MOST schoolboys will have some sympathy with my companions and myself in the feelings with which we, in our schooldays, regarded the announcement, written in large letters upon a board, in a field that had many birds’ nests in it, “Trespassers will be prosecuted!” It ever excited in us the desire to commit the very trespass it warned us against; indeed, at length we determined to get rid of the board altogether, as my story shall tell.
Our way to school lay through a lane of about a mile in length―a pleasant country lane, with no houses, and rarely having a policeman to be seen in it. We had the lane all to ourselves on our way to school, and our annoyance can readily be imagined as we viewed the words of warning referred to; indeed, we made it our rule to pelt the board with stones, and to cover it with mud, until the objectionable words were hardly visible. We were like hundreds of others, who dislike the warnings of the Bible, and who do their best to obliterate them from view.
One morning the farmer who owned the fields had set up a new board. This roused our indignation, and, not content with defacing it by pelting it from the road, we climbed over the hedge, rooted it up, post and all, and, dragging it into the lane, ran off as fast as our feet would carry us. But our exultation was speedily turned to consternation, for a man appeared, and gave chase. As he was nowhere in a race of more than a mile with us, we were beginning to feel a little easier; but our hope proved to be vain, for some of our number wore the cap which distinguished our school. Our pursuer, having recognized us by this sign, made his way to the head master, and we soon learned that we had been discovered.
What the punishment was I need not explain, but I would point out the folly of pelting the board, and the injury that resulted from pulling it down. Boys have sense enough to see that upsetting a notice board will not overthrow the law, nor stop the punishment of breaking the law from coming upon the offender; but there are men silly enough to teach boys that the Bible may be overthrown with impunity, and that those who hate it can get rid of its truths by making light of them. Now, I do not wish you, boys, to find yourselves brought up to the terrible judgment throne of God, and to have to answer to Him not only for your sins, but also for the crime of making light of and insulting His holy word.
We ran for a mile, and were at last found out and punished, and men may go on for fifty years, or more, running away from the God they have wronged, but in the end they will be punished for their sins.
Just as we discovered, to our cost, that pulling down the notice board did not alter the laws of the land for the protection of property, so those who treat God’s word with contempt will learn that “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?” (Num. 23:1919God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? (Numbers 23:19).) O.