Is it important that a girl should be saved? “The wages of sin is death,” not merely physical death, for many of us will experience that, but eternal death — eternal separation from God, and eternal association with the doomed in hell.
It was because of her belief in the Word of God, and in those passages which relate to hell, that an old widow in Dundee, who used to watch the children as they played in the streets, would call them into her room and tell them of their need of a Saviour. One dark winter afternoon she gathered them around her fire, and, with the fire for her text, she showed the children the fate of those who reject the Saviour. “If ye dinna repent,” she said, “and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, your souls will burn in the lowin’, bleezin’ fire forever and ever.”
Among her juvenile listeners was one, Mary Slessor, at that time “a wild lassie,” as she herself confessed in later life. This girl’s father was a drunkard, and cared more for the wine glass than for his family, so little Mary had to commence work in the weaving mill at the early age of eleven. Notwithstanding her “wildness” however, that faithful old woman’s solemn warning, to “flee from the wrath to come” (Matt. 3:77But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? (Matthew 3:7)), arrested her. She became convicted and soon found the Saviour. The scarlet sins, of which she was conscious, were washed snow-white, and she was thus not only made fit for the kingdom of heaven, but was thereby admitted to the service of the King Himself.
And how great was that service—those who have read the story of her life and labors as the White “Ma” of Calabar, will know.
ML 07/23/1961