IT WAS a long promise, that Freddie should be allowed to go to Sunday School as soon as his sixth birthday was come. It was New Year week, and the snow lay thick upon the ground. But what of that, to Sunday School Freddy must go. So, well wrapped up in his overcoat, with his Testament, Freddy set off by his brother’s side to school.
They had fully a mile to walk in the deep snow, from the country house where Freddy lived, to the village Sunday School.
When they arrived, the first hymn was being sung, and Freddie thought it was grand. The words were—
“Around the throne of God in heaven,
Thousands of children stand
Whose sins through Christ are all forgiven,
A holy, holy band,
Singing glory, glory, glory.”
He was put into a class and the teacher told them about the paschal lamb slain in Egypt, and how its blood was pm upon the doors; to shelter the firstborn children inside from the sword of judgment; then about “The Lamb of God” dying on the cross, that sinners might be saved from death and hell. At the close, his teacher gave him a pretty text card, on which the words—
“The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin,” were printed. He was told to learn the text during the week, and to be able to repeat it when he came the following Lord’s day.
Freddy went home, greatly delighted with what he had seen and heard, that first day at school, and it was found after many days that some of the good seed that was dropped into his young heart that day, took root, never to be forgotten. All through the week the cottage rang with the precious words,
“The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin,” until Freddie could repeat them without a mistake. Not only so, but they became so familiar to him that he kept thinking about them every day for long after. But Freddie did not know their meaning then, nor did he know how great a sinner he was, and how he needed the “blood of Jesus Christ” to cleanse him. It was some time after this that Freddie came home from a children’s meeting one evening really anxious to be saved, convinced that he was a sinful boy, unfit to be in heaven.
His first text, these glorious words learned on his first day at Sunday School, were brought to his memory. They had been planted in his dear little heart, and Freddie trusted the precious blood, and was cleansed from all his sins, and made fit to be in heaven. How he loved then to trace along the pages of his Bible the various things which the blood of Christ has done, and is doing, for all who believe on Jesus. On a page of his well-read Bible you may read,
Dear boys and girls, have you known, like this dear boy, the cleansing of the blood of Christ? Are you made clean from all your sins and fit for heaven through “the precious blood of Christ”?
“It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”
ML 12/29/1918