A CHRISTIAN lady once spent a summer at the seaside, and she used to go about and visit the cottages in the neighborhood. In one of these she found a poor retarded boy named Matt. He could not tell one letter from another, and seemed hardly to have sense enough to understand anything. She felt interested in him, however, and often visited him in his home. She walked with him in the fields and along the shore, trying to teach him something about God and heaven, and his own soul.
Before the summer was over, she found that the poor boy, somehow or other, had learned to know that he was a sinner, and he was greatly distressed about it. She saw that the only way to comfort him would be to teach him about Jesus, who came to "'save His people from their sins.” But how could she expect this poor feeble-minded boy to understand these great things? She resolved to try, however, so taking his hand kindly in hers, she said to him one day: “My poor boy, I know that you are a sinner, and those sins are the debts you owe to God. Now when one man owes a debt to another man which he can’t pay, he must be put in prison for it. God has a prison too, called hell. But though you cannot pay these debts to God, you need not go to prison, for God loves you and does not wish you to go there. God has a dear Son named Jesus, whom He sent all the way from heaven, on purpose to pay your debts for you, and so keep you from going to prison. He did this by suffering and dying on the cross for you. And so you see this God-man, the Lord Jesus, has paid all your debts for you, and you don’t have to go to prison.”
Matt listened with his eyes and ears wide open while the lady was talking to him, and then with great earnestness he said, “Tell it me again — tell it me again!” So she repeated what she had said. She told him over again “the old, old story of Jesus and His love"; and she told it to him slowly and simply, hoping that he might be able to take it in.
God by His blessed Spirit did help Matt to take it in. He saw and understood the great love of Jesus in dying for his sins. This took away all his fear; his sorrow was turned to joy and his poor distressed heart was comforted. For a time he seemed to forget everything but God and His great love in Jesus Christ.
One day while his kind friend was talking to him about Jesus, as they sat by the seaside, Matt’s heart seemed full of joy, and jumping to his feet he stretched out his hands toward heaven and shouted: “God and Man, who paid the debts, Matt says, thank you.”
From that time Matt never lost the joy that he first found in having Jesus for his Saviour. Not long after, he was taken sick and died. The last words he was heard to speak before he passed away were, “Man that paid the debt, do come and fetch poor Matt to live with Thee.”
“THE SON OF GOD, WHO LOVED ME, AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME.”
—Gal. 2:20.
ML-01/02/1966