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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



May 



man without knowing it, nor can you be a, fully de- 

 veloped christian without a knowledge ol' the fact. 

 But you can be a child in Christ, and hnoir nothing of 

 it. You spent many months of your life before you 

 realized your existence in this world, and came to 

 the consciousness that you were a child. So it is 

 possible for a person to have been born again a 

 long time before he has awakened to a conscious- 

 ness of the fact. Do not call in question the possi- 

 bility of your being a Christian because you can 

 not trace the beginning of the Christian life, any 

 more than you would question your physical exis- 

 tence because you can not trace the early months 

 of your life, or can not remember when you were 

 born. There are a great many people, recognized 

 as earnest and sincere Christians, and themselves 

 conscious of a change of heart, who are compelled 

 to confess that they c;in not mention a time when 

 they gave their hearts to Christ. What a great 

 many need is to realize that they arc already Chris- 

 tians, because they love God and the things of God; 

 and all that they need further is to come out and 

 confess Christ before the world. A gentleman of 

 my acquaintance was very ill, and not expected to 

 live. For two weeks he seemed at the point of 

 death, fie had heen a godless man, and during 

 that time I spoke frequently with him regarding 

 Christ. He seemed to make a complete surren- 

 der, and told his friends that he had found Christ. 

 At length he grew better, and then we discovered 

 that he could not remember a single event of those 

 two weeks— not a single call, not a circumstance, 

 not a word spoken, could he recall. Yet, when he 

 came to himself, it was with the joyous conscious- 

 ness that he had found Christ. The weeks them- 

 selves were blanks, yet in those weeks he had been 

 born again, and afterward the consciousness of 

 that fact was his. Is it not true of us, that in one 

 event of life or another, we sometimes unconscious- 

 ly yield up the point that separates between us and 

 God, so that we become truly his, and all that we 

 need is to come to ourselves and realize it? 



We spend too much time in examining our own 

 hearts. We might conceive of a crazy man cut- 

 ting out a friend's heart and dissecting it to discov- 

 er whether or not the friend loved him. Would he 

 ever find out in that way? Yet in much the same 

 way do we often go about examining our own 

 hearts to discover whether or not we love God. 

 While the seat of the affections is in the heart, we 

 might spend a lifetime in examining it, and yet 

 never And the affections. Don't let us stop and 

 look at our hearts to see whether they are old or 

 new, but let us look out toward God and ask wheth- 

 er we want to please him by doing his will; and if 

 we do, then are we friends of God; and if friends of 

 God, then surely we have been born again. We 

 know whether we believe in Christ with the belief 

 of self-surrender, and if we do, that's enough- 

 let us go on and do what he would have us, 

 and leave the matter of a new heart with Him who 

 created and whose it is to re-create. If we have 

 thus done our part, we can have the assurance that 

 God icill iId his part toward making Die heart ru ir. 

 There may be no wonderful transformation, there 

 may be no sudden change, there may be no great 

 revelation of light, but we have simply to deoide 

 the point of self-surrender to Christ, leave the rest 

 wjtlj God, and go straight ahead. 



We sometimes call the Christian life a vocation. 

 Can we not know whether we have entered upon 



that vocation or not? That is not a question hard 

 to decide in other vocations— why can we not de- 

 cide it here? In a little book entitled, " Being a 

 Christian," by Dr. Gladden, I find this illustration: 

 "Ask a man what his business is, and he will ans- 

 wer promptly enough, 'I am a carpenter,' or, '1 

 am a lawyer,' or, ' I am a druggist,' or, ' 1 am a ma- 

 chinest,' as the case maybe. The carpenter does 

 not say to you, in a sad, uncertain tone of voice, 

 '7 don't know; I have been trying for five, ten, or 

 forty years, to be a carpenter, and I have some- 

 times hoped that I was one; indeed, there have 

 been seasons when I felt quite sure of it; but I am 

 often in great doubt. He may say, indeed, ' I am 

 not so good a carpenter as I might be; I have seen 

 nicer workmen; but I can do a pretty fair job, and 

 I am not ashamed of my trade. It is one that I 

 freely chose, and that I have done my best to 

 learn; and I shall work at it as long as I live, if I 

 can find employment.' Surely there is nothing 

 presumptuous in saying as much as that. A man 

 who did not have his mind made up about such a 

 matter, and who did not know his own mind, would 

 never accomplish much in this world." Why, then, 

 is it not just as possible and just as essential that a 

 person should know that he has chosen the Chris- 

 tum professon, that he has entered upon the heaven- 

 ly calling, even though as yet he may be only an 

 apprentice at the trade? If uncertainty seems 

 strange in the one case, why not as unaccountable 

 in the other? If we have chosen the Christian 

 calling, and are workiug at it every day, trying to 

 improve and perfect ourselves in every way possi- 

 ble, we certainly ought to know the fact. One rea- 

 son for so much uncertainty, just in the line of 

 this comparison, is because we don't clearly under- 

 stand what we are about when we set out in the 

 Christian life— we don't comprehend that we are 

 choosing a life calling, and hence should know our 

 choice. Another source of uncertainty, here sug- 

 gested, is portrayed in the boy's remark, when ask- 

 ed whether his father was a Christian. " Yes," he 

 replied, " he's a Christian, but he a'n't workiug at 

 it much." We don't work at our trade constantly 

 enough to keep our zeal up. A man who didn't 

 work at the carpenter's trade more than half a day 

 a week might well question sometimes whether he 

 were really a carpenter or not. A carpenter who 

 never did, and never tried to do, a good job, might 

 well be declared by his fellow-men to be no carpen- 

 ter at all. How, then, about professing Christians 

 who are only half-hearted in their work? Can they 

 be called Christians at all? If not, how about their 

 assurance of the fact? Another source of uncer- 

 tainty is because, when we fail at some point, 

 we conclude that we were mistaken and are not 

 Christians at all. But when our purposes are good 

 and our endeavors earnest, are not our failures ex- 

 cusable, just as the carpenter is 'excusable when he 

 does the best he can, although he may not do quite 

 as good a job as another carpenter? We should 

 know that we have chosen the Christian calling; 

 we should steadily persevere in it; and when mis- 

 takes occur, rise superior to them and press reso- 

 lutely on " toward the prize of the high calling of 

 God in Christ Jesus." 



Can we not tell whether or not we &re spiritually 

 blind —whether we have received spiritual sight! 

 Think you that any blind man whom Christ healed 

 would be uncertain of that healiug? Are we told 

 of any who said he didn't know whether he coujd. 



