“THIS afternoon we are going to read about 'The Grain of Mustard Seed,’ ‘The Hidden Treasure,' and 'The Goodly Pearls,'" said Miss Chester, when the children had assembled on Sunday afternoon.
"Winnie," said Fred, in a whisper, "wake me up when it's over. I know I shall be asleep before she's half through.”
But Fred was mistaken. He did not feel anything like sleepiness. As soon as Miss Chester began to read, he was all attention.
“the Grain of Mustard Seed”
“By this parable. Jesus wanted to show His disciples how Christianity would increase and grow; the mustard seed, you know, is a very small seed, and yet it grows into a tree. So at first Jesus only had one or two disciples. ( John 1:3737And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. (John 1:37).) Then in Acts 1:1515And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,) (Acts 1:15), we read of one hundred and twenty disciples, and now there are millions of Christians.
“But Jesus wants His seed to bring forth fruit in your hearts also. The seed which is sown in your hearts is the word of God. (Luke 8:22And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, (Luke 8:2)) Now I will tell you of a very small seed; it is ‘only believe.' (Mark 5:3636As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. (Mark 5:36).) If that is really sown in your hearts you will have everlasting life. Another small seed is the beautiful text, ‘Come unto me.' (Matt. 11:2828Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28).) Corning means believing, so that both these seeds are very much alike.
“How can you come to Jesus? You can come to Him by believing in Him. Think how He bore the punishment due to us, think how He hung on the cross, and that everything He suffered, He suffered for us, to save us from perdition. His hands and feet were nailed to the cross, His forehead wounded, His side pierced, all for poor sinners. We deserved everything He suffered, but He bore it all instead of us. And now, if you will really believe in Him, God will forgive you all your sins.
“All are by nature dead in trespasses and sins. (Eph. 21.) But he that believeth on the Lord Jesus, hath everlasting life. So you see what a great thing this little seed, ‘only believe,' grows into. Before it was planted you were dead, when it begins to grow you are made alive, If you, dear children, have not come to Jesus yet, let me intreat you to come to-day. Ask Him to help you to come, and remember He says, Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.'
“Now, children, can any of you tell me of some more small seeds, some short texts, which we may plant in our hearts?”
“I know one, Miss Chester," said Winnie, eagerly, "‘He was wounded for our transgressions.'”
“Yes, dear, if you believe that, you have the good seed planted in your heart.”
“‘With his stripes we are healed,'" said May.
“‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,'" said one little girl.
“‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,'" repeated another.
Fred was quite ashamed to find he could not think of any appropriate text, when, on turning over the leaves of his Bible, his eye caught the words, "God is love," and he repeated them aloud.
“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'”
“Now look at 1 John 5:1919And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. (1 John 5:19): ‘We love him because he first loved us.' You see if the little seed, ‘God is love,' is planted in our hearts it will grow into the beautiful plant of love to God. When we learn how much God has loved us, we shall then begin to love Him.
“Now we will go on to the next two parables.
AT 13:44{“‘And the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field.' Can you not fancy how eager this man must have been to get possession of the field, so that the treasure might belong to him, and how great must have been his joy, when at last it was his own?
“It has often been thought that this parable teaches us that we must sell all that we have in order to buy salvation; but, dear children, this is not its meaning. We are not called to obtain salvation in that way. It is the Lord Jesus who sold all that He had in order to buy the field in which His chosen ones are hidden; as we read, He who was rich, became poor to save us (2 Cor. 8:99For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)); yes, He gave up His life that He might make poor sinners His own.
“The parable of The merchantman seeking pearls," means very much the same as the ‘Hidden Treasure.' This merchantman had been looking for pearls. At last, seeing such a large and beautiful one, he sold all that he had that he might buy it. Jesus is the merchantman who bought the Pearl of great price, which, no doubt, refers especially to His church, made up of those who now believe on Him, as He said, ‘Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed' (John 20:2929Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. (John 20:29)), in contrast with those who believed when they saw Him on earth.
“Have we to pay anything to Jesus to be saved? No, the Bible tells us we may come ‘without money and without price.' But we must be ready to give up anything we dearly love that keeps us from coming to Jesus. Jesus is worth more than anything else. Think of what it cost Him to make His loved ones His own.”
"Fred, my boy," said Miss Chester, the same evening, when, the children having gone to bed, they were left alone in the schoolroom, "have you found Christ as your Saviour yet?”
“No, Miss Chester," answered Fred; then after a pause, he added, "I wish I had. Winnie says she and May have.”
“Yes, I think both the dear children have come to the Saviour; but, my dear boy, He that said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me,' is also saying to you, ‘Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.' Will you not come to Him, Fred?”
“I don't know what ‘coming' means, Miss Chester.”
“Read this verse," said Miss Chester, opening her Bible at John 6, and pointing to verse 35.
“‘I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst,'" read Fred.
“‘Coming' and ‘believing' are here used to mean the same thing. If you believe that Jesus died instead of you, if you accept Him as your substitute, and trust your soul to Him, He saves you, and He will never cast you out.”
“I have never done that; I have not thought of Him at all.”
“For fourteen years, Fred, Jesus has been calling you to come to Him. Do you not think you have kept Him waiting long enough?”
“If I only knew how, I would come to Him!" said Fred in a husky voice.
“My dear boy, Jesus is even now waiting to see if you will come to Him. Will you not accept the salvation He has wrought out by His death?”
Very earnestly did Miss Chester plead that the boy might be led to accept the Lord Jesus as his Saviour, and trust his soul into His hands. "Lord, here is a poor, lost sinner seeking Thee," she prayed. "Open his blind eyes, that he may see those wounds in the hands and feet of the Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for the sheep; open his deaf ears, that he may hear Him saying, ‘Look unto me and be ye saved.'”
At the concluding words, Fred quite broke down and hid his face in his hands.
“Do you think He will save me, Miss Chester?" he sobbed. "I have never loved Him or thought about Him all my life.”
“His promise is, that He will not cast out any poor sinner who comes to Him. You want really to come to Him, Fred?”
“Yes, Miss Chester.”
“Then, my boy, tell Him so yourself.”
As they knelt again, Miss Chester asked him to repeat, sentence by sentence, a little prayer she often used when praying with children, if it expressed what was really true of him.
“Dear Lord Jesus, I come to Thee just as I am. Take me and make me Thine. I give myself to Thee. I want to love and trust Thee, for I know Thou hast loved me. Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief. I believe Thou wilt wash all my sins away, and blot them out of Thy book, for Jesus' sake. Amen.”
As they rose from their knees, Fred said heartily: "Thank you, Miss Chester." Then after a little hesitation, "Would you mind lending me your parable book? I should like to read it a bit up in my room.”
“Do, my boy, you will find the last chapter a very nice one.”
Locking his door, Fred sat down in his little room to have, as he said, a good search to see what God's message to him would be. Turning to the last chapter of Miss Chester's little book, he commenced reading:
The Net
“The net here means the gospel, the fishermen are preachers, and the fish are men, women, boys and girls. Whenever any one preaches the gospel, he casts a net into the sea. While the net is in the sea, the fishermen cannot tell which fish are good and which are bad; but when they draw the net to shore they pick out the bad and throw them away, ‘but gather the good into vessels,' So when the gospel is preached, a great many people listen, but they do not all believe and come to Jesus. Listening to the gospel will not save them; those only who believe in Jesus and come to Him are saved.
“In Matt. 13:4949So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, (Matthew 13:49) we read that at the end of the world, the angels shall come forth and sever (that means separate) the wicked from the just. The wicked are those who have not come to Jesus, and are not washed in His blood. The just were sinners, too, but they are washed sinners, they have come to Jesus, and washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. To which sort of people do you belong, the saved or the unsaved, the washed or the unwashed, the wicked or the just?
“The net has been let down, you have heard the gospel preached over and over again; but are you saved? If you are trusting in Jesus, you are saved, but if you do not believe in Him, you are still among the unsaved. Friends and teachers cannot tell to which class you belong; but God knows, and He will not make any mistake. Everlasting life for those who believe in the Lord Jesus; everlasting death for those who do not. God offers you now everlasting life, will you take it?”
As Fred finished reading he heaved a deep sigh. "Everlasting life or everlasting death," he said to himself, "it must be one of them for me. I know I shall not sleep a wink in this unsettled state. I'll call Miss Chester to come and have another talk when she comes up to bed.”
All the time Fred was undressing the words "saved or unsaved," "washed or unwashed," kept coming into his mind; and as he lay listening for Miss Chester's footsteps he kept repeating them over and over again. And when, an hour later, Miss Chester, hearing him call, came into his room, he exclaimed:
"I can't go to sleep for thinking of those words, ‘saved or unsaved.' Tell me how I can be saved, Miss Chester.”
“You know this text, don't you, Fred, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved'?”
“But, Miss Chester, I do believe in Him.”
“If you believe, Fred, you are saved, because the Bible says so.”
“No," said Fred, sadly, "I know I'm not that.”
“You believe, that Jesus is the sinner's Saviour you have said; then why not trust Him as such? Give yourself up to Him, and trust Him to save you now. He has promised not to cast any one out; will you not trust Him, Fred?”
As Fred did not answer, Miss Chester continued: “I am going to say a little hymn, and I want you, in the words of the hymn, to trust your soul to Him, while I am saying it.”
Then very slowly and distinctly she repeated the following beautiful lines:
"Jesus, I will trust Thee, trust Thee with my soul,
Guilty, lost and helpless; Thou canst make me whole.
There is none in heaven, or on earth like Thee,
Thou hast died for sinners—therefore, Lord, for me.
“Jesus, I do trust Thee, trust without a doubt,
Whosoever cometh, Thou wilt not cast out.
Faithful is Thy promise, precious is Thy blood.
These my soul's salvation. Thou my Saviour God.”
For several minutes Miss Chester knelt in silent prayer by the boy's bedside, while Fred, with his head buried in the bed clothes, prayed, as he had never prayed before. It was not till Miss Chester had risen from her knees, that he looked up and said: "I have done it, Miss Chester. I can say, ‘Jesus, I will trust Thee,' and I think I have found out now what it is to have Christ as my Saviour.”