This it is to receive the Kingdom of God as a little child—to come to Jesus in our helplessness, and say: "Lord Jesus, wash me!" "Clothe me!" "Feed me!" "Carry me!" "Save me, Lord, or I perish."—Rainsford.
Following the Lamb
A friend who lost all his children told me about being in an eastern country some time ago, and he saw a shepherd going down to a stream, and he wanted to get his flock across. He went into the water and called them by name, but they came to the bank and bleated, and were too afraid to follow. At last he went back, tightened his girdle about his loins, took up two little lambs, and put one inside his frock, and another inside his bosom. Then he started into the water, and the old sheep looked up to the shepherd instead of down into the water. They wanted to see their little ones. So he got them over the water, and led them into the green pastures on the other side.
How many times the Good Shepherd has come down here and taken a little lamb to the hill-tops of glory, and then the father and mother begin to look up and follow.
Two Pictures
A friend told me of a poor man who had sent his son to school in the city. One day the father was hauling some wood into the city, perhaps to pay his boy's bills. The young man was walking down the street with two of his school friends, all dressed in the very height of fashion. His father saw him, and was so glad that he left his wood, and went to the sidewalk to speak to him. But the boy was ashamed of his father, who had on his old working clothes, and spurned him, and said:
"I don't know you."
Will such a young man ever amount to anything? Never!
There was a very promising young man in my Sunday-school in Chicago. His father was a confirmed drunkard, and his mother took in washing to educate her four children. This was her eldest son, and I thought that he was going to redeem the whole family. But one day a thing happened that made him go down in my estimation.