Now, what was this woman's task? Hear it. I take these words as embodying not the will of the princess, but the will of God, "Take this child and nurse him for me and I will give thee thy wages." This mother was not to govern the world. She was not to lecture in the interest of suffrage. I have nothing to say against the woman who does so. She was not to be the center of a social set. She was not to turn her child over to some colored woman while she went gadding about to every sort of club. She had just one supreme job. She had one highest and holiest of all tasks. It was for that cause that she came into the world. She was to train her child for God. And whoever we are and whatever may be our abilities, we can have no higher task than this. The training of a child to-day is the biggest big job under the stars. He is the center of all our hopes and possibilities.
Did you ever read the story of the "Little Palace Beautiful"? In the Little Palace Beautiful there are four rooms. The first is a room called Fancy. In this room looking out toward the south sleeps a little child, a beautiful baby. It is the Child-that-Never-Was. It was longed for, hoped for, dreamed of, but it never came. In the west room looking out toward the sunset, the room called Memory, is the Child-that-Was. Here sleeps the little fellow that came and stayed just long enough to gather up all our heart's love and then he went away. In the room toward the north, the room of Experience, is the Child-that-Is. He is the little fellow that now plays in your home in your Sunday School class. And in the room looking out toward the sunrise, the room called Hope, is the Child-that-Is-to-Be.
Now, we are interested in all four of these children, but our interest in the four is to be expressed in our care for just one, and that is the Child-that-Is. We think tenderly of the Child-that-Never-Was. We think sadly of the Child-that-Was. But we bring the love that we might have given and did give, to lavish it upon the Child-that-Is. We think hopefully of the Child-that-Is-to-Be, but we realize that all his possibilities are locked in the Child-that-Is. And so the world's future salvation is in our cradles, in our homes and in our nurseries to-day. To train our Children for God is the highest of all high tasks.
And notice that this woman was to receive wages for her work. What were her wages? I suppose the princess sent down a little coin at the end of each week, but do you think that is all the pay that this mother got? I feel confident that she never counted this as pay at all. But she received her reward, she received her wages. And they were wages that were rich in worth beyond all our fondest dreams. First, there was given unto her the fine privilege of loving. And Paul, who knew what was priceless, Paul, who knew what was of supreme value, said that love was the soul's finest treasure. And he meant not the privilege of being loved, as fine as that is, but the higher privilege of loving. And it has been given by the grace of God to the mothers of men to be the world's greatest lovers.
"If I were hanged on the highest hill,Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!I know whose love would follow me still,Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
"If I were drowned in the deepest sea,Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!I know whose tears would come down to me,Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
"If I were damned of body and soul,I know whose prayers would make me whole,Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!"
To her was given, in the second place, the fine reward of self-sacrifice. She had the privilege of giving. She had the privilege of offering her life a willing sacrifice upon the altar of her home. It is blessed to receive, but it is more blessed to give. And the rewards of motherhood are the highest rewards because she is the most godlike giver that this world knows.
Then, she was rewarded, in the third place, by the making of a great life. She became the mother of a good man. Her faith became his faith. "By faith Moses was hidden." That was by his mother's faith. But in the next verse we read this, "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter." That was by his own faith. Where did he get that rare jewel? He got it from the training of his mother. He saw it in her life. It looked out from her eyes. It spoke through her lips. He drank it in as he lay in her arms.
"When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois and in thy mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in thee also." Oh, if you are here a man of faith, a woman of faith, the chances are you secured that precious treasure at the hands of a God-loving and a God-trusting mother.
So this despised slave woman, this mother has this to her credit, that she mothered and trained one of the greatest men that ever set foot on this earth. She took a little boy named Moses to her heart and trained him for God. She had him for a little while. Then he went away to the big University. But he stood true. She speaks to him as she holds him close in the twilight. She says, "Laddie, do not forget how God has watched over you. One day when death was suspended above your baby head by a thread, one day when your life was frailer than a gossamer thread, I took a queer little basket and lined it with pitch, and also with faith and with prayer. And I put you afloat, and God preserved you and sent you back into these arms. And I carried you and cared for you. And now when you are grown you won't forget. You won't prove disloyal to your mother and you won't forget your mother's God."
And Moses did not forget. And one day the little laddie who had once been carried about in the arms of a slave mother, was a big broad-shouldered man. And he had a big broad-shouldered faith, and he trusted in a big broad-shouldered God. And in the strength of that faith, and in the might of that God he lifted an enslaved people in his arms and carried them clean across the wilderness. And he made possible an Isaiah and a Jeremiah and a David. And he made possible the birth of Jesus Christ. And he became the blesser and enricher of all the nations of the earth. And this mother, whose name is not well known in the annals of men, but whose name is known in Heaven to-day, had the rich reward of knowing that she mothered a man who fathered a nation and blessed a world.
Oh, it is a blessed reward, the reward of success in the high enterprise of motherhood. I know of no joy that can come to a father's or a mother's heart that is comparable to the joy that their own children can give them. I have seen sweet-faced mothers look upon their children when there was enough joy in those faces to have raised the temperature of Heaven.
But while it is true that none can bring us so much joy, it is also true that none can so utterly break our hearts. To see disease take our children in hand and wreck their bodies is painful, but it is as joy in comparison to seeing sin steal the moral rose from their cheek and the sparkle of innocence and purity from their eyes. But the deepest of all damning griefs is that grief that comes to us when we realize that we failed, and that their ruin is due to sin and unfaithfulness in ourselves.
Do you hear the wild outcry from that broken-hearted king named David? There he stands upon the wall and looks away across the wistful plain. A lone runner is coming. He knows he is a messenger from the battlefield. "Good tidings," he shouts. But the king has no ear for good tidings. His one question is this, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" And the runner does not rightly answer his question. Then the second messenger comes with the news of his son's death. And there is no more pathetic cry in literature than that that breaks from the lips of this pathetic king. "O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!" He is sobbing over his lost boy. But there is an added pang to his grief. It is the awful pang that comes from the torturing fear that he himself is in large measure responsible for the loss of his boy. And there is no more bitter agony than that.
Oh, men and women, let us who are fathers and mothers spare ourselves David's terrible agony. Let us spare our children Absalom's tragic ruin. Let us give ourselves the joys of this old time mother. While our children are about us, may we hear the very voice of God speaking to us on their behalf, saying: "Take this child and train it for me and I will give thee thy wages." And wages we shall receive just as surely as did this mother of Moses. We will be privileged to love, to give, to bless. And God Himself can give no richer reward than that.
Jeremiah 15:4
"And I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh." The prophet of the Lord is here fixing the responsibility for the downfall of Jerusalem. He says that the wreck was due in an especial sense to one man. He makes it very plain that it was one man's hands that had planted the infernal bomb that was destined in later years to blast the foundation from under the nation. "I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh."
Had a jury at that day been impanelled to try this man Manasseh I do not know whether they would have found him guilty or not. Possibly they would. It is also possible that they would not. Had they failed to have done so it would have been because they did not know the facts; they were not entirely familiar with all the evidence in the case. But when God sought the man upon whose shoulders rested the chief responsibility for the wreck of the nation, He fixed on this man. When Manasseh stood on trial before Him, charged with the terrible crime of blasting a kingdom, he was found guilty.
It was a startling verdict. It is all the more startling when we realize that Manasseh in the last years of his life was a good man. It was only his earlier years that were spent in sin. In his old age he was a saint. In the last years of his reign he knew God and did all that he could to undo the evils of an ill-spent yesterday. But in spite of the saintliness of the eventide, in spite of his winter-time goodness, the full influence of his life was not a blessing but a curse. It did not make for upbuilding. It made for terrible downfall and ruin.
Take a glance at his life's story. It is full of interest. Every young heart in the world should make a study of the life of this man. How it gives the lie to many of our false and easy conceptions of sin. How urgent it presses home the truth that the only salvation that can mean the most is the salvation that grips us from life's earliest moment to its very last.
Manasseh came to the throne when he was only twelve years of age. He had not been long in his position of influence and power till he turned utterly away from the Lord and began to wallow in every form of sin. There was no dirty idolatry that he did not practise. There was no false belief to which he did not seem willing to give hospitality. There was scarcely any form of evil of which he was not guilty.
And his career of godlessness was all the more inexcusable because of the good opportunities that he had. He was the son of a great and good father. His father was Hezekiah. And Hezekiah was one of the best kings that Judah ever had. He was a man of spiritual power. He was a man who served as saving salt to his kingdom throughout his entire reign. When the Assyrians hung like a threatening storm cloud over his weak little nation, it was the compelling might of his prayer that stood as a wall between them and their enemy. So, Manasseh was the son of a great saint.
And mark me, it is no small privilege to be the child of a godly father or of a saintly mother. If God granted to you to open your baby eyes to look into other eyes that were "homes of silent prayer," if He sent you to grow up in a home where the family altar and the saintly life made Christ real, then He has given you an opportunity unspeakably great. And as great as is your opportunity, just so great is your responsibility. How hard must be the sentence upon that boy or that girl who breaks away from such saving and sanctifying influences to go into the far country.
Not only was the guilt of Manasseh intensified by the fact that he had a saintly father. It was intensified further by the fact that he was repeatedly warned. Though he turned his back on God and though he gave himself up to a perfect orgy of wrong doing, God did not forget him and did not give him up. He sent to him messenger after messenger to bring home his guilt and to invite him back to the pardon and peace of his Father's presence. But seemingly the more he was warned the deeper he plunged into sin.
And you who are in sin, you are even more guilty than he, because to you God has sent warning after warning, rebuke after rebuke. God has given you calls and invitations without number. He has called you through your conscience. He has called you through your wretchedness and restlessness and hunger of heart. He has called you through your longing for usefulness. He has called you through your sorrow and your pain and your losses. He has called you through ten thousand mercies. Oh, believe me, our need to-night is not so much for more light as it is for courage to live up to the light we have.
Not only was Manasseh guilty because he sinned in spite of the help of a godly father and in spite of repeated warnings. His guilt was deepened yet more because he knew that he did not sin alone. When he went away from God he carried a kingdom with him. The reign of Hezekiah had been a righteous reign. With the coming of Manasseh to the throne there was a violent reaction, akin to that that followed upon the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England. You know how that when Charles came to the throne the court life was changed into a brothel. Charles lived in open and notorious adultery, and the rottenness of the throne led to the rottenness of the kingdom. Such was the case here. Manasseh not only fell but he drew a kingdom after him.
It is profoundly true that no man ever sins alone. Your influence will not be so wide as that of Manasseh, yet however obscure your life may be this is true, that it will set in motion influences that will literally outlast the world. I have control over my own action before it is done, but after it is done I seek to control it in vain. If it is a fiendish act it laughs its devilish and derisive laughter in my face and says, "Control me if you can."
Now, there came a time when this great sinner began to pay the penalty for his sin. Retribution slipped in by the guards at the door one day and took the king rudely by the shoulder. It shook him and shook him so roughly that his crown fell from his head and his sceptre dropped from his hand. Then it dragged him from his throne and dressed him in chains and sent him a captive into a foreign country.
Retribution, suffering for sin, does not always come as it came to this king. It does not always come at once but come it does. That is as sure as the fact of God. There are some shallow souls that fancy that because sin does not pay off every Saturday night that it does not pay at all. But to hold such views is to spit in the face of a most open and palpable fact. Manasseh had a fancy that he was a much freer man than his father had been, far more broad-minded, but he waked one day, as every man wakes sooner or later, to discover that sin did not mean freedom, that it only meant slavery.
Now, what effect did this degradation and shame and suffering have on the king? Suffering has very opposite influences on different types of character. Sometimes it hardens us, it makes us only the more bitter and rebellious. But suffering did not have that effect on Manasseh. It made him think, and it is a tremendously good day when God can get a man to think. He thought, I dare say, of his saintly father. He thought of his father's God. This story is another evidence of how all but impossible it is for a child to break finally away from the saving influence of a truly good father or truly good mother.
This experience not only made him think but it sent him to his knees in an agony of prayer. He came to hate the sin that had been the ruin of him. He asked God for forgiveness. And God did forgive him. Truly, "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." No man ever goes so far away from God, no man ever lives in sin so long but that if he will return to God, God will receive him and will give him abundant pardon.
Not only did God save this man. He brought him again to his throne. And he who had once been a captive in a strange land wore his crown once more. And for the remaining years of his life he was a devout follower of the Lord. He did his best to undo the evils of the earlier years of his reign. He tore down the altars to false gods that he had builded. He tried to bring his people back to the new and saving faith that he had found. His conversion was genuine and lasting.
But what was the result? He did not succeed. He found that it was easier to lead folks astray than it was to bring them back after he had led them astray. He was a good man. He knew God. But this was his hell, that he had to stand in utter helplessness and see his nation totter to its ruin because of the sins that he had committed. He was not even able to save his own home. His boy became a godless idolater, as he himself had been during the best years of his life.
So we are brought face to face with this fact. Repentance will bring us salvation whenever we repent, but there is one thing that repentance cannot do. It cannot save us from the consequences of our sin. Go out into the field of life and sow tares for half a century, if you dare. Even then God will forgive you if you will come in repentance to Him, but there is one thing that God will not do and cannot do. He cannot change the tares that you have sown into wheat. I may be exceedingly sorry for my wrong sowing, I will be, but the seed will grow none the less.
Did it ever occur to you how many faces the Prodigal missed on his way back home? Many a splendid young fellow that caroused with him as he went into the far country did not enjoy the fatted calf with him when he came back to the peace and plenty of his Father's house. Some of them had gone into eternity and others had gone beyond his influence forever more.
While I was in Huntington a few weeks ago, the pastor for whom I was preaching told me of a young friend of his who carried his little baby in to see a noted eye specialist. The child's eyes were very bad. The physician examined them and shook his head. "Her eyes will never get better," he said, "but will get worse. She will be blind before she is grown." And the father's face went white and he said, "Doctor, you know my youth wasn't what it ought to have been. Can that be the cause?" And the doctor said, "You needn't to have told me. Certainly it is the cause." And it was a broken-hearted man that left that office that day. And it was a broken-hearted and praying and penitent man that kissed his child to sleep that night. Oh, God will forgive him, but there is one thing that that forgiveness will not include and that is daylight for his little girl.
"I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh." And Manasseh is good and pure and blood-washed, but the influences that he set in motion have gone beyond his reach forever more. What a fearful fact is this! I am talking to young men and women and you have your lives before you. You may give them to sin, and you may be saved at the last moment. That is a possibility, though it is a slight one. But such a salvation may mean the wrecking of many another life. The only safe way is to repent before you waste your life. Repent before you sin.
Do you remember Esau's pathetic story? He sold his birthright for one mess of lentils. Nor was he at all displeased with his bargain. At least that was true for a little while, but there came a time when he was sorry. There came a time when his foolish bartering broke his heart. And the story says that he found no place for repentance though he sought it diligently and with tears.
That does not mean, of course, that God refused to forgive Esau. The moment we turn in penitent surrender to our Lord He will save us and give us an abundant pardon, however far we may have gone into sin. God forgave him when he repented, but there was one thing that his repentance could not do. It could not undo the past. It could not put him again in the light of the morning of life. It could not place in his hands the opportunities of yesterday. The good that he might have done and the service that he might have rendered and the crowns that he might have won had passed beyond the reach of his hand forever. Repentance saved his soul but it did not save his life.
And what a startling chapter is the story of the sin of David. David was a whole-hearted man. He never did anything by halves. When he sinned he sinned with a horrible abandon. Few men have dirtier pages in their life's history than that of David's sin against the house of Uriah. But as his sin was whole-hearted so also was his repentance. We can hear his heart-broken cry for pardon across the centuries: "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness. According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin; for I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is ever before me." It is the heart-broken cry of the penitent who has not one good word to say for himself. And God heard his prayer and washed him and made him whiter than snow.
But beyond that God with all His love and tenderness could not go. He could not save David from the consequences of his sin. His bloody and lustful deed became possessed of a power beyond his control. "Down!" he cries to it in helpless horror. But it will not down. "Then where are you going?" he asks, all a-tremble with dread. And the fiendish deed answers, "I am going to steal the purity of your daughter Tamar. I am going to make your son Ammon into a rapist. I am going to make your handsome boy Absalom into a murderer."
When I was a boy there was a family living neighbors to us, all of whom were outside the Church. But when the children were almost all grown and the father was an old man he became a Christian. But instead of being influential in bringing his children to Christ they seemed only to be ashamed of him. He did not seem to have the slightest power to influence a single one of them for good. I would not say that he was not saved, I think he was, but I think his years spent in sin cost him the salvation of his children.
E. J. Bulgin said that he was holding a meeting some years ago in a city in Kentucky. A girl was converted in his meeting. She was in the early bloom of young womanhood. She belonged to a wealthy and prominent family. Her mother was not a Christian. The girl wanted to join the Church and the mother objected. The preacher went to see the mother and prayed with her and plead with her. She said she wanted her daughter to have her coming out dance soon and therefore she should not join the Church. And the preacher left that home with a heavy heart.
Three years later he was holding a meeting in a neighboring town. A long distance call came asking him if he would not come and conduct the funeral of Nellie, the girl who had not been allowed to join the Church. He went. The undertaker said that it was a request of the mother that the preacher ride with her and her other daughter to the cemetery. The journey was made in silence. The remains were being lowered when the mother ordered the undertaker to open the coffin again. All the crowd was requested to stand back. They moved some fifty feet away. Then leaning on the preacher's arm the mother showed him her daughter. And lying upon her breast was a little armful of shame.
That was all. The grave was filled and on the way back home the penitent and heart-broken mother found Christ. She said to her daughter, "Mary, I have found Jesus. I have found the salvation that I rejected three years ago." And Mary answered, "No, Mother, you have found salvation, it is true. But it is not the salvation that was offered to you three years ago. Your salvation then would have included the salvation of Nellie. Now it means only the salvation of yourself."
Heart, you may be saved at another time. Many a father is saved after he has wrecked his boys. This mother was saved after she had destroyed her daughter. Manasseh was saved after he had ruined his kingdom. But I submit to you that it is not the largest salvation. It is a salvation that may yet leave you with a burning hell in your own heart, the hell of the memory of evil you can never undo, and wrongs you can never right, and of lost men and women, led away from God by your influence that you can never lead back again.
Therefore, because of these startling and palpable facts, I come to you with this oft-repeated word of our Lord upon my lips: "Now is the accepted time. To-day is the day of salvation." Seek not to make religion into a fire escape. Give God your life now and in so doing you will both save yourself and those who are influenced by you. "Therefore, choose you this day whom you will serve."