p. 245 | The Captive Birds by Thomas Guthrie

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 22, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 16.

The Captive Birds.

By Thomas Guthrie

WE have somewhere read of a traveler who stood one day beside the cages of some birds that were exposed for sale, which ruffled their sunny plumage on the wires, and struggled to be free. A wayworn and sun-browned man, like one returned from foreign lands, looked wistfully and sadly on these captives till tears started in his eyes. Turning round on their owner, he asked the price of one, paid it in strange gold, and, opening the cage, set the prisoner free, and thus he did with captive after captive, till every bird was away soaring to the skies and singing on the wings of liberty. The crowd stared, and stood amazed; they thought him mad, till to the question of their curiosity, he replied: "I was once myself a captive; I know the sweets of liberty."

And so they who have experience of guilt have felt the serpent's bite, the burning poison in their veins, who on the one hand have felt the sting of conscience, and on the other, the peace of faith, the joys of hope, the love, the light, the liberty, the life, that are found in Jesus,—they, not excepting Heaven's highest angels, are the fittest to preach a Saviour, to plead with man for God, or with God for man.—Guthrie.