The Greenlander
Greenland is a very cold country, much colder than it is here. For three months in the year the sun is never seen; and for nearly nine months the land is covered all over with snow. We have plenty of nice fruit in summer, and many good things all the year round; but the poor Greenlanders live mostly on seal’s flesh, blubber, and oil.
Poor, poor Greenlanders, they live so miserably; and, what is much worse, many of them know nothing whatever of Jesus and his love! But God loves them; for He loved the world, and gave “his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” so that, if a Greenlander hears of Jesus, he too may be saved.
Now, some good men pitied the poor heathen in Greenland, and thought they would like to go and tell them of Jesus, how he was born in Bethlehem, how good and kind He was to every one, how He gave sight to the blind, healed the sick, raised the dead, how He died on the Cross for sinners, how He went to the grave and then to Heaven, how He will come again.
Well, they went to Greenland and labored there for eight long, weary years. At last they got tired laboring so long without any apparent success, and thought upon returning to their homes. They had suffered a great deal from cold and hunger, and the people only laughed at them, and mocked them. But these dear missionaries had made a great mistake, for instead of telling the people as they meant to do of Jesus and his great love in dying and rising again from the dead, telling the sweet, sweet story of the Cross, they found them so very ignorant that the missionaries thought to begin with proving that God lives, and that He made all things. Now, this was a great mistake, for we are sinners, and we need to know—not that God is the Creator, but that “God is love,” and that Jesus died.
One day a party of heathen Greenlanders came to the missionary village. They were led by a cruel and wicked Greenlander named Kajarnak, and entered the hut where the missionary was writing. He was finishing his final correction of the Four Gospels, and was at the moment engaged on that part of John’s Gospel relating to the sufferings and death of Christ. Kajarnak was surprised at seeing the missionary writing, and at once asked him what he was doing.
“Writing.”
“Writing!” said Kajarnak. “What is writing?”
The missionary tried to explain it to him, and then said, “I will read you what I have been writing.”
He read the account of Christ’s agony in the garden, and then upon the Cross, with the story of his being crowned, scourged, and spit upon. As he read, Kajarnak became interested.
“And why,” he asked, “did they treat the man so? What had he done?”
“Oh!” said the missionary. “This man did nothing amiss, but Kajarnak did. Kajarnak filled the land with wickedness; and Kajarnak deserved to go to hell for it. But this man suffered all this to bear Kajarnak’s punishment, that Kajarnak might not go to hell.”
And then the missionary went on to tell about God’s love, man’s sin, and Christ’s work for sinners, till the big tears were seen to roll down the poor heathen’s cheeks, and unable any longer to restrain his feelings, he cried—
“Oh! Tell it all over again, for I, too, would like to be saved.”
He was told it all over again—it was such a sweet story. Kajarnak believed the good news. His heart was drawn to Christ. He loved him. Kajarnak was saved.
Are you saved, dear young reader? You have often heard and often read of Jesus and of his sufferings. Perhaps, too, you have often wept as you thought of the cruel men scourging Jesus and spitting on his face. But though you cry very much, it won’t save you. The blood of Jesus puts sin away, and nothing else will do it.
Will you now love Jesus? Poor Kajarnak, from “Greenland’s icy mountains,” with a heart colder than the ice, and darker than the darkest night, yet came to Jesus, believed in God’s love, and was saved.
How I long that all my dear young readers too would seek the same Saviour, and love the Jesus that loved Kajarnak, the Greenlander.