55. When to Believe
When to Believe
GIRARD, ASTOR, GOULD.—Stephen Girard, when surrounded by immense wealth, wrote thus to a friend: “As to myself, I live like a galley-slave, constantly occupied, and often passing the night without sleeping. I am wrapped in affairs, and worn out with care. I do not value fortune. When I rise in the morning, my only effort is to labor so hard during the day that, when night comes, I may be enabled to sleep soundly.” It is said that when Mr. Astor was once congratulated for his wealth, he replied by pointing to his pile of bonds and maps of property, at the same time inquiring, “Would you like to manage these matters for your board and clothes?” Jay Gould said he was kept on the drive from morning till night, the money he had made having enslaved him. NO TIME TO WASTE.—A gentleman friend of Professor Agassiz, an eminent practical man, once expressed his wonder that a man of such abilities should remain contented with such a moderate income. “I have enough,” was Agassiz’s reply. “I have no time to waste in making money. Life is not sufficiently long to enable a man to get rich and do his duty to his fellowmen at the same time.”
SPONGES HARDEN.—A sponge is, in one period of its history, a soft thing; but sponges become flints by a peculiar process. There are in sponges particles of flint or silex; these are ever attracting particles to themselves, until, in process of time, the whole mass is silicious matter and the once soft sponge has become perfectly hard.
WHY IS IT.—A man said to Moody, “I wish you would tell me why I can’t find the Lord.” Moody replied: “I can tell you why you can’t find Him.” “Why is it?” “Why, you haven’t sought for Him with all your heart. Now, my friend, I can tell you the day and hour you are going to be converted,” said Moody. The man looked at him, and perhaps thought he was a little wild. Moody continued: “The Scripture tells me: ‘Ye shall find me when ye seek for me with all your heart.’“
DELAY HARDENS.—An aged sinner said, “When I was young, I said, ‘I cannot give up the world now, but will when I have passed the meridian of life; then I shall be ready to attend to the concerns of my soul.’ But here I am an old man. I feel no disposition to enter upon the work of salvation. In looking back, I often feel as if I would give worlds if I could be placed where I was when I was twenty years old. There were not half so many difficulties in my path then as there are now.”
CHRIST KNOCKING.—In Hunt’s picture, “The Light of the World,” is represented an august person standing with a lamp in his hands under a midnight sky, on the outside of a walled enclosure, the entrance gate of which is barred. He stands as one who has knocked over and over and over again, and received no answer; and you observe that the wild vine and bramble have grown over the gate, showing how long and resolutely it has been closed.
GOD CAN CHANGE ME.—A little boy once said, “How hard it is to do right!” and so hard did he find it that, after a while, he added, “It’s of no use trying.” But he had learned to read and understand the Bible; and one day he thought to himself, “Why, I have been trying to change myself all this time; and here I read that only God can change me. How foolish I have been not to ask Him.”