Not Under the Law

by Grace Livingston Hill

What was that in Mary Massey’s prayer so long ago?

“Help us for Christ’s sake to have our eyes open to sin, so that we shall always know when we are not pleasing Thee.”

It had been long years since he had heard that first and only real prayer of his lifetime, for other prayers that he had happened to hear had meant nothing to him, but the words of this were as clear to him as if it had been heard only yesterday. He pondered on the words as he walked down the highways on his search. “To have one’s eyes open to sin, so that one should always know—” That had been his trouble. Strange! He had prided himself on never making mistakes, on keeping his code in mind, and yet what he had been doing had not seemed to be hurting any one, and it was not until that clear-eyed girl had been a witness of his deeds in the darkness that he had felt the conviction. There had been something like that in the story her aunt had read. He wished he had a Bible that he might find it and read it again.

The desire grew upon him as the days went by, till the next time he reached a city he searched out a book-store.

It was a little dusty book-shop in a back street, with a kindly old gentleman in spectacles in charge, and when Darcy asked for a Bible he looked at him over his spectacles with a smile and asked what type of Bible he would like. Darcy didn’t know. Did they have different types? He had supposed a Bible was a Bible.

“Aren’t they all alike?” he said with a troubled frown. “I want one that has a story of a man that was born blind and was healed. Would that be in them all?”

“Oh, yes, oh, yes,” said the man happily, trotting away and returning with an armful of Bibles. “I’ll find it for you. There’s a concordance in the back of this one. This is a very good Bible—Scofield Bible, you know. Has notes and explanations. Good binding too, though it is a little expensive. Let’s see, let’s see, blind man, blind man—born blind—yes, here it is, one of the Gospels. I thought so. John nine, sir—” and he handed over the open page to Darcy.

Standing in the little dusty book-shop, with the daylight fading and the street lights beginning to blink out here and there, the young man read the old story over again until he came to the last words of the chapter: “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.”

Like a spear it thrust conviction to his soul. Yes, he had not been blind. He had been proud of his ability to see, to be a law unto himself—and he had sinned against all that was best in himself.

He bought the book and went out into the dusk, pondering. He went to a hotel and read the story over again and turned the pages aimlessly to find more about it, but in his soul there grew that knowledge of himself that brought a sense of sin. So far it was only sin in the eyes of the girl who stood to him for all that was pure and holy in the world, but it was sin, and the weight of the knowledge of it lay like a burden upon him. His smile grew grave whenever it appeared, and his eyes took on their sad wistfulness. People looked after him sometimes and thought how strangely sad he looked for a young man as fine and strong as he seemed to be.