Clinching a Sermon

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 21, 1871

Clinching a Sermon.

I HEARD a sermon once from a venerable itinerant preacher, on benevolence. I thought the effort was 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 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 $3 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 the 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 fact 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.—The Standard.