1888 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



119 



Qu^ pejiEg. 



If any mau will do God's will, he shall know of the 

 doctrine.— John 7: 17. 



foil some little time back I have been in 

 tlie habit of meeting a neighbor (at 

 least a resident of our own coun- 

 ty), Sunday afternoon, in our county 

 jail. The man had twice attempted 

 to commit suicide, and failed ; but he final- 

 ly succeeded iji the third attempt. The 

 Sunday before his death I saw him alone, 

 and had quite a long talk with him. I knew 

 he was bent on suicide, and it seemed to 

 me I could reason him out of it if he would 

 only talk with me, and tell me frankly his 

 feelings and his reasons. I prayed earnest- 

 ly, before having this talk, that help might 

 be given me to save my neighbor, if it were 

 a possible thing to do. At first he remain- 

 ed silent, and refused to talk, especially 

 when I approached the matter in question. 

 However, by using all my energy, and call- 

 ing in play every faculty that God has given 

 me in the way of hopefulness and encour- 

 agement, I succeeded, by taking up other 

 topics, in getting him to talk comparative- 

 ly freely. I told him incidents in my own 

 conversion, and of the ways in which God 

 had led me when I first started out to serve 

 him. He became quite interested, and ask- 

 ed many ([uestions, and said that he agreed 

 with a religion that bore such fruit as was 

 manifest in the cases I have told you of. 

 He even went so far as to say he would Ije 

 glad to believe there is to he a future state 

 of existence. He said he would ^ive any 

 thing in the world to V)e able to believe as I 

 seemed to believe. Now, I did not succeed 

 in making the poor man see that his life 

 was worth saving; but the questions he put 

 to me, and the objections he raised, stimulat- 

 ed me to grasp hold of thoughts and truths 

 that I never got before ; and one of these 

 has been on my mind so much that I want 

 to tell you of it to-day. 



Before dismissing our poor unfortunate 

 brother, however, I want to tell you this : 

 His unhappiness and disccmtent, and hatred 

 of existence, did not come from a lack of 

 this world's goods ; for, in fact, he was one 

 of the wealthiest men in our county. His 

 friends insisted that he was crazy, and may 

 be he was. The Judge of all the earth, who 

 can not err, knows, although I do not; but 

 so far as my judgment and perception were 

 able to determine, I could see nothing about 

 him that indicated what I should call insan- 

 ity. He was sentenced to the penitentiary, 

 for attempting to kill another man, just l)e- 

 fore he made the first attempt (m his own 

 life, so that the prospect was not sucli as 

 might make him want to live, especially 

 without any faith in Christ Jesus, who 

 came to save even bad men, and those 

 steeped in ciime. Before he made the at- 

 tempt to murder, he had for years been 

 guilty of l)i-e;iking a commandment that 

 Jesus places only second to murder — see 

 Matthew lU : IS. Well, he who breaks this 

 commandment, settles down, so far as my 

 observation goes, into the most hard, unfeel- 

 ing, sarcastic skepticism known to the hu- 



man family. When you see a man whose 

 heart is so cold and flinty that it defies eve- 

 ry text of Scripture, or every appeal that is 

 likely to soften the human heart, you may 

 be afraid that his skepticism comes from 

 transgressions in this way. 



This man had not done God's will, as in 

 the language of our text, and he had no 

 knowledge of the doctrine; in fact, tlie Bi- 

 ble was to him a dull book. Like Christ be- 

 fore Herod, where it speaks volumes to the 

 most of us to him it said nothing. Now, 

 don't understand me as saying that such 

 cases are hopeless, only so long as the indi- 

 vidual absolutely refuses to accept Christ as 

 the Son of God, and the meditator. I be- 

 lieve that the most hardened criminal— in 

 fact, the worst wretch who ever lived, if, 

 in real penitence and sorrow for his ci'imes, 

 he should, on bended knees, say, " God 

 have mercy on me a sinner," would see the 

 door of salvation swing open to him in an 

 instant. You may say, however, that, 

 when a man is so steeped in crime, the 

 probabilities are very small that he will ever 

 do this, on account of the hardening influ- 

 ence of transgression; and here I agree 

 with you. He who goes headlong into sin 

 and crime, with the expectation that he can 

 be forgiven some time in the future, will 

 very likely be mistaken. Where one keeps 

 on persistently and repeatedly in breaking 

 God's commands, true sorrow and peni- 

 tence do not come to him very easily. Now, 

 this friend of whom I have been speaking 

 would say, — 



" Then you really do believe that there is 

 a future state of existence after this life ? '' 



" Most assuredly, I do, my friend.'" 



'' Well, I don't.'' 



When I remonstrated, he declared frank- 

 ly that he could see no evidence whatever 

 that there is any thing beyond this life. 

 And now, dear "friends, it is a sad thing 

 to say, but I am afraid he told the truth— 

 that God gave him no evidence whatever 

 of any future— no, not even if he honestly 

 felt it when he said tome that he would give 

 any thing in this world to have faith in this 

 direction. When he said it, however, he 

 did not mean to include bowing humldy to 

 Jesus, and confessing fitlly and completely 

 the sins that weighed down his past life. 

 His whole life, in fact, was devoted to con- 

 cealing and denying his guilt— to hiding it 

 from the eyes of man ; and when taking his 

 own life seemed to be the surest and secur- 

 est method of covering and concealing the 

 past from human eyes, he chose that way of 

 doing it. There is" no promise in tlie Bible, 

 as I understand it, for any one in that atti- 

 tude ; therefore he refused to consider ex- 

 istence as a boon or gift. Instead of having 

 in his heart thanks to the Creator for life 

 with its privileges, its joys, and its opportu- 

 nities, he flung it away. 



Now% the point I wish to arrive at is the 

 one I have often taken up in these pages. 

 It is a point I love to dwell on ; and as the 

 years pass by, it seems to me I get brighter 

 and more precious glimpses of the great un- 

 known ; especially while, as in the language 

 of our text, I am striving to obey God's 

 commands. It is those who ol)ev the will of 



