The Personal Touch

The Personal Touch

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Title: The Personal Touch
Author: J. Wilbur Chapman
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9957] [This file was first
posted on November 4, 2003]
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THE PERSONAL TOUCH
BY
J. WILBUR CHAPMAN, D.D.

CONTENTS
FOREWORD
I. A TESTIMONY
II. A GENERAL PRINCIPLE
III. A POLISHED SHAFT
IV. STARTING RIGHT
V. NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL
VI. WINNING THE YOUNG
VII. WINNING AND HOLDING
VIII. A PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION

IX. WHOSOEVER WILL
X. CONVERSION IS A MIRACLE
XI. A FINAL WORD

FOREWORD
IF
If to be a Christian is worth while, then the most ordinary interest in
those with whom we come in contact should prompt us to speak to
them of Christ.
* * * * *
If the New Testament be true--and we know that it is--who has given us
the right to place the responsibility for soul-winning on other shoulders
than our own?
* * * * *
If they who reject Christ are in danger, is it not strange that we, who are
so sympathetic when the difficulties are physical or temporal, should
apparently be so devoid of interest as to allow our friends and
neighbours and kindred to come into our lives and pass out again
without a word of invitation to accept Christ, to say nothing of
sounding a note of warning because of their peril?
* * * * *
If to-day is the day of salvation, if to-morrow may never come, and if
life is equally uncertain, how can we eat, drink, and be merry when
those who live with us, work with us, walk with us, and love us are
unprepared for eternity because they are unprepared for time?
* * * * *

If Jesus called His disciples to be fishers of men, who gave us the right
to be satisfied with making fishing tackle or pointing the way to the
fishing banks instead of going ourselves to cast out the net until it be
filled?
* * * * *
If Jesus Himself went seeking the lost, if Paul the Apostle was in agony
because his kinsmen, according to the flesh, knew not Christ, why
should we not consider it worth while to go out after the lost until they
are found?
* * * * *
If I am to stand at the judgment seat of Christ to render an account for
the deeds done in the body, what shall I say to Him if my children are
missing, my friends not saved, or if my employer or employee should
miss the way because I have been faithless?
* * * * *
If I wish to be approved at the last, then let me remember that no
intellectual superiority, no eloquence in preaching, no absorption in
business, no shrinking temperament, no spirit of timidity can take the
place of or be an excuse for my not making an honest, sincere,
prayerful effort to win others to Christ by means of the Personal
Touch.
CHAPTER I
A Testimony
I have the very best of reasons for believing in the power of the
personal touch in Christian work, especially as it may be used in the
winning of others to Christ.
My boyhood's home was in the city of Richmond, in the State of
Indiana, my mother was a devout member of the Methodist Episcopal

Church, and in the first years of my life in company with my father and
the other children of the household, I attended the church of my mother.
When she was just a little more than thirty-five years of age she was
called home. My father in his youth had been trained