LITTLE Charlie had one great fault, which much grieved his God-fearing father, who sought to bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Charlie often spent his play hours with boys his father did not wish him to be with. He enjoyed their games and fun, and could not believe this scripture, “Evil communications corrupt good manners.”
One afternoon his father, instead of punishing him for being with the naughty boys, told him to go into the garden and pick three of the very best apples he could find. Charlie was not long before he came back with three fine rosy ones.
“Put them down upon the table, my son,” said his father, “and now fetch me the worst apple you can find; and, mind it must be quite rotten.”
Away ran Charlie, and soon came back with the bad apple, wondering what his father could mean.
“Now take the three good apples, my boy, and put the bad apple close to them on the shelf in the cupboard.”
“No, father,” cried Charlie, “it will spoil the others — don’t say so,” for it grieved him to think of the three beautiful apples being spoiled that way.
“Do as I tell you, my boy,” said his father, so Charlie obeyed.
A few days later Charlie’s father called him and told him to open the cupboard and look at the apples, and there, just as the little boy had thought, were the four apples quite rotten and only fit to be thrown away.
Before his little son had time to exclaim and say as children often do, “I said it would be so, father,” the good man explained to Charlie his parable.
One bad apple placed by the side of three good apples had first tainted them, and then corrupted them all. The three good apples had not made the bad one good, but they had all caught its badness and become like it. And if one bad apple could spoil three good apples, what effect would many bad boys have upon his little son? Indeed, had there not been in little Charlie already something bad, he would never have played with children whom his father wished him not to play with.
He showed Charlie that it is the pride of our hearts which makes us say, the bad boys cannot do me any harm. There is something in our hearts which soon makes us as bad as the worst if we go near the evil. This something is sin. There is sin in our hearts, and it loves the sin which is in other people’s hearts.
God is a holy God and hates sin; and God must punish sin. But God is love and He told out His love by sending the Lord Jesus into the world to die for sinners and to bear the punishment against sin which we deserved. He is full of love and is waiting for you to come to Him and have all your sins washed away.
ML-02/14/1960