HERE we see a very interesting picture. This girl and boy have put their two little pets into their father’s old-fashioned scales. They are trying to see which one weighs the most. Fido does not find the small, round pan very comfortable so he tries to jump down. Frank must hold him down with his hand. I fear they will have trouble when they try to let the two sides balance for the animals will not keep still long enough to be properly weighed.
These children are having almost as much trouble as some people (both big and little) who try to weigh good deeds, motives and actions against bad ones. Oftentimes God’s children desire to do things not always bad in themselves but about which they do not have a happy conscience. Then they become like these children. They bring up questions and arguments to meet the uneasiness of conscience and try to cheat themselves into believing the things to be right. So the troublesome struggle goes on in much the same way as the weighing shown in our picture.
How much better it would be if all of us would give up everything, no matter how dear to us, which causes us even the slightest doubts of conscience. Sometimes, sad to say, the matter is decided in the wrong way and then the Lord has to rebuke us for doing, the wrong thing, just as He did Belshazzar, the king (Dan. 5:55In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. (Daniel 5:5)) when He told him by the mysterious handwriting on the wall, “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”
How sad it is to think of the coming day when God will weigh the deeds of men and will have to say to many, “Depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity!”
Let us remember, in our daily life, these solemn words,
ML 05/18/1902