1890 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



143 



ate in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew 

 .a right spirit within me ; then " (after that, 

 mind you) " will I teach transgressors thy 

 -way, and sinners shall be converted unto 

 thee." He had learned, as I have, that 

 no spiritual message can be carried to others 

 until his own heart was made clean, and re- 

 newed. A good many things began to as- 

 sail me. When I went into our afternoon 

 prayer-meeting only day before yesterday, a 

 -good brother was speaking. His concluding 

 sentence was something like this : He spoke 

 of his comrades of earlier days. Some of 

 them had gone to ruin, and some filled 

 •drunkards' graves. Why? Just because 

 they thought they were strong enough to 

 dally with sin. They thought they would 

 go just a little way, just for the fun of it. 

 They did not propose any thing out of the 

 way. They would get just a glimpse of these 

 ■things that were talked so much about ; 

 'but the end was death. 



I thought of that little speck of cloud, 

 and it made me shiver. The wind blew a 

 bit of paper across my path. On that paper 

 something was said about the grand char- 

 acters and shining lights that all of a sud- 

 den had tumbled and fallen. Men who were 

 considered as strong pillars of integrity and 

 purity, all at once shocked the community, 

 and may be the whole nation, by something 

 appalling. The writer said, however, that 

 no great man had ever fallen suddenly. No 

 such thing ever happens. The character 

 that the world looked on as great, and be- 

 yond reproach, was all the time worm-eaten. 

 The little worm had commenced years ago. 

 gnawing at his vitals. Perhaps he stood 

 before the world fair to look upon for some 

 time after he was only a hollow shell. Aft- 

 er his fall, all the world could see that such 

 was the case. Corruption and depravity be- 

 gin slowly. It is at first only a little speck ; 

 but it gets larger and larger. Then my im- 

 agination pictured the effect on humanity, 

 and the shock it would give those who had 

 been reading his Home Papers, aud perhaps 

 the dishonor that it would throw on the 

 name of Christ Jesus, if A. I. Boot should, 

 in his old age, say, get cold or indifferent, if 

 nothing worse. " Lord, help thy poor stum- 

 bling unworthy servant !" welled up from 

 my lips. But still the cloud hung over my 

 spiritual horizon. It was getting to be a 

 part of me. It was with me when I closed 

 my eyes in sleep, and it was plainly in sight 

 when I awoke in the morning. Sometimes 

 Satan tempted me by saying it was like 

 Paul's thorn in the flesh, and that doubtless 

 God intended it to stay there. But 1 knew 

 better. We have it in the words of Holy 

 Writ : " Let no man say, when he is tempt- 

 ed, I am tempted of God.'' Why did I not 

 go to some good spiritual friend of mine and 

 ■ask him to pray for meV I was ashamed to 

 do so ; for. from some strange inconsistency, 

 if I had told the truth I should have been 

 obliged to say that I was not sure that I 

 wanted to be any different. Another thing 

 troubled me : Whenever I looked at the 

 whole matter as though it were one of my 

 -"■ neighbors," I began to boil with indigna- 

 tion, not at myself, but at my neigtibor. 

 The thing that I would not have tolerated 



for a moment in a neighbor of mine was not 

 any thing particular out of the way when it 

 came to have a lodging-place in my own 

 heart. And this thought troubled me a 

 good many days. " Thou shalt love thy 

 neighbor as thyself." Sometimes in my 

 own life I have prided myself on the fact 

 that I came pretty near doing this. But 

 just now the thought was — why, to tell the 

 plain truth, a ridiculous absurdity. I could 

 sit down very complacently so long as the 

 cloud belonged to me ; but if it hung over 

 somebody else — oh, yes ! that made all the 

 difference in the world. 



A young friend, whom I was once ex- 

 horting to come to Christ, said to me some- 

 thing like this : " What shall a person do if 

 he does not want to be any different?" 



I thought at the time that the expression 

 exhibited a very depraved spirit ; but here 

 was I near that very predicament. I had 

 been praying for many days that God would 

 help me to realize and comprehend the sin- 

 fulness of sin. I have seen it stated some- 

 where, that every sin is hideous in the sight 

 of God. I thought if God would help me to 

 see how hideous was this sin, in his sight, I 

 should be freed from its continuance. At 

 the time of my conversion I did get a brief 

 glimpse of the Sinfulness of sin. I got, for 

 the time being, a little insight into the way 

 that God looks at sin, so that I could real- 

 ize just a little how impossible it is for him 

 to tolerate it. And just the contemplation 

 of it for a little time caused me to bow my 

 head in such shame that the tears wet the 

 very ground where I sat. And after that, 

 came deliverance. At present, however, 

 although I seemed to be getting a better 

 view than ever before of the way in which 

 Satan makes inroads upon the human heart, 

 and of the subtile way in which he leads 

 people out of the straight and narrow path, 

 it did not seem to make much difference. I 

 feared that I was getting to be a hardened 

 sinner. What shall be done with one who 

 is weary and heavy laden, and yet is so 

 stubborn and contrary— so inconsistent — 

 that hf does not want rest? Some of you 

 who have never had a hand-to-hand conflict 

 with Satan may think this ridiculous. But 

 I am impressed, that many among my read- 

 ers know something about just such hard 

 struggles as I have been telling you of. 

 Why do I tell it ? Because I want to tell 

 you as I sit here and dictate these words 

 that I have found deliverance. It was on 

 my mind last night when I went to bed ; 

 and it was on my mind and conscience 

 when I opened my eyes this morning. 



Not very long ago our seven-year-old boy 

 Iluber got up in the morning out of sorts. 

 He complained; and because his mamma 

 did not let him have his own way he refused 

 to eat his breakfast. His papa finally look- 

 ed toward him. I knew he was having one 

 of the same battles that I had fought, oh so 

 many times ! 



"Why! is our boy a bad boy this morn- 

 ing? " 



I looked him full in the face, and waited 

 for his answer. Notwithstanding his fits of 

 temper he is remarkably truthful. He look-' 

 ed up at me ; but as there was no other hon- 



