THERE is a little girl living in the same house that I am, named Alice. She is a very wild little thing, and never sits still for more than a few moments at a time. If I listen, I hear her running up and down the halls as hard as she can go, then her restless little feet fly to the door, to see if the bakery man is coming; then she catches sight of poor pussy, and hugs her until she gets a good scratch in return.
Sometimes she comes, and stays with me, while I read to her, or tell her a little story.
One evening, hot and flushed she entered the room, and sat down on the little footstool beside the window.
I went on with my writing, but presently, hearing a deep drawn sigh, I looked up.
Alice was gazing out of the window, with a most unusually saddened look on her mischievous little face,
“I suppose God only likes the good little boys and girls,” she said, with almost an impatient shrug of her shoulders.
“What makes you think that?” I answered.
“Well, I am quite sure He doesn’t care about me.”
“Why not?”
“O! because I’ve done such heaps of wicked things.”
“Have you?”
“Yes—heaps—disobeyed mother, and slapped Johnnie, and, O! ever so much more. I’m sure Jesus doesn’t love me.”
“Come here, Alice,” I said, “and let us have a little talk about this. Now, if everyone had been nice and good and obedient, do you think God would have thought it necessary to part with His dearly loved Son, and send Him into the world to die on the cross?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah, Alice! if we could have saved ourselves, Jesus would never have come, but He knew how bad we all were, how sunken in sin and iniquity, so He left His Father’s home and suffered on the cross instead of us, and now He says,
“I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
“And does He really love the naughty ones?” asked Alice anxiously.
“O, yes,” I answered, “and Alice, you know when you have been naughty or disobedient to your mamma, she doesn’t cease to love you, does she? but she feels very grieved and sad, and she wants you to tell her you are sorry, doesn’t she?
“O yes, indeed she does,” was the quick reply.
“And as soon as you have confessed your faults, she takes you in her arms, and kisses you, and tells you it’s all right now, does she not? Well, that is what God does.
‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ If we go to Him and confess that we are sinners, He shows us Jesus on the cross, the One who died for us, and who wants us to accept His full and free pardon, and if we are His children, and we confess to Him all that we do that is wrong, we are again happy in His presence.
“Then He does love me though I am so bad,” said Alice, with a great sigh of relief. When mother came in a few minutes later to take Alice to bed, she was surprised to see the quiet look on her little girl’s face, and even more so, when, instead of the usual entreaties to be allowed to sit up “just five minutes more,” she readily went to bed. And O! I am sure that He who began a good work in that little girl’s heart then, will complete it, that she may be the Lord’s for time and eternity.
Yes, dear little reader, Jesus calls the naughty ones. I want you to say—
“I bring my sins to Thee,
The sins I cannot count;
That all may cleansed be
In Thy once opened fount;
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe,
Sin has left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.”
ML 11/02/1924