A LITTLE boy with golden-curls, and earnest gray eyes, lay full length on the floor, one arm over a favorite dog, the other resting on a large book opened before him, and which he was intently reading.
Now and again a little sigh escaped his lips, but beyond that, nothing broke the stillness that reigned over everything.
Presently he closed the book, he laid it beside him on the floor, and remained lost in thought.
The door opened softly, and a tall fine-looking young man entered the room. Catching sight of the little figure curled up on the floor, he advanced towards the child.
“Cecil,” he said, “I can’t have you hiding yourself away like this, I have been searching for you everywhere. What! more fairy tales!” he continued, glancing carelessly at the volume on the floor. “So much reading is not good for you, my boy.”
The child arose, and ran into the arms extended to him; but the look of wistful sadness still lingered on his small white face.
“Father,” he said, putting his arms round the young man’s neck, and resting his golden head against the broad shoulder, “Are they fairy tales, or true stories, in that big book?”
“What is the book, my boy?” asked the father, stooping down and taking up the heavy volume. “Why, Cecil,” he continued, turning over the pages, while a dark frown crossed his handsome face, “It is a it is a Bible. What are you doing with this book? There is nothing in it to interest a little boy like you.” And without another word, he arose and put it back upon the shelf, from whence it had been taken.
But Cecil was not to be silenced. “It is about a Man,” he continued, “who was beaten and spit upon, and thorns put on His head, and hanged on a cross!”
“Well, Cecil, what of that?” replied the father, not knowing exactly what answer to make, and turning his eyes uneasily away from the earnest pleading ones of his little son.
“Well, I want to know if it is true, and why they hanged Him on the cross? Was He a very wicked man?”
For a moment the father did not reply, a feeling of restlessness stole over him at these strange questions. It was a subject he had never allowed his mind to dwell upon, and one which filled him with hard, rebellious thoughts.
Well he knew the story of a Savior’s love; well he knew that Christ had suffered for a guilty world, for often had his gentle wife (whom God had taken to Himself) spoken of the Savior, who was all in all to her.
Alas! like many others, Cecil’s father had never found out that, he was a sinner before God. He was moral, respectable, upright in all his ways towards men, but he was sadly ignorant of God. He never thought that He was holy, righteous, and taking account of man as a sinner. If he thought of God at all, it was to judge Him as a hard master. A heavy, crushing blow had fallen upon him, in the early death of his beloved, almost idolized, wife; and, without definitely knowing why, he attributed his lifelong calamity to, at least, a want of love on the part of God. He saw nothing beyond his own selfish sorrow.
No, to his ignorant, rebellious heart, God was not a God of love; but one who had robbed him of all that he held dearest in the world leaving nothing in its place but darkness, upon which the light would never more shine. With a dark frown upon his brow, he put the boy down.
“No! it is not true, Cecil,” he said slowly. “Now run away and play, and don’t ask any more foolish questions.”
This was easily, thoughtlessly, said. In spite of apparent calmness, it left a sting in a conscience that was all at rest. But little did that father think what a second bitter sorrow lay in his path. A few weeks more and that sorrow burst upon him like a terrible thunderstorm on a summer’s day. The blinds were down, and the curtains were drawn to keep out the faintest ray of light that might stray in. A silence as of death reigned in the room only broken now and again by the sound of restless, troubled moans. Upon a little bed, with burning cheeks and un-naturally brilliant eyes, lay little Cecil.
“O! the drops of blood! I see them on His forehead! O! father, father, why did they kill Him?” sighed the little sufferer.
“A story he was reading just before he was taken sick,” explained his father, who was standing beside the bed, in answer to the doctor’s questioning look.
“Well! well! keep him quiet,” said the grave, matter-of-fact doctor, taking up his hat to leave the room, “I shall call in again this afternoon.”
As soon as the door had closed behind the physician, the young man seated himself by his little boy and watched the varying expressions on the small, sad face, until the burning eyes closed, and a deep heavy sleep fell on the, boy.
Who can know the thoughts that came crowding into the father’s mind, as he sat there. With overwhelming shame he recalled the lie he had told his little son. But this was only the starting point—one of those apparently little things God graciously uses in bringing poor lost souls to know their real condition before Him. For the first time in his life, he was conscious of the guilt of a positive sin against God. It grew deeper and darker.
But did that sin stand alone?
While that child lay there, as he thought on the brink of eternity as never before, his whole life passed before him; and now God seemed to have a connection with every thought, word, and action of that life. But it was a condemning connection. He became clearly, painfully conscious that he had left God out of every one of those thoughts, words, and actions. He found himself in a place of light where he had never been before, and he was alarmed to find that all in his life, which before he had thought so well of, now looked so different. A crushing sense of having lived for his own pleasure, and of having completely not only forgotten God, but in his heart despised Him, overwhelmed his soul. He knew now, and for the first time, that he was a sinner before God. He was learning that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. But that light condemned him, and he was willing to be condemned. Still, ignorant of the kindness of God, he regarded, and accepted this present trial, as a punishment from God, for his sin and folly.
“O God I have sinned against Thee,” he murmured, in an agony of remorse and repentance. “And wilt Thou take this one as Thou didst the other?”
But no; God’s ways are not as man’s ways! In an hour’s time little Cecil awoke. The fever had left his cheeks, and his eyes once more assumed their natural look. With a heart filled with thankfulness, his father bent over him, and placed the little head on his shoulder. The reality of his repentance became manifest at once. He could not delay an instant to undeceive the boy.
“Cecil,” he said very gently, “I think that story you were reading in the library, has been troubling you all these weeks. It was no fairy tale, my dear boy!”
The child looked up eagerly. O! strange that the sweet, old, old story of the cross, with its depths of infinite love and compassion, should have so laid hold of this lonely little boy, shut up in the gloomy old mansion, far away among the mountains!
“Who was it, father?” he asked.
“It was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Cecil,” answered the anxious, brokenhearted father.
What a world of meaning he had never seen before, now shone in those words, “Jesus Christ, the Son of God!” If He is the Son of God, then He must be the gift of God, and if the gift of God to a ruined, guilty world, then there must be mercy with God, pity, and love to the poor sinner. Was Christ the expression of that love? The whole story of the cross, the Just suffering for the unjust; Christ, the Lamb of God, the sinner’s substitute, bearing the judgment of God; these and a thousand wonderful thoughts came like a flood of blessing through the father’s soul. His heart believed, and his mouth had confessed; salvation was his.
“Jesus Christ!” echoed the hoy dreamily, while his thoughts wandered back through the dim vista of the past. How familiar that name sounded to him. How often it had sounded in his baby ears, murmured by the lips of the one who was now in the presence of her Lord she loved so well.
“Why did they kill Him? he asked.
“O Cecil!” replied his father, clasping the boy in his arms and burying his face in the golden curls, “He died for you and me, and for all, that we might be saved, that we might live with Him.” And there in that darkened room, into which the grim presence of death had so nearly entered, the father told his boy the old sweet story of Jesus and His love, the telling of which brought light and joy into his own heart, that had been growing harder and harder each day. O how precious that moth-eaten volume, that had lain so long unused, became to both father and son.
Each day they learned to know more and more of the great love of Him who left the Father’s home to tread this weary world, and who died, that we who believe in His precious blood might live.
ML-03/28/1920