Weighing The Evidence

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 21, 1858

Weighing The Evidence.

A CLERICAL correspondent of the Presbyterian relates an account of a recently deceased jurist, which is interesting. This man had been for many years a Judge of the Supreme Court of a southwestern State. His learning, sagacity, integrity, and morality gave him a very high position in the community. But, while an attentive hearer of the gospel, he was not a professor of religion. On one occasion the clergyman who had had some previous acquaintance with him, having concluded his call, was about to withdraw, when the Judge said to him, with emotion, "Sir, I have good news for you. Although I feel myself the unworthiest of them all, I am, I trust, one of the children of God." As he spoke, his eyes filled with tears, and he proceeded to give me a narrative of his case. He had been for years undecided, if not sceptical in regard to the Bible. Feeling himself advancing in age, he determined to decide the case for himself once and for ever. He gave one year to an investigation of scripture, and the evidence for and against it exactly as he would have done a complicated and important case laid before him as Judge of the Supreme Court. After a full, calm, impartial examination, he deliberately decided that the Bible was from God—was all it professed to be. He then felt the clear obligation to believe and to act upon its teachings.

A little while he hesitated in regard to what was faith in Christ—puzzled by its very simplicity. But the Holy Spirit completed his work by opening his eyes to see and acknowledge Christ as his Saviour; and after some months of serious consideration of that part of Christian duty also, he became a member of the Presbyterian Church in the place in which he lived. If all sceptics would only thus weigh the evidence, how surely would they attain the like precious faith of God's elect?—Christian Intel.