Читать книгу A Handful of Stars: Texts That Have Moved Great Minds - Frank Boreham - Страница 20

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But his text! What was James Chalmers' text? When he was eighteen years of age, Scotland found herself in the throes of a great religious revival. In the sweep of this historic movement, a couple of evangelists from the North of Ireland announce that they will conduct a series of evangelistic meetings at Inverary. But Chalmers and a band of daring young spirits under his leadership feel that this is an innovation which they must strenuously resist. They agree to break up the meetings. A friend, however, with much difficulty persuades Chalmers to attend the first meeting and judge for himself whether or not his project is a worthy one.

'It was raining hard,' he says, in some autobiographical notes found among his treasures after the massacre, 'it was raining hard, but I started; and on arriving at the bottom of the stairs I listened whilst they sang "All people that on earth do dwell" to the tune "Old Hundred," and I thought I had never heard such singing before--so solemn, yet so joyful. I ascended the steps and entered. There was a large congregation and all intensely in earnest. The younger of the evangelists was the first to speak. He announced as his text the words: "The Spirit and the Bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say, Come; and let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." He spoke directly to me. I felt it much; but at the close I hurried away back to town. I returned the Bible to the friend who, having persuaded me to go, had lent it to me, but I was too upset to speak much to him.'

On the following Sunday night, he was, he says, 'pierced through and through, and felt lost beyond all hope of salvation.' On the Monday, the local minister, the Rev. Gilbert Meikle, who had exercised a deep influence over his early childhood, came to see him and assured him that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, could cleanse him from all sin. This timely visit convinced him that deliverance was at any rate possible. Gradually he came to feel that the voices to which he was listening were, in reality, the Voice of God. 'Then,' he says, 'I believed unto salvation.'

'He felt that the voices to which he was listening were, in reality, the Voice of God.' That is precisely what the text says. 'The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.' The Bride only says 'Come' because the Spirit says 'Come'; the Church only says 'Come' because her Lord says 'Come'; the evangelists only said 'Come' because the Voice Divine said 'Come.' 'He felt that the voices to which he was listening were, in reality, the Voice of God, and he believed unto salvation.'

The Spirit said, Come!

The Bride said, Come!

Let him that is athirst come!

'I was athirst,' says Chalmers, 'and I came!'

And thus a great text began, in a great soul, the manufacture of a great history.