p. 13 | His Boundless Love

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 19, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 50.

His Boundless Love

An old soldier walked up and down the streets of Vienna playing a violin to earn his daily bread. After a time his hand became feeble and tremulous, and he could no more make music. One day the old man sat on the curb weeping. A man came along and said:

"My friend, you are too feeble to play; give me your violin."

He took the instrument and began to discourse most exquisite music. People who were passing stopped. A crowd gathered. While the stranger played the violin, the old man held his hat, and into it fell the coins which the enraptured townspeople willingly gave. When the hat was full the stranger said:

"Now put that coin in your pocket, and hold your hat again."

Then the man played more sweetly than he had before, and the tears ran down the faces of the people who listened. When the hat was filled the second time, the violinist dropped the instrument and passed on.

"Who can it be?" the people exclaimed. "Why," said a man in the crowd, "it is Bucher, the greatest of violinists."

And so it was. He just took the old soldier's place, and assumed his poverty, and shouldered his burden, and played his instrument, and earned for him the coin he needed so much.

That is precisely what Jesus did for us. He found us in poverty and distress and across the broken strings of His own broken heart He struck a strain of infinite music which called forth the plaudits of earth and heaven. He stood in our place. He assumed our poverty. He carried our burden. — Christian Herald.