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
When he was on trial, it came out that he had murdered five other
people, and from one end of the city to the other there was a
universal cry going up against him. During his trial they had to guard
the court-house, the indignation was so intense.
The white-haired mother got just as near her son as she could, and
every witness that went into the court and said anything against him
seemed to hurt her more than her son. When the jury brought in a
verdict of guilty a great shout went up, but the old mother nearly
fainted away; and when the judge pronounced the sentence of death they
thought she would faint away.
After it was over she threw her arms around him and kissed him, and
there in the court they had to tear him from her embrace. She then
went the length and breadth of the city trying to get men to sign a
petition for his pardon. And when he was hanged, she begged the
governor to let her have the body of her son, that she might bury it.
They say that death has torn down everything in this world, everything
but a mother's love. That is stronger than death itself. The governor
refused to let her have the body, but she cherished the memory of that
boy as long as she lived.
A few months later she followed her boy, and when she was dying she
sent word to the governor, and begged that her body might be laid
close to her son. That is a mother's love! She wasn't ashamed to have
her grave pointed out for all time as the grave of the mother of the
most noted criminal the State of Vermont ever had.
The prophet takes hold of that very idea. He says: "Can a mother
forget her child?" But a mother's love is not to be compared to the
love of God.
Restitution
I was preaching in British Columbia some years ago and a young man
came to me, and wanted to become a Christian. He had been smuggling
opium into the States.
"Well, my friend," I said, "I don't think there is any chance for you
to become a Christian until you make restitution." He said, "If I
attempt to do that, I will fall into the clutches of the law, and I
will go to the penitentiary." "Well," I replied, "you had better do
that than go to the judgment-seat of God with that sin upon your soul,
and have eternal punishment. The Lord will be very merciful if you set
your face to do right."
He went away sorrowful, but came back the next day, and said: "I have
a young wife and child, and all the furniture in my house I have
bought with money I have got in this dishonest way. If I become a
Christian, that furniture will have to go, and my wife will know it."
"Better let your wife know it, and better let your home and furniture
go."
"Would you come up and see my wife?" he asked; "I don't know what she
will say."
I went up to see her, and when I told her, the tears trickled down her
cheeks, and she said: "Mr. Moody, I will gladly give everything if my
husband can become a true Christian."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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