Christian fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
“Good God!” he exclaimed, “here am I bothering over words, and
questioning about this and that, as if I were testing his fitness for
a post I had to offer him, and he all the time claiming my obedience! I
cannot even, on the spur of the moment at least, tell one thing he wants
me to do; and as to doing anything because he told me--not once did
I ever! But then how am I to obey him until I am sure of his right to
command? I just want to know whether I am to call him Lord or not. No,
that won’t do either, for he says, Why even of yourselves judge ye not
what is right? And do I not know--have I ever even doubted that what
he said we ought to do was the right thing to do? Yet here have I, all
these years, been calling myself a Christian, ministering, forsooth, in
the temple of Christ, as if he were a heathen divinity, who cared for
songs and prayers and sacrifices, and cannot honestly say I ever once in
my life did a thing because he said so, although the record is full of
his earnest, even pleading words! I have NOT been an honest man, and
how should a dishonest man be a judge over that man who said he was the
Christ of God? Would it be any wonder if the things he uttered should be
too high and noble to be by such a man recognized as truth?”
With this, yet another saying dawned upon, him: IF ANY MAN WILL DO HIS
WILL, HE SHALL KNOW OF THE DOCTRINE, WHETHER IT BE OF GOD, OR WHETHER I
SPEAK OF MYSELF.
He went into his closet and shut to the door--came out again, and went
straight to visit a certain grievous old woman.
The next open result was, that, on the following Sunday, a man went up
into the pulpit who, for the first time in his life, believed he had
something to say to his fellow-sinners. It was not now the sacred spoil
of the best of gleaning or catering that he bore thither with him, but
the message given him by a light in his own inward parts, discovering
therein the darkness and the wrong.
He opened no sermon-case, nor read words from any book, save, with
trembling voice, these:
“WHY CALL YE ME LORD, LORD, AND DO NOT THE THINGS WHICH I SAY?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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