Perhaps there never has been a finer illustration of the far-reaching mercy and grace of God to sinful men than that given by a poor Chinaman when asked why he had given up Confucius and Buddha, his native gods, and had accepted Jesus Christ instead.
“I was down in a deep pit,” he said, “into which I had fallen in my folly and sin through heedlessness and drunkenness. I was sinking in the mire and vainly calling for aid. Suddenly a shadow fell across the mouth of the pit and I looked up, happy that a deliverer had come, and there was Confucius, the teacher of my fathers, with his venerable face and form looking down and calling to me.
I implored him to reach out his hand and help me, but he proceeded calmly to instruct me in the principles of right living, and told me that if I had only listened to his teaching I would not have been there. After fully impressing this upon me, he closed by saying that if I ever god out to be sure to mind his teachings in the future. Then with cold and heartless indifference, he passed on. It was vain for me to cry, ‘Help me, help me now. Your good advice will be useful after I get out, but it is useless until someone delivers me from this pit of death,’ for he was gone, and I felt that Confucius could not save me.
“Then indeed I was ready to sink in uttermost despair, and hardly cared to look up again, when a third shadow fell across my vision.
At length I ventured to look up once more, hardly daring to hope for help, when I saw a man, like myself, with kind and tender countenance and the marks of tears and blood upon the brow that had been pierced with thorns, and with a voice that broke my heart he cried, ‘My child, I have come to save you. Will you let me?’ and I cried out in my despair, come, Lord, help me, I perish. In a moment He had leaped down into the pit and put His arms around me, and was lifting me up, and then He placed me on the brink, and taking from me my torn and spattered garments, He washed me and robed me in new raiment, and then He said, ‘I have come to save you from your distress. Now if you will follow me I will never leave you, I will be your Guide and Friend all the way, and will keep you from ever falling again,’ and He told me His name was Jesus. Need I say I fell at His feet and said, ‘Lord, I will follow Thee.”
“That,” said the Chinaman, “is why I became a Christian.”