A Handful of Stars by Frank Boreham (moboreader .TXT) ๐
- Author: Frank Boreham
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Book online ยซA Handful of Stars by Frank Boreham (moboreader .TXT) ๐ยป. Author Frank Boreham
The Author bore his Corner. It was just about a hundred years after the birth of Philip Doddridge, and just about fifty years after his death, that his book, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, fell into the hands of Henry Martyn. Twenty years earlier it had opened the eyes of William Wilberforce and led him to repentance. Doddridge's powerful sentences fell upon the proud soul of Henry Martyn like the lashes of a scourge. He resented them; he writhed under their condemnation; but they revealed to him the desperate need of his heart, and he could not shake from him the alarm which they excited.
The Minister bore his Corner. No preacher in England was better fitted to appeal to the mind of Martyn, at this critical stage of his career, than was the Rev. Charles Simeon, the Vicar of Trinity Church, Cambridge. In his concern, the young collegian found himself strangely attracted to the services at Trinity; and he gradually acquired, as he confessed to his sister, more knowledge in divine things. He made the acquaintance, and won the friendship, of Mr. Simeon, and confided in him without reserve. 'I now experienced,' he says, 'a real pleasure in religion, being more deeply convinced of sin than before, more earnest in fleeing to Jesus for refuge, and more desirous for the renewal of my nature.' The profit was mutual. For, many years after Henry Martyn's departure and death, Mr. Simeon kept in his study a portrait of the young student, and he used to say that he could never look into that face but it seemed to say to him, 'Be earnest! Be earnest!'
And so, to repeat the language of the Gospel, 'there came unto Jesus one that was borne of four,' and his name was Henry Martyn.
IIII cannot discover that, up to this point, any one text had played a conspicuous part in precipitating the crisis which transfigured his life. But, after this, I find one sentence repeatedly on his lips. During a journey a man is often too engrossed with the perplexities of the immediate present to be able to review the path as a whole. But, when he looks back, he surveys the entire landscape in grateful retrospect, and is astonished at the multiplicity and variety of the perils that he has escaped. Henry Martyn had some such feeling. When, at the age of twenty-two, he entered the ministry, he was amazed at the greatness of the grace that had made such hallowed privileges and sacred duties possible to him. Even in his first sermon, we are told, he preached with a fervor of spirit and an earnestness of manner that deeply impressed the congregation.
And as a dying man to dying men.
'For,' he wrote, 'I am but a brand plucked from the burning.'
Again, when the needs of the world pressed like an intolerable burden upon his spirit, the same thought decided his course. On the one hand, he saw a world lying in darkness and crying for the light. On the other hand, he saw all those sweet and sacred ties that bound him to his native land--his devoted people, his admiring friends, and, hardest tie of all to break, the lady whom he had fondly hoped to make his bride. Here, on the one hand, stood comfort, popularity, success and love! And here, on the other, stood cruel hardship, endless difficulties, constant loneliness, and an early grave! 'But how,' he writes, 'can I hesitate? I am but a brand plucked from the burning!'
A brand in peril of sharing the general destruction!
A brand seen, and prized, and rescued!
A brand at whose blaze other flames might be lit!
A brand plucked from the burning!
IV'Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?'--it was John Wesley's text. To the end of his days John Wesley preserved the picture of the fire at the old rectory, the fire from which he, as a child of six, was only rescued in the nick of time. And, underneath the picture, John Wesley had written with his own hand the words: 'Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?'
'Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?'--it was John Fletcher's text. John Wesley thought John Fletcher, the Vicar of Madeley, the holiest man then living. 'I have known him intimately for thirty years,' says Mr. Wesley. 'In my eighty years I have met many excellent men; but I have never met his equal, nor do I expect to find such another on this side of eternity.' From what source did that perennial stream of piety spring? 'When I saw that all my endeavors availed nothing,' says Mr. Fletcher, in describing his conversion, 'I almost gave up hope. But, I thought, Christ died for all; therefore He died for me. He died to pluck such sinners as I am as brands from the burning! I felt my helplessness and lay at the feet of Christ. I cried, coldly, yet, I believe, sincerely, "Save me, Lord, as a brand snatched out of the fire! Stretch forth Thine almighty arm and save Thy lost creature by free, unmerited grace!"'
'Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?'--it was Thomas Olivers' text. Thomas Olivers was one of Wesley's veterans, the author of the well-known hymn, 'The God of Abraham praise.' He went one day to hear George Whitefield preach. The text was, 'Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?' 'When the sermon began,' he says, 'I was certainly a dreadful enemy to God and to all that is good, and one of the most profligate and abandoned young men living; but, by the time it was ended, I was become a new creature. For, in the first place, I was deeply convinced of the great goodness of God towards me in all my life; particularly in that He had given His Son to die for me. I had also a far clearer view of all my sins, particularly my base ingratitude towards Him. These discoveries quite broke my heart and caused showers of tears to trickle down my cheeks. I was likewise filled with an utter abhorrence of my evil ways, and was much ashamed that I had ever walked in them. And, as my heart was thus turned from all that is evil, so it was powerfully inclined to all that is good. It is not easy to express what strong desires I felt for God and His service; and what resolutions I made to seek Him and serve Him in the future. In consequence of this, I broke off all my evil practices, and forsook all my wicked and foolish companions without delay. I gave myself up to God and His service with my whole heart. Oh, what reason have I to say, "Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?"'
'Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?'--it was Stephen Grellet's text. Writing of his conversion, he says that 'the awfulness of that day of God's visitation can never cease to be remembered by me with peculiar gratitude as long as I possess my mental faculties. I am as a brand plucked from the burning; I have been rescued from the brink of a horrible pit!'
VAnd it was Henry Martyn's text! 'Is not this,' he cried, as he entered the ministry, and again as he entered the mission field, 'is not this a brand plucked from the burning?'
A brand that might have perished in the general destruction!
A brand seen, and prized, and rescued!
A brand at whose blaze other flames might be lit!
A brand plucked from the burning!
'Oh, let me burn out for my God!' he cries, still thinking of the brand plucked from the flames. He plunges, like a blazing torch, into the darkness of India, of Persia and of Turkey. He leaves the peoples whom he has evangelized the Scriptures in their own tongues. Seven short years after he left England, he dies all alone on a foreign strand. 'No kinsman is near to watch his last look or receive his last words. No friend stands by his couch to whisper comforting words, to close his eyes or wipe the death-sweat from his brow.' In the article of death, he is alone with his Lord. The brand plucked from the blaze has soon burned out. But what does it matter? At its ardent flame a thousand other torches have been ignited; and the lands that sat so long in darkness have welcomed the coming of a wondrous light!
VIII MICHAEL TREVANION'S TEXT IMichael Trevanion misunderstood Paul: that was the trouble. Michael, so Mark Rutherford tells us, was a Puritan of the Puritans, silent, stern, unbending. Between his wife and himself no sympathy existed. They had two children--a boy and a girl. The girl was in every way her mother's child: the boy was the image of his father. Michael made a companion of his son; took him into his own workshop; and promised himself that, come what might, Robert should grow up to walk in his father's footsteps. All went well until Robert Trevanion met Susan Shipton. Susan was one of the beauties of that Cornish village. She had--what were not common in Cornwall--light flaxen hair, blue eyes, and a rosy face, somewhat inclined to be plump. The Shiptons lay completely outside Michael's circle. They were mere formalists in religion, fond of pleasure; and Susan especially was much given to gaiety. She went to picnics and dances; rowed herself about the bay with her friends; and sauntered round the town with her father and mother on Sunday afternoons. She was fond of bathing, too, and was a good swimmer. Michael hardly knew how to put his objection in words, but he nevertheless had a horror of women who could swim. It seemed to him an ungodly accomplishment. He did not believe for a moment that Paul would have sanctioned it. That settled it for Michael. For Michael had unbounded faith in the judgment of Paul; and the tragedy of his life lay in the fact that, on one important occasion, he misunderstood his oracle.
One summer's morning, Robert saved Susan from drowning. She had forgotten the swirl of water caused by the rush of the river into the bay, and had swum into the danger zone. In three minutes Robert was at her side, had gripped her by the bathing dress at the back of her neck, and had brought her into safer water. From that moment the two were often together; and, one afternoon, Michael came suddenly upon them and guessed their secret. It nearly broke his heart. In Robert's attachment to Susan he saw--or thought he saw--the end of all his hopes. 'He remembered what his own married life had been; he always trusted that Robert would have a wife who would be a help to him, and he felt sure that this girl Shipton, with her pretty face and blue eyes, had no brains. To think that his boy should repeat the same inexplicable blunder, that he would never hear from
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