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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