p. 202 | Clinching a Sermon by Sel.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 27, 1866

Clinching a Sermon.

By Sel.

I HEARD a sermon once from a venerable itinerant preacher on benevolence. I thought the effort very lean, but one thing impressed me a little. “Go,” said he, “and do something after I have done preaching. Have it to say when I come back four weeks hence, that you have done something, and my word and God’s word for it, you will be a better and a happier man.” I knew a poor widow living on the edge of some woods about a mile from my home. Her husband had been dead two or three years, and with three helpless little girls she had a hard conflict with poverty. I had often spoken kindly to her, and thought my duty ended when the words were uttered; but when the sermon of the old white-headed preacher was done, the resolution was formed to go and do something.

Next day I visited the cellar, and measured out a bushel of potatoes, a bushel of apples, and a variety of other things, and having put them into a wagon, started for the cottage of the widow. A load of wood for which I paid three dollars, preceded me.

An hour’s drive brought both loads in front of the house, and when my explanation was given there were wet eyes and warmer hearts in both parties. The widow wept for joy and the children joined in while I, finding my feelings too much for my strength, had to give way also to tears. The act was one that gave me a new spiritual start; and when the preacher came back I thought the discourse one of the most eloquent I had ever listened to. The change was in myself, not in him or his preaching.—Sel.