I once received an anonymous note asking me to call on the lady principal of a school. She was a woman of very brilliant gifts but professed to be an utter unbeliever. I called one day at the school and received a very cordial reception, but the woman said, “I do not believe anything. I do not even read the Bible because it seems wrong for one to read it and disbelieve everything in it as I do.” As I talked with her, she insisted that she was confirmed in her unbelief, and that there was no possibility of her being led out of it. But suddenly she began to weep and I said to her, “Why are you crying?” “Oh,” she said, “there is one thing I cannot get over, and that is my father’s life. My father was a minister of the gospel, and whenever I think of the holy life he lived, I feel that there must be something in Christianity. I cannot get over his life.” She had tried hard to do so, but she had failed utterly.
Starting out from this point, I was able to tell her how she could find out for herself that beyond a peradventure the Bible was the Word of God, and Jesus Christ the Son of God. She promised to follow the plan suggested, and I afterward had the privilege of receiving her into membership in the church.
But my reasonings would have been of no avail if she had not been prepared to listen to them by the insurmountable argument of her own father’s holy life. The best argument for Christianity is a Christian life.