Bible Truths Illustrated by J. C. Ferdinand Pittman

"
BIBLE TRUTHS ILLUSTRATED
it was due to himself to state the present position of theological
thought, and he might have to quote once or twice from Ewald."
His saintly aunt gave him some advice : "Ye maun mind, laddie,
that they're no clever and learned like what ye are, but juist
plain country fouk, ilka ane wi' his ain temptation, an' a' sair
trachled wi' mcny cares o' this world. They 'ill need a clear word
tae comfort their herts and show them the way everlasting.
Ye 'ill say what's richt, nae doot o' that, and a' body 'ill be
pleased, but, oh, laddie, be sure ye say a gude word for Jesus
Christ." So he burnt the carefully prepared sermon, with its
review of modern thought and its trenchant criticism of oldfashioned
views. It was a sacrifice, but it had been such a
sermon as led him humbly to hope that he would not be called
to Edinburgh for at least two years. On the Sunday he gave a
loving message. "Come unto me" was his text, and his mother's
dying wish was fulfilled, "Speak a gude word for Jesus Christ."
—A. R. Main, MA.
671. I heard a preacher once say in the course of a sermon
that once, in London, he saw an auctioneer hold up a picture
of a man, which he was trying to sell. He described all the
good features of the painting; but you could only see the picture
; the auctioneer was hidden behind it. "So," said the
preacher, "we should strive so to hold up the Christ that the
people shall see 'Jesus only.'
672. Simplicity of style, then, as opposed to the artificial and
rhetorical, is essential to earnestness ; for who can believe that
man to be intent on saving souls who seems to have laboured in
the study only to make his sermon as fine as glittering imagery
and high-sounding diction could render it. I could as soon
believe a physician were intent on saving his fellow-creatures
from death, who, when the plague was sweeping them into the
grave, spent his time in studying to write his prescriptions in
beautiful characters and classical Latinity.—/. A. James.
673. C. H. Spurgeon says : "From the deck of an Austrian
gunboat we threw into the Lago Garda a succession of little
pieces of bread, and presently small fishes came in shoals, till
there seemed to be, as the old proverb puts it, more fish than
240