70. A Real Change
A Real Change
TWO PHOTOGRAPHS.—The wife of a drunkard found her husband with torn clothes, matted hair, and bruised face, asleep in the room, having come home from a drunken revel. She sent for a photographer, and had a portrait of him taken in all his wretched appearance, and placed it on the mantel beside another portrait taken at the time of his marriage, which showed him handsome and well dressed. When he became sober he saw the two pictures, and awakened to a consciousness of his condition, from which he arose to a better life. The office of the law is not to save men, but to show them their true state as compared with the Divine standard. It is like a glass, in which one seeth himself. NOT SURGICAL HELP.—A wounded soldier in the hospital, when informed that the surgeon was coming, said, “It ain’t such help that I want. I am a dreadful wicked man.” The Christian nurse tried to comfort him with the promises of the Bible. At length he read, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.” He grasped at the word “whosoever.” He was assured, that he, hardened and wretched, was included in it. He went into the vale of death, supported by it.
MUST BREATHE CONTINUALLY.—The acts of breathing which I performed yesterday will not keep me alive today; I must continue to breathe afresh every moment, or animal life ceases. In like manner, yesterday’s grace and spiritual strength must be renewed, and the Holy Spirit must continue to breathe on my soul from moment to moment.
HIT THE NAIL.—Rowland Hill was introduced to an aged Scotch minister somewhat resembling himself in piety and eccentricity. The old man looked at him for some time very earnestly, and at length said, “Weel, I’ve been looking for some time at your face.” “And what do you think of it?” said Mr. Hill. “Why, I am thinking that if the grace of God had na changed your heart you would have been a rogue.” Mr. Hill laughed and said, “You have hit the nail on the head.”
CONVERSIONS.—The Holy Spirit comes like a rushing wind upon the disciples, and in an hour they are new men. The jailer hears and believes in a night. Luther, while toiling up the stairs, holding to salvation by works, drops that scheme, and lays hold of salvation by faith. Ignatius Loyola, in a dream, has sight of the Mother of Christ, and awakes a soldier of Jesus. It is often so. We do not so much grow into the possession of new spiritual truths as we awake to them.
I HAVE FOUND IT.—If Archimedes, upon the discovery of a mathematical truth, was so ravished that he cried out, “I have found it, I have found it!” what pleasure must the discovery of a divine truth give to a sanctified soul!” “Thy words were found of me,” says Jeremiah, “and I did eat them; and Thy word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” Truth lies deep, as the rich veins of gold do; if we will get the treasure, we must not only beg, but dig.
TRUTH AND THE SCRIPTURES.—Jansen, the leader of the Jansenites, was an ardent seeker after the truth. His advice to his followers was to study the Bible on their knees. “No means of conversion,” he used to say, “can be more apostolic than the Word of God. Every word of Scripture,” he says, “deserves to be weighed more attentively than gold.”