FREDERICK STANLEY ARNOT was born in Glasgow,
on Sep. 12th, 1858, but the family soon removed to
Hamilton. When six years old he heard an address by
Dr. DAVID LIVINGSTONE, the great African Explorer, who
so stirred him that from henceforth Africa drew him
like a magnet. Friendship with the Livingstones, who
also lived in Hamilton, deepened his interest. Boylike,
he determined that he must go out to help his hero, a
resolution which coloured all his studies and thoughts,
and set his feet in a direction from which they never
diverged.
Arnot's parents were Christians; he himself was con-
verted when 10 years old. It came about in this way.
One day he and a companion, Jimmie, were appropriating
and eating plums from a neighbour's garden, and Jimmie's
older brother, from a window, called them thieves. Fred
Arnot felt as though a pistol had gone off at his very head.
"Thief! Thief!" rang in his ears all the time.
Next day
he had to pass Hamilton prison, and did so in a state of
terror, fearing he might be taken off to prison. To his
horror he saw a policeman leading a little boy to the very
place, and in his other hand the policeman held a pair of
new boots which the bare-footed little boy had stolen.
Fred felt that he was much more wicked than that little
needy boy. He rushed off home and hid himself till bed-
time. He said: "I dreaded to pass another night; I
could
not tell anyone what a wicked boy I was. I knew I ought
to tell God about it, but I trembled to
do so at my usual
evening prayer, so I waited until all were in bed and the
house quiet, then up I got. Now, I thought, I will ask
God to forgive me, but words would
not come, and, at
last, I burst into a flood of tears. I felt I was too wicked
even for God to forgive; yet a glimmer of light and hope
came to me with this thought: ‘That is why Jesus died on
the Cross for me, because I am so wicked.’ Among many
texts of Scripture that my parents
had taught me was
John 3. 16. I repeated it to myself on my knees about two
o'clock one morning, and that ‘whosoever’
took me in.
I awoke next day with a light heart, the burden was
gone."
He went out to Africa in 1881, spent 33 years on behalf
of the natives of that country, traversed 30,000 miles of
its trodden and untrodden paths, and died at Johannes-
burg on 11th May, 1914, at the age of 55.
As F. S. ARNOT did, so do you. Put
your name in John
3. 16: "For God so loved ..... that He gave
His only begotten Son for ..... that, if .....
believeth in HIM, ..... should not perish,
but have Everlasting Life." DO IT NOW.