74 Sermon Illustrations on Spiritual Discipline

Anselm says, "Our heart is like a mill, ever grinding, which a certain lord gave in charge to his servant, enjoining that he should only grind in it his master's grain, whether wheat, barley, or oats, and telling him that he must subsist on the produce. But that servant has an enemy, who is always playing tricks on the mill. If, any moment, he finds it unwatched, he throws in gravel to keep the stones from acting, or pitch to clog them, or dirt and chaff to mix with the meal. If the servant is careful in tending his mill, there flows forth a beautiful flour, which is at once a service to his master, and a subsistence to himself; but if he plays truant, and allows his enemy to tamper with the machinery, the bad outcome tells the tale; his lord is angry; and he himself is starved." This mill, ever grinding, is the heart; thoughts are the grain; the Devil is the watchful enemy: he throws in bad thoughts, which can only be prevented by watchfulness and prayer.

Socrates, the ecclesiastical historiographer, reports a story of one Pambo, a plain, ignorant man, who came to a learned man, and desired him to teach him some psalm or other. He began to read unto him the Thirty-ninth Psalm, "I said, I will take head to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue." Having passed this first verse, Pambo shut the book, and took his leave, saying that he would go learn that point first. When he had absented himself for the space of some months, he was demanded by his reader when he would go forward? He answered, that he had not yet learned his old lesson; and he gave the very same answer to one that asked the like question, forty-nine years after. Spencer.

Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce; set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, — why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. Shakespeare.

Proprietors wear strong fences round young trees, while they leave aged forests to take their chance. Permit not the immortal to be twisted at the very starting of its growth, for the want of such protection as it is in your power to afford. Arnot.

We learn, from Chrysostom, that in the primitive church, women and children had frequently the Gospels, or parts of the New Testament, hung round their neck, and carried them constantly about with them. The rich had splendid copies of the sacred writings on vellum, in their libraries and book-cases; but as the art of printing was not known till many ages after, complete copies of the Scriptures were, of course, exceedingly scarce. Children were particularly encouraged in the efforts which they made to commit to memory the invaluable truths of the divine volume. Though in those times the Bible was to be multiplied by no other means than the pen, and every letter was to be traced out with the finger, so repeatedly were the Scriptures copied that many of the early Christians had them in their possession; and they were so copied into their writings, that a celebrated scholar engaged, that if the New Testament, by any accidental circumstances, should be lost, he would undertake to restore it, with the exception of a few verses of one of the Epistles; and he pledged himself to find these in a short time.

Mr. Harris, a London tradesman, whose sight had decayed, procured the whole New Testament, except the book of Revelation, and also the book of Psalms, to be written with white ink on black paper, in letters an inclong, that he might enjoy the consolations of the gospel of Christ.

At an anniversary of the French and Foreign Bible Society, held in Paris, the secretary related the following interesting fact:

That interesting person, who now lives in a village not far from my house, writes a Christian friend, had lost in her early age the little sight which the bad conformation of her eyes had left her after birth. Her parents, however, had succeeded, while she was yet a child, to make her discern her letters by the use of very large characters; but for a long time past she had not been able even to distinguish the largest letters on the show-bills. She can hardly now make the distinction between light and darkness. Gifted with intelligence and skill, she rejoiced when she learned that God had put it into the hearts of some pious men to offer his word to the blind; and as soon as I was enabled to procure for her the gospel according to Mark, issued from your presses, she began to study it alone with great earnestness. After a few days she could, to my astonishment, read about a page; but she was greatly discouraged, on account of the slowness of her progress.

Her means are very limited, and she is obliged to work for her living. Alone in a small chamber, which she rents, she attends herself to all the necessaries of her life, and cultivates even a little piece of ground, out of which she contrives to raise some vegetables. All this obliterates her sense of touch, which, therefore, is far less delicate than that of other blind, who are less skillful or in easier circumstances, and hence are not obliged to have recourse to this manual labor. One day the idea crosses the mind of this poor girl, that the sensibility of her fingers would be excited were the skin taken off; and immediately (such is her desire to read, and chiefly to read the word of God, which he has taught her to love,) she takes a penknife and begins to skin off the ends of her fingers. But, alas! sensibility excites pain; her touch is not improved; and soon the sores which succeed to the thick skin which she has tried to scrape off, become, for our poor sister, an insurmountable obstacle to the pursuit of her study.

She tries yet, however, but in vain; she must now give it up. In a moment of despair, she takes up the book, and pressing it against her lips, wetting it with her tears, thus addressed it: "Farewell, farewell, sweet word of my heavenly Father, food of my soul! I must part with thee!" But what is her surprise! her lips, more delicate than her fingers, have discerned the form of the letters! she reflects, she tries, at last she cannot doubt any more; she has certainly read, "Gospel according to Mark!" Her soul overflowing with gratitude, pours out her thanks before the throne of her Father in heaven. She lies down to rest. All night she perused the holy book, and every where she discovers, in a few moments, not only the form of the letters, but also the sense of the phrases.

# 68. "Searching the Scriptures."

The emperor Theodosius wrote out the whole New Testament with his own hand, and read some part of them every day. Theodosius, the second, dedicated a great part of the night to the study of the Scriptures. George, prince of Transylvania, read over the Bible twenty-seven times. Alphonsus, king of Arragon, read the Scriptures over, together with a large commentary, fourteen times.

Sir Henry Wotten, after his customary public devotions, used to retire to his study, and there spend some hours in reading the Bible. Sir. John Hartop in like manner, amidst his other vocations, made the book of God so much his study, that it lay before him night and day. James Bonnel, Esq., made the Holy Scriptures his constant and daily study, he read them, he meditated upon them, he prayed over them. M. De Renty, a French nobleman, used to read daily three chapters of the Bible, with his head uncovered, and on his bended knees.

Lady Frances Hobart read the Psalms over twelve times a year, the New Testament thrice, and the other parts of the Old Testament, once. Susannah, countess of Suffolk, for the last seven years of her life, read the whole Bible over twice annually.

Dr. Gouge used to read fifteen chapters every day; five in the morning, five after dinner, and five in the evening, before going to bed. Mr. Jeremiah Whittaker usually read all the Epistles in the Greek Testament twice every fortnight.

Joshua Barnes is said to have read a small pocket Bible, which he usually carried about with him, a hundred and twenty times over. Mr. Roger Cotton read the whole Bible through twelve times a year.

The Rev. Wm. Romaine studied nothing but the Bible for the last thirty or forty years of his life.

A poor prisoner, being confined in a dark dungeon, had no light, except for a few moments when his food was brought him; he used to take his Bible and read a chapter, saying, he could find his mouth in the dark, when he could not read.

Henry Willis, farmer, aged 81, devoted almost every hour that could be spared from his labor, during the course of so long a life, to the devout and serious perusal of the Holy Scriptures. He had read with the most minute attention, all the books of the Old and New Testament, eight times over, and had proceeded as far as the book of Job in his ninth reading, when his meditations were terminated by death.

There was living in 1832, at Stirling, in Scotland, a blind old beggar, known to all the country round by the name of Blind Alick, who possessed a memory of almost incredible strength. Alick was blind from his childhood. He was the son of poor parents, who could do little for him; though, indeed, at that time, wealth could not have done much for the education of one laboring under his privations. Alick was sent by his parents to a common school, to keep him out of mischief, and in order that he might learn something by hearing the lessons of the other children. The only volume then used in such establishments, as a class or reading book, was the Bible; and it was customary for the scholars, as they read in rotation, to repeat not only the number of each chapter, but the number of each verse as it was read. By constantly hearing these readings, young Alick soon began to retain many of the passages of Scripture, and with them the number of the chapter and verse where they occurred. It is probable, that being incapacitated by his sad privation from any useful employment, he may have remained an unusual length of time at this school; and that his father, as was generally the case with the Scottish peasantry, was a great reader of the Bible at home. A constant attendance at church would also contribute to the result. However this may have been, it was observed with astonishment that when Blind Alick was a man, and obliged, by the death of his parents, to gain a livelihood by begging through the streets of his native town of Stirling, he knew the whole of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, by heart! Many persons of education have examined Alick, and have invariably been astonished at the extent of his memory. You may repeat any passage in Scripture, and he will tell you the chapter and verse; or you may tell him the chapter and verse of any part of Scripture, and he will repeat to you the passage, word for word. Not long since, a gentleman, to puzzle him, read with a slight verbal alteration, a verse of the Bible. Alick hesitated a moment, and then told where it was to be found, but said it had not been correctly delivered; he then gave it as it stood in the book, correcting the slight error that had been purposely introduced. The gentleman then asked him for the ninetieth verse of the seventh chapter of Numbers. Alick was again puzzled for a moment, but then said hastily, "You are fooling me, sirs! there is no such verse—that chapter has but eighty-nine verses." Several other experiments of the sort were tried upon him with the same success. He has often been questioned the day after any particular sermon or speech; and his examiners have invariably found, that had their patience allowed, Blind Alick would have given them the sermon or speech over again.

A pious officer of the army, travelling through the Mahratta country, was asked by Judge D—, a religious gentleman, to accompany him to a public dinner, at which the commanding officer of the district, with all his staff, and various other public characters, were expected to meet.

"I expressed a wish to be excused," says the officer, "as I had then no relish for such entertainments, and did not think that much either of pleasure or profit was to be derived from them." His reply was—"While I feel it my duty to attend on such an occasion, I certainly have as little pleasure in it as you have. But there is one way in which I find I can be present at such meetings, and yet receive no injury from them. I endeavor to conceive to

## 88. CONFEREN

"Several of you," said Rev. R. Robison in a sermon, "know a good old man who departed this life twenty years ago, and who often exhorted you to live by the Ten Commandments, and not by impulses. He used to tell, you know, how he got free from that delusion fifty years before. Then he was pious and poor, and, being only a lad, thought all suggestions in Scripture style came from heaven. Walking in the fields in

# INFIDE

# CAUSES OF INFIDELITY.

# 212. Ignorance.

It is recorded of the late Rev. R. Cecil, that he never seemed weary of his studies. They were not only his business, but his enjoyment and recreation, and he used to call them his rest. He felt any interruptions of them required acts of self-denial, and always returned to his study with pleasure. Few more carefully aimed to redeem time, and to spend it only in what was worthy of a man and a Christian minister; often repeating—

For at back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And onward, all before I see Deserts of vast eternity.