Individual Responsibility
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY.—Ministers of the Gospel are often applied to by christian fathers, and husbands and brothers with such pleas as these: “Won’t you talk to my children, to my wife, to my sister, about their soul’s welfare? I can’t do it myself.” Some of these applicants have even been in honor in the church, and held positions of importance. “I once had an elder of my church,” said a speaker, “come to me and implore me to go to his house, and talk to his children! I asked him if he did not do it himself. No; he didn’t like to do it; he couldn’t do it! He felt a backwardness, a hesitancy about it and he thought the work could much better be done by me! Said I to him, ‘Sir this is your work. The responsibility rests upon you. It’s not my business to take it from your shoulders. I cannot do it!’” Does not this reluctance, this stange fear to speak to our dear ones on such vital matters, reveal the secret of too many Christian homes? that we do not set such an example in our daily walk before our children as to recommend our religion? The duty and privilege of this personal work for souls was strikingly illustrated by the speaker in the following incident: “A clergyman stopping at my house last night told me this little incident: A lady came to her minister to ask him to talk to her husband about his soul’s salvation. She said she did not like to do it—could not do it herself. “But it’s your business to do it madam,” said her pastor. “Before this night passes you should talk with your husband and try to lead him to Christ. Will you do it?” She promised she would. “She went home greatly troubled in mind. She went to bed. Still she had not courage to say a word to him. She did not dare to go to sleep because of her promise. She lay there hour after hour till near morning, awake, terribly distressed in mind, scarcely knowing what to do. Yet she did not dare to broach the subject. Presently, thinking her husband asleep she was surprised to hear him ask if she was asleep. “‘Well why dont you go to sleep? What’s the trouble?’ “She then related the cause—how anxious she was that he should become a christian. “‘Why,’ said he, ‘I have been thinking on the subject for the last month or two, and I wondered you did not talk to me; I wanted you to do it; I thought it was your place. Let us pray now.’ “They kneeled by that bedside imploring divine pardon and acceptance, and before the light of day broke into that chamber, that husband’s heart was liberated—he had found peace in Christ.” O how many just such cases there are! How many who want us to talk to them; who, if we will only stretch out the hand to them, will willingly, gladly grasp it and go with us to where Christ may be found!—Sunday School Times.