Moody's Stories: Being a Second Volume of Anecdotes, Incidents, and IllustrationsMoody, Dwight Lyman
Religion
Moody's Stories: Being a Second Volume of Anecdotes, Incidents, and Illustrations
Moody, Dwight Lyman
Homiletical illustrations
A man in one of our meetings had been brought there against his will;
he had come through some personal influence brought to bear upon him.
When he got to the meeting, they were singing the chorus of a hymn:
/*
Come! oh, come to Me!
Come! oh, come to Me!
Weary, heavy-laden,
Come! oh, come to Me!
*/
He said afterward he thought he never saw so many fools together in
his life before. The idea of a number of men standing there singing,
"Come! come! come!"
When he started home he could not get this little word out of his
head; it kept coming back all the time. He went into a saloon, and
ordered some whisky, thinking to drown it. But he could not; it still
kept coming back. He went into another saloon, and drank some more
whisky; but the words kept ringing in his ears: "Come! come! come!" He
said to himself, "What a fool I am for allowing myself to be troubled
in this way!" He went to a third saloon, had another glass, and
finally got home.
He went off to bed, but could not sleep; it seemed as if the very
pillow kept whispering the word, "Come! Come!" He began to be angry
with himself: "What a fool I was for ever going to that meeting at
all!" When he got up he took the little hymn book, found the hymn, and
read it over.
"What nonsense!" he said to himself; "the idea of a rational man being
disturbed by that hymn."
He set fire to the hymn book, but he could not burn up the little word
"Come!"
He declared he would never go to another of the meetings; but the next
night he came again. When he got there, strange to say, they were
singing the same hymn.
"There is that miserable old hymn again," he said; "what a fool I am
for coming!" When the Spirit of God lays hold of a man, he does a good
many things he did not intend to do.
To make a long story short, that man rose in a meeting of young
converts, and told the story that I have now told you. Pulling out the
little hymn-book--for he had bought another copy--and opening it at
this hymn, he said:
"I think this hymn is the sweetest and the best in the English
language. God blessed it to the saving of my soul. And yet this was
the very hymn that I despised."
Don't Scold
"He that winneth souls is wise." Do you want to win men? Do not drive
or scold them. Do not try to tear down their prejudices before you
begin to lead them to the truth. Some people think they have to tear
down the scaffolding before they begin on the building. An old
minister once invited a young brother to preach for him. The latter
scolded the people, and when he got home, asked the old minister how
he had done. He said he had an old cow, and when he wanted a good
supply of milk, he fed the cow; he did not scold her.
A Long Time to Reap
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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