The Personal Touch | Page 9

thing of the past in too many cases. In other days the father, the mother, and the children attended divine worship in the house of God. They sang the hymns of the church together; they worshipped God with the same spirit of devotion; they listened to the minister's preaching and they came forth from such a service clothed with a power that made them able to stand against the mightiest influences for evil. Because the family pew is out of date many boys are wandering, and many girls have gone astray.
With the beginning of the fourth chapter of Nehemiah there is a change in the story as told by the Prophet. There is a ring of triumph when he announces: "So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof; for the people had a mind to work," Nehemiah iv. 6. And the completeness of his work is described when he says: "Now it came to pass when the wall was built, and I had set up the doors, and the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed ..." Nehemiah vii. 1. I am sure it is quite true that out from all the despair which sometimes appals us, we shall come into the same complete victory. But if we are to win others to Christ and if our work is to be a work of prevention, so that our children shall not go astray and our friends may not wander, then it will be essential that we should, like Nehemiah of old, begin to build everyone over against his own house. It is a sad thing to find so many people in the world who are a public success and a private failure. Great superintendents of Sunday Schools, and poor fathers; experienced Sunday School teachers, and inconsistent in their own homes; eloquent preachers and poor illustrations of the spirit of Jesus; famed for piety as revealed to the public eye and quite as famed for lack of piety, when living out of the lime light, in the common round of daily duties with those who know us best and ought to speak of us most highly.
If our work is to be as God would have it where shall it begin? By all means let it begin with ourselves. There is a text of Scripture which every Christian must say over and over. He might begin the day with it and it might not be amiss for him to say it over before he closes his eyes in sleep. "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me," Psalm cxxxix. 23, 24. It is quite unnecessary to study the methods of men if we cannot bear the test of God's searching eye.
We must be right in our own homes. In a meeting conducted recently in Wales a gentleman rose to say: "I came to the meeting on Friday afternoon and made a covenant with God that I would speak to someone about Christ. It laid so hold of my heart that I went home and spoke to my little girl. I asked her if she loved the Lord Jesus Christ, and she said, 'Yes, I do.' I said, 'Will you accept Jesus as your personal Saviour?' 'Yes, I am willing to' she said. I went to the steel works, and had been praying that God would use me. I asked the young man with whom I was working if he were a Christian. He looked black at me, but I asked him to be honest before God. In a moment his face changed as he said without hesitation, 'I will accept Jesus as my Saviour now.'
"I was working during the night, and it came to food time, so I asked several of the men if they would come into the smith shop and have a word of prayer. There was a young man there whose little boy I had spoken to. This young man came to me at three o'clock in the morning to tell me that he would accept Jesus as his personal Saviour. I asked some of the men if they would come up to my house and have a little prayer meeting after work, at six o'clock in the morning. They came up and I spoke to them, quoting the texts John iii. 16 and John v. 24. Some of the men present were not saved. I asked them if they really understood the Scriptures, and they told me they did. 'Now,' I said, 'will you not accept Jesus as your personal Saviour?' and one who was in the smith shop told me that he had definitely given himself to God at three o'clock