"Rose," said the blind old man, "do you think that I ever pass one day without sin?"
"I'm sure that you do," replied Rose, "I never knew you do anything wrong."
"If my salvation were to depend upon my passing one waking hour without sin, Rose, my poor soul would be lost! Remember that God looks at the heart. His pure eyes read the evil thought; he knows not only the sinful things that we do, but the duties which we leave undone. All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; that truth is written in the Bible."
"But I can't see," persisted the little girl, "that you need to be saved by the Lord just in the same way as Luke Dobson did, who was run over by a cart when he was drunk. He lay ill for months and months, and father says that he repented, and hoped to go to heaven at last, because the Lord died for sinners. Now there must be a very great difference between his case and yours, for he was once a very bad man, and treated his wife very cruelly when he had been at the public."
"My dear child," said the aged Christian, laying his thin hand on the curly head of Rose, "I have no more power to reach heaven by my works than poor Luke Dobson had by his. The blood of Jesus Christ which cleanseth from all sin, is just as much needed to wash away mine as it was to wash away his. He depended on the mercy of the Saviour, and I have nought else to depend on."
"I can't understand that," said Rose.
"I'll tell you what happened to me in my youth, Rose, nigh three score years ago, when I was not much older than you are. It seems to me a sort of picture, as it were, of the way in which sinners are saved, and how there's nothing that we have to trust to but God's mercy in Christ."
"I should like to hear what happened to you, grandfather; but I want to ask just one question first. If the wicked and the steady all need mercy alike, where's the use of doing good, and trying to put away our sins? Why should we not live as we choose, and trust that all will come right in the end?"
Old Peter looked grave as he replied. "Because no one who really belongs to the Saviour can bear to continue in wickedness. The Lord died not only to save His people from hell, but from sin; and they hate and dread the one as they hate and dread the other. I'll try and show you what I mean by my story."
"It's nigh sixty years ago, as I said, when I was a young, strong, active lad, that I lived for some months by the sea-shore. Our dwelling was near the beach, in a place where the cliffs were rugged and high—so high, that when we looked front the top of one of them, men walking on the sands beneath seemed little bigger than crows."