Quiet Talks on ServiceGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks on Service
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Christian life
He said, "I try to be as tactful as though I were selling a contract of
cars. Though there's a fine reverence here that never gets into business
talk. And then if it seems good, without causing him any embarrassment, we
have a bit of prayer together. Not always, but often." And he said to me,
with a tender eagerness in his voice, "Gordon, it's been the _delight_ of
my life to have man after man accept Jesus in my library corner."
And I looked at him. We were driving along the busiest block of the
busiest street in Columbus. The Capitol building on this side. And the old
Neil Hotel on this. And all around us were the electrics, and wagons and
carriages; so much noise and dust. And there that man sat by my side so
quiet, with his eyes dancing as they looked off at something I could not
see. And if ever Moses' face shined or Stephen's, his did that morning.
I was caught as I looked. That was the _delight_ of his life. Not his
money, nor his business, nor his social relations, though he took keen
interest in all of these, but this. And the sound of his voice, and the
sight of his face that morning, seemed to kindle the fires in my heart
that I might, in my own way, as came best to me, be doing something of
that same sort. That is what I mean by a deep-seated purpose, under every
other, to try to win men.
I was telling this story one night to some people in his state, not
thinking that I was within maybe two hundred miles of his home. And as the
audience was dismissed I saw a man coming up the aisle toward the pulpit,
apparently to meet me. So I went down his way. He looked like a business
fellow, with a clean-cut way about him, and a strong manly face. Before we
met I noticed something glistening in his eye, and yet a smile across his
lips.
And he _gripped_ my hand. I can feel that grip now. And he half-blurted
out, "_I'm_ one of those fellows! And there are a lot of us that are
thanking God with full hearts for that man's library room." And the grip
of that hand seemed to make the fires within burn just a bit stiffer.
In an after conversation this friend told me how he had wanted to be a
Christian, but didn't seem to know just how. And nobody had ever spoken to
him about it, he said, though so often he had wished somebody would. There
are a great many just like him in that.
"Two Missing"--"Go Ye."
Same years ago I was a guest at a small wedding dinner party in New York
City. A Scotch-Irish gentleman, well known in that city, an old friend,
spoke across the table to me. He said he had heard recently a story of the
Scottish hills that he wanted to tell. And we all listened as he told this
simple tale. I have heard it since from other lips, variously told. But
good gold shines better by the friction of use. And I want to tell it to
you as my old friend from the Scotch end of Ireland told it that evening.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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