Reviled, He Reviled Not Again

  Many years ago three boys were playing, a mile outside a large Australian town. The eldest, a lad of twelve, was the leader of the other two, who were slightly younger. Presently, along the road from the town there came a crippled man, with arms and legs all twisted and gnarled by disease. As soon as this eldest lad spied him he was so un-British (I quote his own words) as to suggest to the others that they should mock him.
“Say, boys, let’s have a lark with him and make fun of him!”

This boy was the idol of the other two, and whatever he said was law to them. So when the crippled with two sticks painfully dragged himself by them, they jeered at his calamity, and mocked his helplessness. Never a word escaped the man’s lips as he crawled past them.
Boy-like, it was quickly “out of sight, out of mind,” and they continued their play without another thought of their victim. Playtime over, they made for their homes, and out heroic hero,” wanting his mother for some triviality, began calling, “Mother, where are you?” No answer came, as she sought her from room to room. At last, bursting open the drawing-room door with “I say mother, I’ve looked----!” he found her sitting talking to this very crippled man whom he’d been so cruelly mocking half-an-hour before.
“Here’s a nice go; he’s told her what I did to him,” raced quickly through his mind. He pulled up sharp, and only wished the earth would open and take him down quickly.
“Well, Henry,” said his mother, seeing him staring from one to the other with quick changing color, “have you forgotten all your manners? Come and say, how d’ye do, to our friend.”
Henry felt and looked a sheep, and unwillingly sidled up to the strange visitor. But the latter, with a winning smile greeted him, and then slowly raising one of his crippled hands, he laid it on the lad’s curly head, and said: “God bless you, Henry, my lad; God bless you! May you grow up a true and faithful servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again I say, God bless you! God bless you, Henry!”
And then the crippled hand came down from the lad’s head. Finally, with a warm greeting to the mother, he hobbled slowly and painfully from the room. As soon as the front door was closed the boy rushed to his mother, and in a torrent of words, asked:
“Mother, who is he? Tell me, quick! Where has he come from? Why is he crippled? What has he come for? –quick, mother!”
“Why, Henry, my boy, I thought you knew. If you will just calm your strange excitement I’ll tell you, so sit down.”
       Not he; he knelt quickly and impatiently at his mother’s knee and drank in these words of hers about the strange visitor.
    “Henry, when you were a little chap, only about four years old, you were playing near our river (the very spot, it turned out, from which he had come), and, seeing a big butterfly, you chased it till it took you to the edge of the river, and then as it settled on a clump of reeds you made a grab at it and fell headlong into one of the deep fish pools of icy cold water. That gentleman was passing, saw you fall in, and, just as he was, he dived in after you and managed to reach you in time. He saved your little life, but rheumatic fever set in, and after a fearful struggle between life and death, he pulled through, but he has been a hopeless and helpless cripple ever since, my boy. That’s what he did for you, Henry; he saved your life, and ruined his own for your sake!”
      And now it was the mother’s turn to be amazed, for the boy had fallen like a stone on the rug at her feet, and was sobbing as if his heart would break.
      “Why, Henry! Henry! What is the matter? What has happened? Tell, my boy? Tell me!” she pleaded. At last through his sobs came the words:
      “Oh, mother! Mother! I’ve been—mocking—and insulting—the—one—the—one—who risked his life—for---for---me. Will he---can he---ever forgive---me? Oh, mother, it’s broken—my heart! I’ve insulted my best friend!”
       You who read this story of Henry B. McCartney’s boyhood, does it fit you, and your conduct towards a perfectly gracious Savior Who went farther than risking His life, Who gave His life for you when you were helpless, to rescue you, and still, to-day, bears the marks of that rescue even now—five clear wounds in all? How have you treated Him these years? Mocked him? Put him to an open shame, while you have gone the pace in sin? Scorned his great love? Perhaps you have never seen it in this light before.