January 1929
T h e
16
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
Special charges o f Sir Wil fred Grenfell, Best L o v e d Missionary in t h e World. These young residents of the Grenfell orphanage at St. An thonys, Labrador, are the same as any kiddies the world over.
Their Smiling
Faces Express
?few Year Greetings
To A ll Our Readers
Herbert Photos, Inc.
“The things you thought were dead things Will live with horrible might.”
Oh, my friend, this is a terrible condition which you have brought upon yourself! In John 8:9 there is a very thrilling story. A woman, a poor outcast, had been taken in sin; and in order to entrap Jesus, to get something against Him, the Pharisees brought this poor outcast and threw her down at His feet in the temple court, for that was where He was on that occasion. “Moses said that this woman should be stoned,” they cried. “What do you say?” John tells us that at that point Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground, and as He continued to write, they kept on asking the question, “What do you say?” He wasn’t saying anything! He was just writing. But by and by He straightened up and said, “Let him who is without sin [and the Greek word justifies me, I believe, in rendering it tfhus: “Let him who is without this sin”], throw the first stone” ; and then He stooped down and wrote again. John says they all went away one by one, “being convicted by their own conscience Jesus looked at the woman and said, “Hath no man condemned thee?” She said, “No man, Lord.” And Jesus said unto her, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.” You ask me why Christ did not condemn her. Does He condone sin and shame? Never. He has not come to condemn. That woman did not need condemnation. She was condemned already. She was lying there, a poor, hopeless, helpless, damned soul. Jesus said on another occasion, “The Son of man has not come to condemn” ; He has come to save. H ope for th e H opeless If there is some poor, broken life in my audience to night, somebody that has failed a thousand times, let me tell you the same Christ is in our midst and He longs to send you away, as He sent that woman, in peace with a cleansed conscience and a clean soul. These men were condemned by their own consciences. You can’t kill your conscience. You may sear it; you may defile it; you may silence it for a while, but something will happen sometime, some place, perhaps at a time and in a place where you don’t want it to happen, and con science will unlock the door of your memory. Memory, like a deep, dark vault, may keep its secrets well and long, but some day conscience will unlock the door and
There are examples of this solemn fact in the Bible, and I am going to mention one or two. In Genesis, chapters 43 to 45, there is the story of Joseph discovering himself to his brethren who had hated him and sold him as a slave into Egypt. God had honored Joseph and exalted him to be a saviour, not only of a strange people but of his own brethren. These men were forced by circumstances to go to Egypt. The history of Joseph and his brethren furnishes us with one of the most dramatic demonstrations of this serious truth. These men who had sold their brother and deceived their father, never seemed to have had one peaceful moment in their lives after that dastardly deed. Every calamity that came to them or upon their land they attributed to their wicked treatment of innocent Joseph. “And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear ; there fore is this distress come upon us.” Gen. 42:21. No one was accusing these men. They never dreamed that the governor of Egypt with whom they were dealing was their brother. Why this terrible fear? Why this terror? Ah, conscience was functioning ; memory was at work. C an ’ t L ie T o C onscience Then there was Herod, governor of Galilee. He came mighty near becoming a Christian. His case is most inter esting. “He was near to the port, but not inside ; He was close to the door, and the door stood wide; He was almost persuaded to give up sin, Almost persuaded to enter in, We are told that Herod went almost daily to hear John the Baptist preach. “He feared John,” not in the sense of being afraid of him, but he believed in him and “he did many things.” That is, he put a lot of wrong things out of his life. But there was one thing that he would not put away, and it is a thing that is damning a Almost persuaded to count the cost, Almost a Christian—but yet—dost!”
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