CLEAN OUTSIDE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 29, 1880

"CLEAN OUTSIDE."

WHEN the first missionaries at Madagascar had converted some of the islanders there, a Christian sea captain asked a former chief what it was that first led him to become a Christian. "Was it any particular sermon you heard, or book you read?" asked the captain.

"No, my friend," replied the chief, "it was no book or sermon. One man, he a wicked thief; another man, he drunk all day long; big chief, he beats his wife and children. Now thief, he no steal; drunken Tom, he sober; big chief, he very kind to his family. Every heathen man gets something inside him, which make him different; so I became a Christian, too, to know how it felt to have something strong inside of me, to keep me from being bad."

Now that old chief had the right idea of Christianity. He had something new and strong inside of him. He had a new motive; it was the desire to be true and pure.

At one of the ragged schools in Ireland a minister asked the poor children before him, "What is holiness?" Thereupon a poor little Irish boy, in dirty, tattered rags, jumped up and said, "Please, your reverence, it is to be clean inside." Could anything be truer?—Sermons to Children by W. W. Newton.