(Many of these Notes were hitherto unpublished.)
(Continued from page 205.)
A GIRL, troubled for her soul, was one day going some distance on an errand. Meeting the minister, she said to him, “Will you keep this money for me till I return, in case I lose it?” “Yes,” replied the minister, “but, if I were Jesus Christ, would you trust me with the keeping of the money?” “O, yes,” she answered. “And if I were Christ,” he went on, would you trust me with all you are worth in the world?” “Yes,” she replied. “And,” said the minister, “would you not trust your soul then to Christ as you can trust Him with everything else?” After some pause and thought, she replied, “I think I could.”
A good woman was wont to say that the sweetest part of the Scriptures to her was these verses in the 50th Psalm:
“That I to eat the flesh of bulls
Take pleasure, dost thou think?
Or that I need, to quench my thirst,
The blood of goats to drink?
Nay, rather unto me, thy God,
Thanksgiving offer thou:
To the Most High perform thy word,
And fully pay thy vow.”
She said: “When I come to the Lord with my dryness, deadness, and hardness, He says, ‘Your services cannot better me, nor the good which you wish to feel in yourself. It’s not your good sacrifices that I want more than I want the flesh of bulls and goats. I have already got the sacrifice with which I am well pleased, and be you pleased with it too, and your thankfulness and the paying of your vows are more acceptable to me than any other sacrifices you can find in yourself to offer.'”
One said that the Lord could hear the desire of the humble without any words (Psalm x. 17).
Another man remarked that the sorest time a Christian is tried is often the safest time for him.
Rev. Dr. Macdonald, Ferintosh, “the Apostle of the North,” said on one occasion that he was afraid that he never received Christ to his own soul as freely as he should have received Him, and that he never preached Christ to sinners as freely as he should have preached Him.
He also said that, when Christ satisfied Justice on the Cross, Justice said to Mercy: “Go away now as fast as you can, and lay hold upon as many sinners as you can. Not only that, but I will go after them myself also, and hunt them out of their refuges of lies till they come to thee.”
One of the fathers was saying that he thought the man who built “on the sand” would have his house finished and roofed before he who built on “the rock” found the foundation to build his house upon.
One, speaking of grace, said: “How wonderful it would be to throw a spark of fire into the sea that would live there, and latterly dry up the ocean! And is it not exceeding wonderful that a spark of grace cast into the corrupt ocean of your heart should survive there, and at length dry up all your corruption?”
Andrew Matheson, Lybster, said that unbelief was one of the fiery serpents under the Gospel that bite so many to death.
Making a difference between “godly sorrow” and the sorrow not wrought by the Spirit, one said that godly sorrow had with it a hatred of sin as committed against God, but that a sinner may have sorrow for what sin does against himself without sorrow for sin as committed against his Maker.