Christian fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Nineteen twenties -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
“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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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