The hedges were covered with blackberries, heavy ripe clusters growing in beautiful luxuriance.
Millie and her little brother Johnnie with eager fingers, stained with the rich red juice, gathered the fruit as fast as possible, running from bush to bush in their hunt after the finest and best.
“The tiresome things always grow just where we can’t get them, I mean the biggest ones,” sighed Millie, with cheeks hot and flushed. “Johnnie,” with a sudden thought “I don’t think it would matter for just this once if we got down there where the train goes,—there are some beauties there.”
Of course Johnnie agreed; everything that Millie said and did, must be right, he thought.
O, Millie! what about all your promises to mother before you left home, to take care of Johnnie, and keep away from the railroad? but Millie was a very thoughtless little girl, and had forgotten everything but the blackberries.
“Keep very close to the hedge, Johnnie,” she said, lifting the little fellow over the gap and landing him safely on the narrow path between the rails where the trains passed over, and the hedge where the coveted blackberries grew. There they hung, such beauties, ripe and luscious, and soon all danger was forgotten, and the children picked away to their heart’s content.
A sudden whistle! and the next moment the train swept round a large projecting rock that had hidden their seeing its approach. Terror-stricken, Millie seized her little brother, and placed him upon a narrow ledge of the rock, then scrambled up herself.
“Keep close to the rock, Johnnie,” she cried, as the little fellow bewildered, and trembling with fright, held on with all his might.
The train whizzed past, almost touching the children as they clung desperately to the projecting piece of granite, but they were safe, and with a beating heart, and trembling limbs, Millie lifted her little brother down again. Blackberries and everything else were forgotten now, in their haste to get home, and sob it all out to mother, and I don’t think thoughtless Millie tried that again.
Keep close to the Rock, nay more, keep on the Rock, the only place of real safety. I mean the Rock, Christ Jesus. If you are there nothing can harm you, danger may be on all sides, but they will not have power to move the heart that has found its rest upon the Rock of Ages, the Lord Jesus Christ.
You all know the hymn, dear little readers
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.”
Have you ever thought what those sweet lines mean? Jesus is that riven Rock, that has stood the storms and tempests of long ages, and it is He who now bids you come to Him and prove that He is all that the Bible says of Him:—
“Jesus is a Rock in a weary land,
A shelter in the time of storm.”
Thousands have found Him to be that.
Boys and girls, who have learned to love Him, and have grown up into maood and womanhood, to go forth into the cold dark world to meet its trials, and worse, its so-called pleasures and allure-, ments, have proved that He has been able to keep them resting on the unmoble Rock, safe and out of the reach of all danger.
O! I want you to test Him. This Rock will bear all your weight, no matter how hard you lean. Jesus Himself asks you today to trust Him, to come to Him with your sins, known and unknown, and accept His pardon for them. He has said, “Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out.” So come.
“Hiding in Thee, hiding in Thee, Thou bless’d Rock of Ages,
I’m hiding in Thee.”
What a blessed place of refuge!
ML 03/21/1943