Word, A Providential
A simple question about one's soul led a stranger to salvation years later.
One day, as Felix Neff was walking in Lausanne, he saw at a distance before him a man, whom he took for one of his friends. He made up to him, tapped him on the shoulder, and, before looking him in the face, asked him, "How does your soul prosper, my friend?" The stranger immediately turned round, and looked at him in surprise. Neff perceived his mistake, apologized, and went his way. About three or four years afterward, a person came to Neff, and, introducing himself, said he was indebted to him for his inestimable kindness. Neff did not recognize the man, and begged that he would explain himself. The stranger replied, "Have you forgotten a certain person whose shoulder you once touched in one of the streets of Lausanne, and whom you asked, 'How does your soul prosper?' It was I. Your inquiry led me to serious reflection; and now I find it is well with my soul."
GO99. WORD, The Purifying. I have heard of one, who, returning from a sermon, highly commended it to some; and, being demanded what he remembered of it, answered, "Truly, I remember nothing at all; but only, while I heard it, it made me resolve to live better than ever I have done: and so, by God's grace, I will." To the same purpose, I have somewhere read a story of one who complained to an aged holy man that he was much discouraged from reading the Scripture, because his memory was so slippery, that he could fasten nothing upon it which he read. The old hermit (for so, as I remember, he was described) bid him take an earthen pitcher, and fill it with water; when he had done it, he bid him empty it again, and wipe it clean, that nothing should remain in it. Which when the other had done, and wondered to what this tended, "Now," saith he, "though there be nothing of the water remaining to it, yet the pitcher is cleaner than it was before: so, though thy memory retain nothing of the word thou readest, yet thy heart is the cleaner for its very passage through." Bp. Hopkins.
G100. WORD, The Tried. All human speculations have alloy about them; that Word is perfect. All human speculations fail; that Word abideth. The Jew hated it; but it lived on, while the veil was torn away from the shrine which the Shechinah had forsaken, and while Jerusalem itself was destroyed. The Greek derided it; but it has seen his philosophy effete, and his Aeropolis in ruins. The Roman threw it to the flames: but it rose from its ashes, and swooped down upon the fallen eagle. The reasoner cast it into the furnace, which his own malignity had heated "seven times hotter than its wont;" but it came out without the smell of fire. The papist fastened serpents around it to poison it; but it shook them off, and felt no harm. The infidel cast it overboard in a tempest of sophistry and screason; but it rode gallantly upon the crest of the proud waters. And it is living still, yet heard in the loudest swelling of the storm; it has been speaking all the while; it is speaking now. The world gets higher at its every tone; and it shall ultimately speak in power, until it has spoken this dismantled planet up again into the smiling brotherhood of worlds which kept their first estate; and God, welcoming the prodigal, shall look at it as he did in the beginning, and pronounce it to be very good. W. M. Punskan.