Jai Singh, a man of good family, but poor, stood by the side of the road
as Parduman, once his boyhood’s companion, rode by. Parduman was mounted
on an Arab horse of great value, richly caparisoned; and two syces
attended their master. Envy and covetousness awoke in the heart of Jai
Singh as he gazed.
“Why should that fellow have all life’s honey, and I he left the gall?”
he exclaimed. “Would that your horse were mine; ay, and the heavy bags of
rupees also, that have fallen to the lot of one less worthy than myself
to possess them!”
“O my son, beware of desiring that which is another’s!” said Isaac, the
aged catechist, who had been a friend and teacher of Jai Singh from his
childhood, and who, chancing to be near, had overheard the exclamation.
“In the Word of God it is written: _Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s
house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his man-servant,
nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy
neighbour’s_” (Ex. xx. 17).
“What matters the thought, if the act be blameless?” inquired Jai Singh.
“I will never lift up my hand to steal or to slay.”
“As the seed to the plant, as the crocodile’s egg to the living reptile,
so is the thought of the heart to the deed of the hand,” answered old
Isaac. “Man seeth the action, God searcheth the heart. In God’s sight he
that hateth, murders; and he that coveteth, steals. It is written in the
Bible: _The love of money is the root of all evil_ (1 Tim. vi. 10). Dig
up the root, and no poisonous fruits can appear.”
Jai Singh shrank from the purity of such a religion as this, which must
convict all men of sin before God. Rather impatiently he said, “Unless
evil be seen, I deny that it is evil at all.”
“Hear an incident of my life which has been to me as a parable,” said
old Isaac. “Before I had one white hair in my beard, I went on a journey
in a mountainous part of our land. Going up a steep place, my horse
stumbled and threw me, and I fell down a precipice; but my dress caught
in some bushes, and though hurt I was able to regain the road and again
mount my horse. Riding on again, I had not gone far when a cheetah burst
from the thicket, and suddenly sprang upon me. I was a strong man then,
and carried a sharp knife in my girdle; after a struggle the cheetah
was killed, but I bear on me the marks of its claws to this day. Weary
and weakened by the loss of blood, I was forced to stop at the nearest
house, though it was the house of one whom I had known as a deadly enemy.
He received me with sullen looks, but denied me not rest nor food. He
brought to me a cup of wine, and I drank it; I knew not that there was
poison in the cup. The evil that I saw not, O Jai Singh! was worse
than the more startling dangers through which I had passed. I suffered
more from the poison hidden in my frame, than from the fall down the
precipice, or the claws of the cheetah.”
“How is it that you are here to-day, if you were poisoned?” inquired Jai
Singh.
“When, after leaving my enemy’s house, I arrived at the place for which I
was bound,” replied Isaac, “I was in sore sickness and pain; but I found
there a doctor of great skill, who gave me a powerful antidote, and after
much suffering I rose from my sick-bed healed. And from the Christian
doctor I also received knowledge of the only antidote for sin,—whether
it be the open sin which man condemns, or the poison of sin, such as
covetousness, lying concealed in the heart.”
“He taught you Christianity,” observed Jai Singh.
“He taught me that for all past sin there is one remedy freely offered
by God to all who truly believe: _The blood of Jesus Christ His Son
cleanseth us from all sin_ (1 John i. 7). But we need more than to be
saved from the punishment of sin; we need to be saved from its power. The
heart, the seat of evil, must itself be made pure by the Holy Spirit of
God. And this Spirit is promised in answer to prayer. Let us cry, with
David in the psalm: _Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me_ (Psalm li. 10). For thus spake the Saviour of mankind:
_If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how
much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that
ask Him?_” (Luke xi. 13.)