33. Fidelity and Candor
Fidelity and Candor
UNFAITHFUL MINISTER REBUKED.—A dying nobleman once sent for the clergyman on whose ministry he had attended, and said to him, “Do you not know that my life has been licentious? Yet you never warned me of my danger!” “Yes, my lord,” was the answer, “your manner of living was not unknown to me; but your kindness, and my fear of offending you, deterred me from reproving you.” “How cruel! how wicked!” said the dying man. “You have neglected to warn and instruct me; now my soul will be lost.”
SYMPATHIZED WITH HUMANITY.—Trumbull, when preaching to the inmates of a prison, said that the only difference between himself and them was owing to the grace of God. Afterward one of the prisoners asked: “Did you mean what you said about sympathizing with us, and that only the help of God made you differ from us?” Being assured that it was true, the prisoner said: “I am here for life, but I can stay here more contentedly now that I know I have a brother out in the world.”
HENRY’S CLOSING WORDS.—Matthew Henry, the great Commentator, said in his latter days: “A life spent in the service of God, and in communion with Him, is the most comfortable life that any one can lead.”
BOURDALOUE’S PLAINNESS.—Bourdaloue was preacher to the French King. On one occasion, after depicting, in soul-awakening terms, a sinner of the first magnitude, he suddenly placed his eyes full upon the King and said: “Thou art the man.” The effect was confounding. After the service he said to the King: “Sire, behold at your feet one who is the most devoted of your servants, but he can own no other master but the King of Kings.”
LAMENT OF SALMASIUS.—Salmasius, the great French scholar, when dying, said: “I have lost a world of time! Had I one year more, it should be spent in perusing David’s Psalms and Paul’s Epistles. Mind the world less, and God more.”
MARTYRS.—In the massacre of Protestants by the Catholics, no age, no sex, no condition was spared. The wife, weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing her helpless children, was pierced with them, and perished by the same stroke. In vain did flight save from the first assault. Destruction was everywhere let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn. They were stripped of their very clothes, and turned out naked and defenceless in all the rigors of winter. The feeble age of children, the tender sex of women, soon sank under the multiplied rigors of cold and hunger. Here the husband, bidding a final adieu to his expiring family, envied them that fate which he himself expected soon to share.
MCLEAN’S TESTIMONY.—As McLean approached his end, he said: “I am gathering together all my prayers, sermons and good works, and am going to throw them overboard and swim to glory on the plank of free grace.”
DUKE AND KING.—A noted Duke had two sons. The eldest fell into consumption when a boy, which ended in his death. Two ministers visited him, and after prayer the youth took his Bible from under the pillow and turned to the language of our text, and said: “This, sirs, is all my comfort.” When death approached, he called his younger brother and spoke to him with much affection, and ended with these words: “Douglas, in a little time you will be a Duke, but I shall be a King.”