And so I come back to my starting-point. The broom that sweeps clean is not a new broom. After commencing this chapter I happened to pick up a report of the British and Foreign Bible Society. On one of its pages I find a story told by the society's colporteur at Port Said. He boarded an incoming steamer, and, on the lower deck, found a German sailor sweeping out a cabin. The man was greatly depressed. In the course of conversation, each claimed to be a greater sinner than the other.
'What!' exclaimed the sailor, 'why, you are the first man to tell me that he is a greater sinner than I am!'
He took a Gospel from the colporteur's hands and began to read.
'Ah,' he sighed, 'that I were a little child again and could read it with a clean heart!'
The remark was overheard by some of his shipmates.
'Is that you, Jansen?' they asked; 'what wonder has happened to you?'
'No wonder at all,' the man replied. 'I want to sweep out my heart, and I am buying a broom!'
The broom that he bought is by no means a new one, but it sweeps wonderfully clean for all that!