A Handful of Stars - Frank Boreham (inspiring books for teens .TXT) 📗
- Author: Frank Boreham
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'On these certainties,' he exclaimed, 'I stake everything! On these certainties I rest my soul!' And, summing up the three in one, he added, 'For I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.'
It is wonderful how the universal heart aches for assurance, for confidence, for finality, for certainty. Mr. Dan Crawford tells of a cannibal chief beside whose deathbed an African boy was reading selections from the Gospel of John. He was impressed by the frequent recurrence of the words 'verily, verily.'
'What do they mean?' he asked.
'They mean "certainly, certainly!"'
'Then,' exclaimed the dying man, with a sigh of infinite relief, 'they shall be my pillow. I rest on them.'
Sage or savage, it is all the same. Bunyan's great night was the night on which he found that same pillow. 'It was with joy that I told my wife, "O, now I know, I know!" That night was a good night to me! I never had a better. I longed for the company of some of God's people, that I might have imparted unto them what God had showed me. Christ was a precious Christ to my soul that night; I could scarcely lie in my bed for joy and peace and triumph through Christ!'
'Those words shall be my pillow!' said the African chief.
'Those words shall be my pillow!' said the English scientist.
'Those words shall be my pillow!' cried John Bunyan.
'For I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day!'
III'He is able to keep!' That was the sublime confidence that won the heart of John Newton. It came to him in the form of a dream on his voyage home from Venice. I have told the story in full in A Bunch of Everlastings. 'It made,' he says, 'a very great impression upon me!' The same thought made an indelible impression upon the mind of Faraday, and he clung tenaciously to it at the last. 'He is able to keep'--as a shepherd keeps his sheep. 'He is able to keep'--as a sentry keeps the gate. 'He is able to keep'--as the pilgrims kept the golden vessels on their journey to Jerusalem, both counting and weighing them before they set out from Babylon and again on their arrival at the Holy City. 'He is able to keep'--as a banker keeps the treasure confided to his custody.
'I know whom I have believed,' says the margin of the Revised Version, 'and I am persuaded that He is able to guard my deposit against that day.'
'I know in whom my trust reposes,' says Dr. Weymouth's translation, 'and I am confident that He has it in His power to keep what I have entrusted to Him safe until that day.'
'I know whom I have trusted,' says Dr. Moffatt's version, 'and I am certain that He is able to keep what I have put into His hands till the Great Day.'
He will guard my treasure!
He will honor my confidence!
He will hold my deposit!
I know! I know! I know!
IVFaraday's text is an ill-used text. It is frequently mis-quoted. It occurred one day in the course of a theological lesson over which Rabbi Duncan was presiding.
'Repeat that passage!' said the Rabbi to the student who had just spoken.
'I know in whom I have----'
'My dear sir,' interrupted the Rabbi, 'you must never let even a preposition come between you and your Saviour!'
And when Dr. Alexander, of Princeton, was dying, a friend endeavored to fortify his faith by reciting some of the most familiar passages and promises. Presently he ventured upon the words:
'I know in whom I have believed, and----'
But the sick man raised his hand.
'No, no,' exclaimed the dying Principal, 'it is not "I know in whom" but "I know whom"; I cannot have even the little word "in" between me and Christ. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day!'
John Oxenham has expressed the same thought with an accent and emphasis well worthy of the theme:
That, in my darkest hour of need,
Hath comfort that no mortal creed
To mortal man may give.
For Christ is more than all the creeds,
And His full life of gentle deeds
Shall all the creeds outlive.
Who walks beside me in the gloom?
Who shares the burden wearisome?
Who all the dim way doth illume,
And bids me look beyond the tomb
The larger life to live?
But Whom!
Not What,
But Whom!
It was a Person, a Living and Divine Person, of whom Faraday was so certain and on whom he rested so securely at the last.
VIs there in all Scottish literature a more robust, more satisfying, or more lovable character than Donal Grant? Readers of George Macdonald will cherish the thought of Donal as long as they live. He was the child of the open air; his character was formed during long and lonely tramps on the wide moor and among the rugged mountains; it was strengthened and sweetened by communion with sheep and dogs and cattle, with stars and winds and stormy skies. He was disciplined by sharp suffering and bitter disappointments. And he became to all who knew him a tower of strength, a sure refuge, a strong city, and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. As a shepherd-boy among the hills he learned to read his Greek Testament; and, later on, he became tutor at the Castle Graham. It was his business in life to instruct little Davie, the younger son of Lord Morven; and he had his own way of doing it.
'Davie,' he said one day, 'there is One who understands every boy, and understands each separate boy as well as if there were no other boy in the whole world.'
'Tell me who it is!' demanded Davie.
'That is what I have to teach you; mere telling is not much use. Telling is what makes people think they know when they do not, and makes them foolish.'
'Well, what is his name?'
'I will not tell you that just yet; for then you would think that you knew Him when you knew next to nothing about Him. Look here! Look at this book!' He pulled from his pocket a copy of Boethius. 'Look at the name on the back of it; it is the name of the man who wrote that book.'
Davie spelled it out.
'Now you know all about the book, don't you?'
'No, sir, I don't know anything about it.'
'Well, then, my father's name is Robert Grant; you know now what a good man he is!'
'No, I don't!' replied Davie.
And so Donal led Davie to see that to know the name of Jesus, and to know about Jesus is not to know Jesus.
'I know Him!' cried Faraday in triumph.
George Macdonald makes Faraday's text the master-passion of his hero's life to the last. All through the adventures recorded in the book, Donal Grant behaves like a man who is very sure of God. 'I know Him,' he seems to say. 'I know Him.' And the closing sentences of the story tell us that 'Donal is still a present power of heat and light in the town of Auchars. He wears the same solemn look, the same hovering smile. That look and that smile say to those who can read them, "I know whom I have believed." His life is hid with Christ in God; he has no anxiety about anything; God is, and all is well.'
VI'I know whom I have believed.'
Pascal had the words engraved upon his seal; Canon Ainger left instructions that they should be inscribed on his tomb at Darley Abbey; but, like Donal Grant, Michael Faraday wove them into the very warp and woof, the fiber and fabric of his daily life.
'Speculations!' he cried in dismay, 'speculations! I have none! I am resting on certainties! For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day!'
Happy the heads that, in the soul's last straits, find themselves pillowed serenely there!
XVII JANET DEMPSTER'S TEXT ISitting here in my pleasaunce on the lawn, surrounded by a riot of hollyhocks, foxgloves, roses, geraniums, and other English flowers that she described so vividly, and loved so well, I find myself celebrating in my own way the hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Eliot. Lying open beside me on the garden-seat is a very well-worn copy of Janet's Repentance. It has been read many times, and must be read again to-day. For even those who cannot go as far as Dr. Marcus Dods in pronouncing it 'one of the greatest religious books ever written' will at least agree that in religious feeling, spiritual insight and evangelical intensity, it is among the most noble and most notable of our English classics. The pity of it is that, long before the book was written, its brilliant authoress had drifted away from that simple and majestic faith which she so tenderly portrays. Indeed, I have sometimes fancied that she wrote of Janet with a great wistfulness in her heart. She seems to have felt that if, in the straits of her soul, she had found her storm-tossed spirit in communion with personalities like those by whom Janet was surrounded in the day of her distress, her spiritual pilgrimage might have been a sunnier one. But she drifted. No other word will describe the process. Some powerful but sensitive minds, like that of Goethe--with whose works she was so familiar--have been driven or torn from their anchorage by some sudden and desolating calamity; but with George Eliot it was quite otherwise. She was a gentle English girl, born on a farm, and passionately attached to the quiet beauty of the countryside. She delighted in the village green, the rectory garden, the fields waving with golden buttercups, and the shady woods in which the primroses twinkled. She loved to watch the poppies tossing in the corn, the wind sweeping over the red sea of clover, and the hyacinths nodding on the banks of the silvery stream. The smell of the hay and the song of the birds and the life of the fields were her ceaseless satisfaction and refreshment. Perhaps, as she wandered about those winding lanes and lonely bridle-paths, she became too contemplative, too introspective, too much addicted to the analysis of frames and feelings. Perhaps, dwelling so exclusively on the abstract and the ideal, her fresh young spirit became unfitted for its rude impact with the actual and the real. Perhaps, too, she was unfortunate in respect of the particular specimens of the evangelical faith that came under her notice. Perhaps! At any rate, she came at length into daily contact with men and women, and her girlish faith reeled under the shock. It is one of the most grievous tragedies of the spiritual realm that conscience often finds the sunny climate of an ardent evangelism singularly enervating. The emotional side of one's nature luxuriates in an atmosphere in which the ethical side becomes languid and relaxed. A man must be very careful, as Mr. Gladstone once incisively observed, to prevent his religion from damaging his morality. The simpleminded people with whom this sharp-witted and fresh-spirited young Englishwoman met had not fortified themselves against that insidious
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