African Coast in breaking up the slave trade, and of the Mississippi in cleaning out the Confederate batteries and gunboats, recorded a similar experience. When a midshipman on the old warship Natchez, he fought the grandest battle of his life. Pacing the deck one midnight he was tempted by all the fiends that lodge in the hot blood of youth. With compressed lips, and emphasizing each syllable with his footfall, he made this splendid resolve, "Henceforth Andrew Foote serves God." It was a repetition of the ancient scene when Jacob by a sublime act of consecration became Israel, "for as a Prince thou hast favor with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Wendell Phillips was a young man of undecided purpose. One day, having heard an appeal from Dr. Lyman Beecher, he went home, threw himself upon the floor, and prayed,-" O God, I belong to Thee. Take what is Thine own. I ask this, that whatever is wrong may have no power of temptation over me; and that whatever is right I may have the courage to do it. Amen." Phillips afterwards said, "From that day I have never found anything that impressed me as being wrong exerting any temptation over me, nor has it required courage on my part to do whatever I believed to be right." Martyn, his biographer, adds, "For him henceforth there was no compromise with animalism, selfishness, cupidity, or any debasing inclination; they were but suppliants at the feet of his soul." Samuel Morley was one of the noblest of English manufacturers. To him Victoria offered a peerage as a tribute to that which more ennobled him, his own superlative character. Morley and Gladstone were among the few men who could afford to decline the title. Morley was more noted as a Christian than as a successful merchant. He thus describes his conversion. Hearing a sermon on the duties of religious life, he said within himself, "If this is to be done, it should be done at once," and announced his public profession of faith. The late Dr. Stephen Tyng, for many years the rector of St. George's Church, New York, had a similar experience. One night when he was nineteen years of age, lying awake, he thought, What a wasteful life I am living!" Upon the instant he exclaimed, "Lord, I will live so no longer." He knelt by the bedside and made his prayer of consecration. He subsequently 66 said. "This impression and choice were not attended with strong emotion: I had no distressing conviction of guilt. . . Not five minutes perhaps elapsed between my first awakened thought and my prayer upon my knees. I was never more calm, more self-possessed, or more considerate. But this was the turning point in my life. I rose from my knees with a fixed determi nation, and without a single hesitation or doubt. I was converted.” George Bowen, missionary to Bombay, is famed for his life of self-sacrificing love for Christ. For many years he was a skeptic. Utterly wearied with the contention of his thoughts, which like phosphorescences in the wood fascinated him, but gave no light for his path, he once exclaimed, "O God-if there be a God who notices the desire of men-I only wish that Thou wouldst make known to me Thy holy will. I will do it any cost." From that moment his skepticism ceased. It was the illuminating rays of God's sunrise touching the highest peak of his soul, his volition, and soon it filled all the landscape of his being with light. Such examples remind one of the words of Amiel, who thus sets forth the Gospel method of giving power to men-"Christianity brings and preaches salvation by the consecration of the Will: humanism by the emancipation of the Mind. The one wishes to enlighten by making better; the other to make better by enlightening. It is the difference between Jesus and Socrates." |