A young convert tried to preach in the open air; he could not preach very well either, but he did the best he could. Some one interrupted him and said:
"Young man, you cannot preach; you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
Said the young man, "So I am, but I am not ashamed of my Lord."
That is right. Do not be ashamed of Christ--of the Man that bought us with His own blood.
He Silenced the Devil
If you find yourself getting very miserly, begin to scatter, like a wealthy farmer in New York state I heard of. He was a noted miser, but he was converted. Soon after, a poor man who had been burned out and had no provisions came to him for help. The farmer thought he would be liberal and give the man a ham from his smoke-house. On his way to get it, the tempter whispered to him:
"Give him the smallest one you have."
He had a struggle whether he would give a large or a small ham, but finally he took down the largest he could find.
"You are a fool," the devil said.
"If you don't keep still," the farmer replied, "I will give him every ham I have in the smoke-house."
Warm the Wax!
A gentleman in Ireland had a seal made for me. "D.L.M." is on one side, and on the other, "God is love." If I want to stamp "God is love" I would not make much headway if the wax was hard and cold. Many people go to meetings, and it is as hard to make an impression on them as in pressing a seal on hard wax. But let the wax be warmed up and an impression is made. If we are willing, every one of us may be sealed for the day of redemption. "In whom ye also trusted after that ye heard the Word of Truth, the Gospel of your salvation; in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise."
Draw Nearer
When I was a boy my mother used to send me out doors to get a birch stick to whip me with, when I had to be punished. At first I used to stand off from the rod as far as I could. But I soon found that the whipping hurt me more that way than any other; and so I went as near to my mother as I could, and found she could not strike me so hard. And so when God chastens us let us kiss the rod and draw as near to Him as we can.
The Panorama Looks Brighter
"When a panorama is to pass before an audience, the artist darkens the room in which they sit, so that the picture may be more fully seen. So God sometimes darkens our place on earth, puts out this light and that, and then before our souls He makes to pass the splendors and glories of the better land."
All Things Work for Good
There is one passage of Scripture which has always been a great comfort to me. In the eighth chapter of Romans Paul says: "All things work together for good to them that love God." Some years ago a child of mine had scarlet fever. I went to the druggist's to get the medicine, which the doctor had ordered, and told him to be sure and be very careful in making up the prescription. The druggist took down one bottle after another, in any one of which there might be what would be rank poison for my child; but he stirred them together and mixed them up, and made just the medicine which my child needed. And so God gives us a little adversity here, a little prosperity there, and all works for our good.
It Takes Time
Suppose I should send my little boy, five years old, to school to-morrow morning, and when he came home in the afternoon, say to him:
"Willie, can you read? can you write? can you spell? Do you understand all about algebra, geometry, Hebrew, Latin and Greek?"
"Why, papa," the little fellow would say, "how funny you talk. I have been all day trying to learn the A, B, C's!"
Suppose I should reply: "If you have not finished your education, you need not go any more." What would you say? Why, you would say I had gone mad!
There would be just as much reason in that as in the way that people talk about the Bible. The men who have studied the Bible for fifty years have never got down to the depths of it yet. There are truths there that the church of God has been searching out for the last nineteen hundred years, but no man has yet fathomed the depths of the ever-living stream.
Something God Cannot Do
In Ireland, some time ago, a teacher asked a little boy if there was anything that God could not do. The little fellow said:
"Yes, He cannot see my sins through the blood of Christ."
It Seemed Too Good to be True
Some time ago I read in one of the daily papers a thing that pleased me very much. When the new administration of President McKinley went into office some clerks in one of the departments were promoted. One young lady was offered a promotion, but she went to see the secretary, General Butterworth, and said that there was a girl sitting next to her that had a family to support. A brother who had been supporting the family had died, or sickened, and it had fallen upon her, and she asked the general to let her friend that sat next to her have the promotion in her place.