THE FENCE STORY | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 19, 1876

THE FENCE STORY.

A man who prided himself on his morality, and expected to be saved by it, was constantly saying, “I am doing pretty well, on the whole. I sometimes get angry and swear, but then I am strictly honest. I work on the Sabbath when I am particularly busy; but I give a great deal to the poor, and I never was drunk in my life.” This man hired a canny Scotchman to build a fence around his pasture lot. He gave him very particular directions. In the evening when the Scotchman came in from work, the man said, “Well, Jock, is the fence built, and is it tight and strong?” “I canna say that it is all tight and strong,” Jock replied, “but it’s a good average fence, anyhow. If some parts of it are a little weak, other parts are extra strong. I don’t know but I may have left a gap here and there a yard wide or so; but then I made up for it by doubling the number of rails on each side of the gap. I dare say that the cattle will find it a good fence on the whole, and will like it, though I canna just say that it is perfect in every part.”

“What!” cried the man, not seeing the point, “do you tell me that you have built a fence around my lot with weak places and gaps in it? Why you might as well build no fence at all. If there is one opening, or a place where an opening can be made, the cattle will be sure to find it, and will all go through. Don’t you know, man, that a fence must be perfect or it is worthless?”

“I used to think so,” said the dry Scotchman, “but I hear you talk so much about averaging matters with the Lord, it seemed to me that we might try it with the cattle. If an average fence wont do for them, I am afraid that an average character won’t do in the day of Judgment. When I was on shipboard, and a storm was driving us on the rocks, the captain cried, ‘Let go the anchor!’ But the mate shouted back, ‘There is a broken link in the cable.’ Did the captain say when he heard that, ‘No matter; it’s only one link. The rest of the chain is good. Ninety-nine of a hundred links are strong. Its average is high. It only lacks one per cent. of being perfect. Surely the anchor ought to respect so excellent a chain, and not break away from it’? No, indeed; he shouted, ‘Get another chain!’ He knew that a chain with one broken link was no chain at all,—that he might as well throw the anchor overboard without any cable as with a defective one. So with the anchor of our souls. If there is the least flaw in the cable, it is not safe to trust it. We had better throw it away and try to get a new one that we know is perfect.”—Sel.