Union County Courier

Strikingly Illustrative Story by Rev. George Coates—If We Would Get Near to Nature's Heart We Must Commune with God.

The following is related by the Rev. George Coates:

Quite different was another case—that of a young man whom I found bowed down in one of the pews in a country chapel in the West Riding. On my asking him if he was saved, he said: "No, and I think I never shall be."

"Why not?"

"Why, because I'm not good enough yet."

"Not too big a sinner?" my answer.

"Well, I'm trying to be a bit better, and when I'm a bit more fit I'll come and be saved."

I asked him if he thought he would get better by keeping back, and he said he thought he should. I quoted the verse:

"Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall,
If you tarry till you're better,
You will never come at all.

Not the righteous,
Sinners, Jesus came to call."

As he still hung back, I said to him "Now, look here, you work in a coal pit; suppose that when you come home to-morrow, all black with coal dust, you sit by the fire, and when your wife says, 'Now, lad, get thee washed,' you say, 'I'm too dirty to wash just yet, so I'll go and sit in the coal house till I'm a bit cleaner.' what would she think?"

"Why, she'd think I was a fool, 'cause I should never get cleaner sitting in the coal hole."

"Then, is it not just as foolish to stay in the filth of sin, in the vain hope of getting better?"

He soon afterward found his way to the front, when he earnestly sought and soon found the Savior; and on my speaking to him before he left the chapel, he said:

"Bless th' Lord, sir, I'm washed cleaner na' than ivver I was i' my life afore."