In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga ConferenceJohnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows)
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In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga Conference
Johnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows)
Epworth League (U.S.) -- Fiction
"There is a young Jew in this city to-night whose heart is turning
lovingly towards your Savior and mine. I have come to ask your prayers
in his behalf, that the stumbling-blocks in his way may be removed. But
it is not for him alone my soul is burdened. I seem to hear Isaiah's
voice crying out to me, 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your
God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her
warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.' And then I seem
to hear another voice that through the thunderings of Sinai proclaims,
'Thou shalt not bear false witness.' Ah! the Christian Church has been
weighed in the balance and found wanting. It must read a terrible
handwriting on the wall in the fact that Israel's eyes have not been
opened to the fulfillment of prophecy. For had she seen Christ in the
daily life of every follower since he was first preached in that little
Church at Antioch, we would have had a race of Sauls turned Pauls! We
are Christ's witnesses to all men. Do all men see Christ in us, or only
a false, misleading image of him? He cherished no racial prejudices. He
turned away from no man with a look of scorn, or a cold shrug of
indifference. He drew no line across which his sympathies and love and
helping hands should not reach. When we do these things, are we not
bearing false witness to the character of him whose name we have
assumed, and the emblem of whose cross we wear? I can not believe that
any of us here have been willfully neglectful of this corner of the
Lord's vineyard. It must be because your hearts and hands were full of
other interests that you have been indifferent to this."
Then he told them of Lessing and Ragolsky and David, and called on them
to pray that his friend might find the light he was seeking. A dozen
earnest prayers were offered in quick succession, and every heart went
out in sympathy to this young Jew, whom they longed to see happy in the
consciousness of a personal Savior.
David had not gone out to Hillhollow. He dined at the restaurant, and
was just starting leisurely down to the depot when he found that his
watch told the same time as when he had looked at it an hour before. It
must have been stopped even some time before that. At any rate it had
made him too late for the train. The next one would not leave till nine
o'clock. He stood on a corner debating how to pass the time, and finally
concluded to go back to the office for a magazine he had borrowed from
Rabbi Barthold, and take it home to him.
His steps echoed strangely through the deserted hall as he climbed the
stairs to the office. He lighted the gas, and sat down to look through
the papers on his desk for the magazine. But when he had found it, he
still sat there idly, drumming with his fingers on the rounds of his
chair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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