SACRIFICE
Late in the fifteenth century, two young woodcarving apprentices in France confided to each other their desire to study painting. But this plan would take money, and both Hans and Albrecht were poor.
Finally though, they had a solution. One would work and earn money while the other studied. Then, when the lucky one became rich and famous, he in turn could help the other. They tossed a coin and Albrecht won.
So while Albrecht went to Venice, Hans worked as a blacksmith. As quickly as he received his wages, he forwarded money to his friend.
The months stretched into years—and at last Albrecht returned to his native land, an independent master. Now it was his turn to help Hans.
The two men met in joyous reunion, but when Albrecht looked at his friend, tears welled in his eyes. Only then did he discover the extent of Hans’s sacrifice. The many years of heavy labor in the blacksmith shop had calloused and bruised Hans’s sensitive hands. His fingers could never handle a painter’s brush.
In humble gratitude to Hans for his years of sacrifice, the artist, the great Albrecht Durer, painted a portrait of the workworn hands that had labored so faithfully so that he might develop his talent. He presented this painting of praying hands to his devoted friend.
Today this masterpiece, a symbol of friendship and sacrifice, is familiar to millions of people throughout the world.
If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.
—C. T. Studd
The queen of Sweden sold her jewels to provide her people with hospitals and orphanages. One day she visited a convalescent home she had helped provide for. When tears of gratitude from a bedridden woman fell on the royal hand, the queen exclaimed, “God is sending me back my jewels again.”
In a Japanese seashore village over a hundred years ago, an earthquake startled the villagers one autumn evening. But, being accustomed to earthquakes, they soon went back to their activities. Above the village on a high plain, an old farmer was watching from his house. He looked at the sea, and the water appeared dark and acted strangely, moving against the wind, running away from the land. The old man knew what it meant. His one thought was to warn the people in the village.
He called to his grandson, “Bring me a torch! Make haste!” In the fields behind him lay his great crop of rice. Piled in stacks ready for the market, it was worth a fortune. The old man hurried out with his torch. In a moment the dry stalks were blazing. Then the big bell pealed from the temple below: “Fire!”
Back from the beach, away from the strange sea, up the steep side of the cliff, came the people of the village. They were trying to save the crops of their rich neighbor. “He’s mad!” they said.
As they reached the plain, the old man shouted back at the top of his voice, “Look!” At the edge of the horizon, they saw a long, lean, dim line—a line that thickened as they gazed. That line was the sea, rising like a high wall and coming swiftly. Then came a shock, heavier than thunder. The great swell struck the shore with a weight that sent a shudder through the hills and tore their homes to match sticks. It drew back, roaring. Then it struck again, and again, and yet again. Once more it struck and ebbed; then it returned to its place.
On the plain no word was spoken. Then the voice of the old man was heard, saying gently, “That is why I set fire to the rice.” He stood among them almost as poor as the poorest, for his wealth was gone—but he had saved four hundred lives by his sacrifice.
—Lafcadio Hearn
Some folks say there is nothing they wouldn’t do for the Lord; that nothing is too good for the Lord; or there is nothing in their lives He cannot have; and nothing is about what the Lord gets.
SAINTS
“Daddy, what are saints?” the youngster asked.
And I paused before making my reply.
“Do we know any saints right here on earth.
Or do they all live with God in the sky?”
We entered the church of God just then,
As the morning sun shone bright and fair
Through the stained glass windows, wide and high,
And the reverent figures painted there.
“These are all saints, my son,” I said,
And his face took on a rapture new.
“Oh, I know what saints are now, Dad;
They are the people God’s light shines through.”
—Jack Gormley
SALARIES
Everybody should be paid what he or she is worth, no matter how big a cut they’ll have to take.
SALESMANSHIP
Queen to king: “It doesn’t matter if the salesman convinced you—we just don’t need aluminum siding on our castle.”
SALVATION
A preacher and an unconverted manufacturer of soaps met on the street. Sneering, the latter exclaimed, “The gospel you preach can’t be very good, for there are still a lot of wicked people.” The preacher was silent until they passed a child making mud pies. The tot was smeared from head to toe with dirt. Pointing to the youngster the preacher said, “George, your product can’t be very effective, for there is still a lot of filth in the world.” “Oh, but my soap cleans only those to whom it is applied,” replied the manufacturer. “Exactly!” exclaimed the preacher. The man was caught in his own trap.
Phillips Brooks was once asked, “Is it necessary to have a personal experience of Christ to be a Christian?” The great New England preacher paused and then made this reply. “My friend, a personal experience of Christ is Christianity.”
There was a shop girl in Chicago a few years ago; one day she could not have bought a dollar’s worth of anything; the next day she could buy a thousand dollars worth of anything she wanted. What made the difference? She married a rich husband. She had accepted him and, of course, all he had became hers. And so you can have everything, if only you will receive Christ.
—D. L. Moody
During the early years of missionary activity in China, the members of one family accepted Christ as Savior, but the youngest, a little boy, didn’t. Later, he came to his father and said he wanted to receive the Savior and live for Him. The father felt the boy was not old enough to understand what he was doing, so the father explained what it meant to receive Christ. He told him that following Christ would not always be easy. The boy gave this touching reply: “God has promised to carry the lambs in His arms. I am only a little boy. It will be easier for Jesus to carry me.”
The late venerable and godly Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton had been a preacher of Christ for sixty years and a professor of divinity for forty. On his deathbed he was heard to say to a friend, “All my theology is reduced to this narrow compass—Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.”
—Charles H. Spurgeon
Years ago Billy Graham was preaching in Scotland. Some reporters were making fun of “Preacher Graham.” An older man replied, “He’s saying we are all sinners. It’s not hard to believe that.”
“And he’s saying that Christ died for us.” And then that statement which he voiced pricked his heart, and he realized that he needed Christ as his Savior and he accepted Him.
An unsaved man talked with a soulwinner about how to be saved because he was deeply convicted about his sin. When he asked the Christian what he could do to be saved, the Christian said he was too late.
“Too late! What do you mean? You mean I’m too late to be saved?”
“No, you’re just too late to do anything yourself. Christ has already done it all.”
A group of boy scouts went hiking and when they were returning, a couple of the fellows said they knew a short-cut back to camp. Later one of these two fellows said he knew an even shorter way. But the other boy thought it best to stay on the one he was on. So they separated. But when evening came, the boy who went on the newest trail didn’t return. Even the search party didn’t find him that night nor the next two days.
Later the father drove out of his way up to the camp after work every day and climbed into the mountains hunting for his boy. It was one of the most pathetic sounds to hear that father calling out that boy’s name somewhere there in the mountains. But the boy was never found.
Similarly, Jesus is searching and calling for lost sinners.
In one of J. Wilbur Chapman’s meetings, a man gave the following testimony: “I got off at the Pennsylvania Depot one day as a tramp, and for a year I begged on the streets for a living. One day I touched a man on the shoulder and said, ‘Mister, please give me a dime.’ As soon as I saw his face, I recognized my father. ‘Father, don’t you know me?’ I asked. Throwing his arms around me, he cried, ‘I have found you; all I have is yours.’ Men, think of it, that I a tramp, stood begging my father for ten cents, when for eighteen years he had been looking for me, to give me all he was worth.”
No Condemnation
No condemnation can be brought
Against the sons of God;
Christ hath for them a cleansing wrought,
And washed them in His blood.
They are righteous in what He’s done,
And evermore will be;
They stand complete in Christ the Son,
From condemnation free.
Justice demanded all the debt,
Of Christ in whom it laid;
Just as the time the Savior set,
The debt He came and paid.
If Jesus had not paid the debt,
Or suffered all the pain,
He ne’er had been at freedom set,
He ne’er had rose again.
But when we see the Savior rise,
Triumphant from the dead,
Our hopes ascend above the skies,
With our victorious Head.
—Samuel Bernard
Jesus was born, that I might be born twice.
He became poor, that I might possess wealth.
He became homeless, that I might have mansions.
He was stripped, that I always should have clothes.
He was forsaken, that I always should have friends.
He was bound, that I might have perfect liberty.
He was sad, that I might have full joy.
He descended, that I should be lifted up.
He became a servant, that I might be a son forever.
He was hungry, that I should always have food.
He was made sin, that I should share His righteousness.
He died, that I should never taste eternal death.
He will come down, that I might go up.
All of this—that He might display in me the riches of His grace and be the companion of God in the heavenlies.
It is not easy to be a Christian, but it is easy to start.
—J. Alexander Findlay
There used to be a quaint and really beautiful custom in the Orient that, when a man paid a personal debt, his creditor would nail the canceled bill over his door, so that all might see that his debt was paid.
Helen Keller, deaf, dumb, and blind, was taken to Phillips Brooks for spiritual instruction. In the simplest of terms the great preacher told the girl about Jesus. As she heard the Gospel, her face lit up and she spelled out in the hand of the preacher-teacher, “I knew all the time there must be one like that, but I didn’t know His name.”
An English earl visited the Fiji Islands. Being an infidel, he critically remarked to an elderly chief, “You’re a great leader, but it’s a pity you’ve been taken in by those foreign missionaries. They only want to get rich through you. No one believes the Bible anymore. People are tired of the threadbare story of Christ dying on a cross for the sins of mankind. They know better now. I’m sorry you’ve been so foolish as to accept their story.” The old chief’s eyes flashed as he answered, “See that great rock over there? On it we smashed the heads of our victims. Notice the furnace next to it? In that oven we formerly roasted the bodies of our enemies. If it hadn’t been for those good missionaries and the love of Jesus that changed us from cannibals into Christians, you’d never leave this place alive! You’d better thank the Lord for the Gospel; otherwise we’d be feasting on you. If it weren’t for the Bible, you’d now be our supper!”
Christ came to pay a debt he didn’t owe because we owed a debt we couldn’t pay.
An Indian told a missionary that he believed in Jesus Christ and meant to give Him his love some day. A native helper turned to him and said, “If you and I were walking through the jungle and came face to face with a tiger, if I placed myself in front of you and said, ‘Run, brother, for your life!’ would you love me?”
“Yes, surely.”
“When, some day?”
The native saw the power of the friend’s argument and said, “I will give myself to Him now.”
In Belgium, on one of the most important bridges, there stands the bronze statues which represent the mutual love and affection of a father and his son who won the hearts of their countrymen.
However, because of political offense, both were condemned to die by the blade of the axe. Great difficulty arose though when the government couldn’t find anyone to be the executioner, since the two were so popular with the people.
Then, a strange proposition was made—one would have his life spared if he would behead the other. The proposal was accepted since each saw that in so doing at least one life might be spared. The son wanted his father to be saved so that he himself could die happily. But, after much persuasion, the son consented to perform the ghastly deed, since the parent reminded him how his own years were so few. On the day of the event, anxious throngs jammed the courtyard as the two were led from the prison. The scene was grim, with the scaffolds built around a huge wooden block. Slowly, the aging man placed his head on the cold block and awaited the fatal blow. Then the son, pale-faced and with a wild look, seized the axe and lifted it with trembling hand. But, just as he started to bring it down, he threw it to the side and placed his head next to that of his father and shouted, “No, we die together!”
In response to the demands of the people, the government ordered the immediate release of the two and later, through the years, sculptors made memorials in bronze to their honor.
During the seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, sentenced a soldier to be shot for his crimes. The execution was to take place at the ringing of the evening curfew bell. However, the bell did not sound. The soldier’s fiancée had climbed into the belfry and clung to the great clapper of the bell to prevent it from striking. When she was summoned by Cromwell to account for her actions, she wept as she showed him her bruised and bleeding hands. Cromwell’s heart was touched and he said, “Your lover shall live because of your sacrifice. Curfew shall not ring tonight!”
—Our Daily Bread
A newly married couple had invited members of their two families to a Sunday dinner. The guests were seated around the table. All desired to be at their best. As the rich brown gravy was being passed, one young lady accidentally tipped the bowl with a resultant large brown spot on the immaculately clean linen tablecloth. The hostess quickly and skillfully scraped up the gravy and spread a napkin over the spot and the meal went on. The napkin did not take away the spot; it merely covered it so the dinner could go on. To the unfortunate young woman who had spilled the gravy the white napkin was a constant reminder of her accident. So the Old Testament sacrifices covered the sins of the Israelites but were a constant reminder of sin. The day after the dinner the tablecloth was washed and the spot taken away. So by the sacrifice of Christ, believers are washed from their sins in His blood (Rev. 1:5). There is no napkin to remind of sin.
A banker said to a Christian, “Do you mean to say that, without my paying a cent or making any recompense, I can expect God to have mercy on me? Do you say I can be saved merely by trusting Jesus Christ? How absurd! If I am to be saved, I must accomplish it by my own efforts.”
“Well,” the Christian said, “suppose someone should come to you in great need and want to borrow some money. Who would have the right to make the terms and conditions on which the money would be loaned, you or the borrower?”
“Why, I would, of course. He would have to meet my conditions before he could get the money,” said the banker.
“Exactly, and this is your position. You are the poor, lost, sinner and God is the banker. So who has the right to make the terms and conditions on which you can come to Him—you or Him?”
In South Texas a little home in the country burned down, and before the neighbors could rescue the family all were burned to death except one little girl, nine or ten years of age, and she was badly burned on one side of her face and body. After a few days the neighbors consulted and sent little Mary to the Buckner Orphans Home in Dallas. They advised the head of that home when little Mary would come, on what train, and there Dr. Buckner was waiting for her, of course. When she got off the train, her eyes were red from weeping, and she seemed intuitively to know that he was her protector, and she started toward him saying, “Is this Mr. Buckner?” He said, “Yes, and is this little Mary?” And then she came and laid her head against his knee and sobbed with indescribable emotion, and looked up at last with that little burned face and said, “You will have to be my papa and mama both.” He said, “I will, the best I can Mary.” Then she went into the home and was looked after along with hundreds of other children.
I have been there time and time again and preached to them, and I have seen them come out to greet him when he would return to them after an absence. The little tots come down the avenue and vie with one another as they swing around him, each wishing to kiss him first. Along in that group one day came the little burned-faced Mary and the little children kissed him, but little Mary stood off, several feet away and looked across her shoulder watching the whole affair, sobbing like her heart would break. And when those little ones had kissed the good man, he looked across at her and said, “Mary, why don’t you come over and kiss me?” That was entirely too much for her and she sobbed aloud, and then he went over and touched her little chin and lifted it up and said, “I do not quite understand you, Mary. Why didn’t you come to kiss me?” And she had difficulty in speaking and when she did speak she said, “O Papa Buckner, I could not ask you to kiss me, I am so ugly. After I got burned I am so ugly I just could not ask you to kiss me, but if you will just love me like you love the other children and tell me you love me, then you need not kiss me at all.” He pushed all those other children away and took up little Mary in his arms and kissed the burned cheek again and again and said, “Mary, you are just as beautiful to Papa Buckner as are any of the rest.”
—George W. Truett
Ole Bull, the world’s most noted violinist, was always wandering about. One day he became lost in the interminable forests. In the dark of the night he stumbled against a log hut, the home of a hermit. The old man took him in, fed him, and warmed him; after the supper they sat in front of a blazing fireplace, and the old hermit picked up some crude tunes on his screechy, battered violin. Ole Bull said to the hermit, “Do you think I could play on that?” “I don’t think so; it took me years to learn,” the old hermit replied. Ole Bull said, “Let me try it.”
He took the old marred violin and drew the bow across the strings and suddenly the hermit’s hut was filled with wonderful music; and, according to the story, the hermit sobbed like a child.
We are battered instruments; life’s strings have been snapped; life’s bow has been bent. Yet, if we will let Him take us and touch us, from this old battered, broken, shattered, marred instrument, He will bring forth music fit for the angels.
Longfellow could take a worthless sheet of paper, write a poem on it, and make it worth six thousand dollars. That’s genius.
Rockefeller could sign his name to a piece of paper and make it worth millions. That’s capital.
Uncle Sam can take gold, stamp an eagle on it, and make it worth dollars. That’s money.
A craftsman can take material that’s worth only five dollars and make an article worth fifty dollars. That’s skill.
An artist can take a fifty cent piece of canvas, paint a picture on it, and make it worth a thousand dollars. That’s art.
But God—and only God—can take a life, sinful and without joy, wash it in the blood of Christ, put His Spirit in it, and make it a blessing to humanity. That’s salvation!
Nicolas II, czar of Russia, had the habit of disguising himself and visiting his military outposts for the purpose of evaluating them. In one of his outposts was a young man whose father had enlisted him in the military with the hope of putting some discipline and direction into his life. However, army life served as fuel that fed the fires of the wild life he lived.
One of this young soldier’s weaknesses was gambling. It so happened that he was also the bookkeeper at his particular outpost. As his gambling debts grew, he found it necessary to pilfer some of the outpost’s funds to pay his debts. Instead of hitting it rich, however, he continued to go deeper into debt to the outpost’s treasury.
One night he decided to add up all the debts and see how much he owed. When he saw the immense debt, he decided to commit suicide. He took out his gun and wrote across the ledger, “So great a debt. Who can pay?” As he contemplated suicide, he dozed off to sleep.
Czar Nicolas II was inspecting the outpost that night, disguised as an officer of low rank. Seeing a light burning in the bookkeeper’s shack, he went to investigate.
Inside the shack he saw the man with the gun in his lap and the writing on the ledger. Immediately he understood the situation.
When the soldier awoke from his sleep, he put the gun to his head. For a moment he stared at the ledger and read these words, “So great a debt. Who can pay?” underneath those words were these, “Paid in full, Czar Nicolas II!”
There came to my father’s house a young man who had been brought to Christ a few months before. One day he was out in our garden talking to me. While we chatted, he stooped down and took a leaf from a nasturtium plant, put it on his hand, and said to me, “Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” As I looked I saw all the veins and the exquisite beauty of the leaf. Then he said, “Do you know, I never saw how beautiful that leaf was until six months ago, when I gave myself to Christ.”
—G. Campbell Morgan
At the close of the War between the States, a party of Federal cavalrymen were riding alone along a road toward Richmond one day when a poor fellow, weak and emaciated and in ragged remnants of a Confederate uniform, came out of the bushes on one side and attracted their attention by begging hoarsely for bread. He said he had been starving in the woods for a number of weeks and subsisting only on the few berries and roots he could find. They suggested he go into Richmond with them and get what he needed. He demurred, saying that he was a deserter from the Confederate army, and he did not dare show himself lest he be arrested and confined to prison, or possibly even shot for desertion in time of war. They looked at him in amazement and asked, “Have you not heard the news?” “What news?” he anxiously inquired. “Why, the Confederacy no longer exists. General Lee surrendered to General Grant over a week ago and peace is made.” “Oh!” he exclaimed, “peace is made and I have been starving in the woods because I didn’t know it.”
In a certain village a man sold wood to his neighbors, always taking advantage of them by cutting his logs a few inches under the required four feet. One day the report was circulated that the woodchopper had been converted. Nobody believed it for they all declared that he was beyond being reached.
One man, however, slipped quietly out of the grocery store where the conversation was being discussed. He soon came running back in excitement and shouted, “It’s so! He has been!” They all asked, “How do you know?” “Well, I … measured the wood he cut yesterday, and it’s a good four feet long!” That convinced the crowd.
A missionary took the Gospel to an old pearl diver, but he didn’t respond. He said if the Gospel is free, it’s worth nothing, and he didn’t want it. Later because of the missionary’s continual kindness and hospitality to the national, he brought a pearl to the missionary and said he wanted to give it to him. Then the national went on to tell him the story behind the pearl.
His son one day was pearl diving and he put a pearl in his bag. Then as he reached for another pearl and started to come up, he went down a little way and seemed to lose his strength. Later he came up but water was in his lungs and he died. “I want you to have this pearl.”
The missionary said, “This is just like salvation. You are giving me this pearl. It is free yet it is worth very much.”
As a result, the man accepted Christ.
Charlotte Elliot came to Caesar Milan and asked how she could become a Christian. The old man replied, “My dear, it is very simple. You have only to come to Jesus.” And she said to him, “But I am a very great sinner, will He take me just as I am?” “Yes, He will take you just as you are, and no other way.” And then she said, “If He will take me just as I am, then I will come,” and she went home to her room, sat down at her desk, and wrote the beautiful words of the gospel song:
“Just as I am without one plea,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
A godless workman was carrying freight up a gangplank to a steamer. Accidentally jostled by another, he fell into the water between the wharf and the boat. His last utterance was a horrible oath! He did not surface, but after some time he was rescued and brought to shore, apparently drowned. The strenuous efforts put forth to resuscitate him were finally successful. With his first breath he cried out, “Praise God, I’m saved!” “Yes, you were almost gone,” someone replied. “Oh,” he said, “I don’t mean from drowning; I mean saved inside! The Lord has taken my sin away.”
Then he told them that when he felt himself being sucked under the waves, he thought the end had come. In his mind’s eye he saw himself as a boy, kneeling again at his mother’s knee as she poured out her earnest prayers for him. His sin, high as a mountain, rose up before him, and in desperation he cried out to the Lord to save his poor soul. In that moment he realized forgiveness and cleansing. He then had lapsed into unconsciousness. However, when he regained his senses, he knew that the great transaction had been accomplished; and so he praised God with his first breath!
—Alliance Weekly