1 C. H. Spurgeon, The Soul- Winntr, 254. PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 1 8
274 THE WINNING OF SOULS
wisdom of the means becomes clear to every eye. The weapon of love is sometimes a look, or a soft word whispered and eagerly listened to ; sometimes it is a tear ; but this I know, that we have, most of us in our turn, cast around another heart a chain which that other would not care to break, and which has linked us twain in a blessed captivity which has cheered our life. Yes, and that is very nearly the way in which we have to save souls. That illustration is nearer the mark than any of the others. Love is the true way of soul-winning, for when we speak of storming the walls, and when we speak of wrestling, those are but metaphors, but this is near the fact. We win by love.
^ I believe that much of the secret of soul-winning lies in having bowels of compassion, in having spirits that can be touched with the feeling of human infirmities. Carve a preacher out of granite, and even if you give him an angel's tongue, he will convert nobody. Put him into the most fashionable pulpit, make his elocution faultless, and his matter profoundly orthodox, but, so long as he bears within his bosom a hard heart, he can never win a soul. Soul-saving requires a heart that beats hard against the ribs. It requires a soul full of the milk of human kindness ; this is the sine qua non of success.^
2. What is this wisdom that wins souls ? It is the wisdom not of the schools, but of the heart. It comes from experience and sympathetic insight. The Hebrew word for winneth " may also be rendered " taketh " and with this we may compare Christ's promise to His disciples that they should " catch men " (Luke v. 10). This suggests the art of fishing or bird-catching. We must have our lures for souls, adapted to attract, to fascinate, to grasp. We must go forth with our bird-lime, our decoys, our nets, our baits, so that we may but catch the souls of men. Their enemy is a fowler possessed of the basest and most astounding cunning ; we must outwit him with the guile of honesty, the craft of grace. But the art is to be learned only by Divine teaching, and herein we must be wise and willing to learn.
^ Washington Irving tells us of some three gentlemen who had read in Izaak Walton all about the delights of fishing. So they must needs enter upon the same aniuseniont, and accordingly they
1 C. H. Spurgeon, The Soul- TVinTur, 256.
PROVERBS XI. 30 275
became disciples of the gentle art. They went into New York, and bought the best rods and lines that could be purchased, and they found out the exact fly for the particular day or m'onth, so that the fish might bite at once, and as it were fly into the basket with alacrity. They fished, and fished, and fished the livelong day; but the basket was empty. They were getting disgusted with a sport that had no sport in it, when a ragged boy came down from the hills, without shoes or stockings, and humiliated them to the last degree. He had a bit of a bough pulled off a tree, and a piece of string, and a bent pin ; he put a worm on it, threw it in, and out came a fish directly, as if it were a needle drawn to a magnet. In again went the line, and out came another fish, and so on, till his basket was quite full. They asked him how he did it. Ah ! he said, he could not tell them that, but it was easy enough when you had the way of it.^
^ " I used to judge the worth of a person," writes George Gissing, " by his intellectual power and attainment. I could see no good where there was no logic, no charm where there was no learning. Now I think that one has to distinguish between two forms of intelligence, that of the brain and that of the heart, and I have come to regard the second as by far the more important." Indeed, I must give my heart to the sinfullest soul, the most pithless and the most provoking, if I am to entice it home to God. I must love it, as God has loved me, out and up from the pit of its corruption.2
(1) We must be wise first of all, in the grand old Scripture sense of the word ; we are to be good. The successful winner of souls must himself have found the truth. This is what the first clause of the verse asserts. " The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life." The fruit of the righteous — that is to say, his life — is not a thing fastened upon him, but it grows out of him. It is not a garment which he puts ofi" and on, but is inseparable from him- self. The sincere man's religion is the man himself, not a cloak for his concealment. True godliness is the natural outgrowth of a renewed nature, not the forced growth of pious hothouse excite- ment. Is it not natural for a vine to bear clusters of grapes ? natural for a palm tree to bear dates ? Certainly as natural as it is for the apples of Sodom to be found on the trees of Sodom, and for noxious plants to produce poisonous berries. When God gives a new nature to His people, the life which comes out of that new