Believing Confidence in God's Word

Believing does not come by trying. If a person were to make a statement of something that happened this day I should not tell him that I would try to believe him. If I believed in the truthfulness of the man who told the incident to me, and who said he saw it, I should accept the statement at once. If I did not think him a true man I should, of course, disbelieve him; but there would be no trying in the matter. Now, when God declares there is salvation in Christ Jesus I must either believe Him at once or make Him a liar. – SPURGEON.

The Peace of the Believer

The believer's peace is like a river for continuance. Look at it, rising as a little brook among the mosses of the lone green hill; by and by it leaps as a rugged cataract; anon it flows along that fair valley where the red deer wanders, and the child loves to play. With hum of pleasant music the brook turns the village mill. Hearken to its changeful tune as it ripples over its pebbly bed, or leaps adown the wheel, or sports in eddies where the trees bend down their branches to kiss the current. Anon the streamlet has become a river, and bears upon its flood full many a craft. Then its bosom swells, bridges with noble arches span it, and, grown vaster still, it becomes an estuary, broad enough to be an arm of old Father Ocean, pouring its water-floods into the mighty main. The river abides the lapse of ages; it is no evanescent morning cloud or transient rain-flood, but in all its stages it is permanent.

"Men may come, and men may go,
But I flow on for ever."

Evermore, throughout all generations, the river speedeth to its destined place. Such is the peace of the Christian. He has always reason for comfort. He has not a consolation like a swollen torrent which is dried up under the hot sun of adversity, but peace is his rightful possession at all times. Do you inquire for the Thames? You shall find it flowing in its own bed in the thick black night, as well as in the clear bright day. — SPURGEON.

Practical Religion As Great Sculptor Felt It in His Life

1917

John Bacon, the noted English sculptor, whose genius was immortalized in prose by Lord Macaulay and in verse by the poet Cowper, was a man of pronounced and practical piety. No matter how much he was occupied with business, how exalted by applause, or how tempted by wealth, religion was always his greatest concern.

One day when Bacon was hard at work in his studio a lady visited him, and in the course of the conversation he happened to make a remark about religion. The lady then said: "My religion is to fear God and to keep the commandments." Then she showed plainly that she did not care to discuss religion any further; whereupon Bacon said quietly: "Do you not recollect that it is said, 'They that fear the Lord spake often one to another?'"

In other words, he believed that if two people with true religious feeling met they should never be afraid or feel embarrassed to talk about their religion.

On the day of his death, Bacon desired to bear such testimony that it would be lasting and have a good influence upon others, and so he dictated the following and requested that it be placed near his grave:

What I was as an Artist
Seemed to me of some importance
While I lived; but
What I really was as a Believer
In Christ Jesus
Is the only thing of importance
To me now.

—From Home and School.


The Source of Its Beauty

Once there was a brier growing in a ditch, and there came along a gardener with his spade. As he dug around it, and lifted it out, the brier said to itself, "What is he doing that for?" Doesn't he know that I am only an old worthless brier?" But the gardener took it into the garden and planted it amid his flowers, while the brier said, "What a mistake he has made, planting an old brier like myself among such rose trees as these!" But the gardener came once more with his keen-edged knife, made a slit in the brier, and "budded" it with a rose, and by and by when summer came, lovely roses were blooming on that old brier. Then the gardener said, "Your beauty is not due to that which came out, but to that which I put into you." This is just what Christ is doing all the time with poor human lives. — Selected.

Photographed "Spirits"

1876

"Spirits," though still refusing to be captured like ordinary mortals, have consented to allow themselves to be photographed. They now obediently follow those over whom they watch to the studios of photographers, and there falling into a graceful attitude, allow those who believe themselves to be accompanied through life by a "guardian angel" to satisfy their vanity (and credulity) by having a carte-de-visite taken of themselves and their "attendant spirit." The resulting carte gives such an air of reality to the affair that it is considered rank folly to doubt any longer, when the spirit can be actually photographed, and these brought within the ken of the most hardened skeptic.

Such piteous folly on one side and arranged deception on the other are more prevalent than ordinary folks generally suppose. A case brought to our notice from Paris will illustrate the way in which this class of photographers impose on the public. The police, hearing that a certain photographer of that city was pocketing large profits by taking these photographs for credulous people, dispatched an emissary to discover the fraud. On making known his wish to be photographed with his guardian spirit, he was requested to leave the studio for a short time for the purpose of the spirit being invoked. During his absence, a plate, prepared in the ordinary way, was exposed to light for a few seconds opposite a screen whereon a vague ghostly image was figured. The man's photograph superposed — gave, it is needless to say, the required effect. The photographer, on a hint from the police, ceased to take spirit photographs.

These photographs may also be produced by the photographer's common process of printing from two negatives; one negative takes the sitter, the other the "spirit" as before, on printing from both the effects are combined. Another method depends upon a curious electrical fact. If a tinfoil device be laid between two sheets of glass, and tinfoil be laid on the outer surfaces of the glass, and then electric sparks passed between the tinfoil coatings, it is found that an image of the device is formed upon the two glass plates, caused by a molecular change in the glass. This image is at first invisible, but on breathing on the glass it becomes visible, and a photograph can then be taken of it in the ordinary way.

But the cleverest plan of all is that which utilizes the lately-discovered optical principle known as fluorescence. Paint on a white screen with sulphate of quinine (which is colorless) something shadowy to represent the "ethereal being." Expose this to bright sunlight for a short time, and then place your unsuspecting believer in "guardian angels" before this screen; photograph him in the ordinary way, and at the same time you obtain a picture of your painting, about which he is ignorant. Finish the photograph in the ordinary way. The quinine drawing will "come out" hazy and indistinct as part of the picture, and then your believer in spirits who has longed to have his "attendant spirit" manifested to him, receives it tremblingly with gratitude. — Chamber's Journal.

Moral Fitness and Endeavor

1895

"There is no book, no church, no inward monitor, no testimony within, without, that can make us to know the truth without moral fitness and endeavor on our part. There must be truth in the inward parts in order to our finding truth anywhere. But, with this, there is truth for you and me, to believe, to know, to live by and to die by. The book, the conscience, the experience of humanity, through all and above all, the life and testimony of Jesus Christ, these are fountains through which the living stream wells forth. What prophets have seen, sages thought, and saints lived is true. What Jesus believed, knew and taught is true. You shall sooner convince me that yon sun emits darkness than make me believe other than this. Yea, you and I have seen human lives that we know were based on truth.

"So the truth which shall judge us at last marshals us to right or to left today.

" 'Heard are the voices,
Heard are the sages,
The Worlds and the Ages!
Choose well, your choice is
Brief and yet endless.' "
—Rev. J. Westly Earashaw.

The Power of Faith - Phillips Brooks

1905

The man who accomplishes anything in this world is and must be a man of faith. Strong men, forcible men, virile men are men of faith. It may be a low type of faith — faith in self — but it is faith. Beaxendale says: "Weak faith makes weak men." How much stronger should be the man who has faith in God, the faith that says: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me." This is faith of the highest type.

Be done with saying what you don't believe, and find in your soul the divinest, truest thing in which you do believe, and work that out. Be the noblest man that your present faith, poor and weak and imperfect as it is can make you to be. So, and so only as you take the next step forward, as you stand where you are now, so only as you think the curtain will draw back, there will be revealed to you what lies beyond. — Phillips Brooks.

—The Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, January 21, 1905, page 2.