SUNDAY came, it was the second Sunday since I had left the office, and I felt rather cast down in spirit, but was much comforted by the services of the day. The Lord sent me a message from His word by His servant and beloved minister, and I felt as though both the sermons were for me. Had the preacher known my mind, or had he witnessed the recent scene in the office, he could not have described it better than he did on Sunday. The text in the morning was from Ps. 23. Among other good things he said, “What can they want who have Jehovah for their Shepherd? He knows and pities their weakness and their sorrow; and He will certainly, if they trust Him, guide them through all, and give them all things that are needed for their spiritual and temporal welfare. You who have tasted that the Lord is good have nothing to fear. ‘The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.’” This was indeed a “feast of fat things” to my hungry soul.
In the evening Mr. B— delivered a most powerful discourse from Matt. 5:10-1210Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. (Matthew 5:10‑12). “You are blessed,” he said, “if you are persecuted for Christ’s sake. They may imprison you, strip you of your estate, exclude you from all places of profit and trust; they may torture you, revile, and say all manner of evil against you falsely; you may be powerfully assailed; things may be laid to your charge that you are guiltless of! if all this, however, is for righteousness’ sake, then is it for Christ’s sake. He is interested in the work of righteousness, therefore I say, ‘Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven.’ Do they call you by offensive names? Rejoice, and be exceeding glad that you are as your Master whom they called Beelzebub, and in all your sufferings look especially to your Lord and Master, and see what He endured for you, lest you grow weary and faint in your minds, and yield to impatience and recriminations under your lesser trials.”
On returning home I said to my wife how strong my faith had become, and that I believed I could now make any sacrifice for Christ’s sake.
“Ah, Samuel,” she said, “we may think ourselves strong, but, when tested by God, our strength may prove to be perfect weakness. Peter thought once that he could go with his Lord to prison, and to death, and yet he denied Him thrice. I think our strength is in looking continually unto Jesus as Peter did when he walked on the sea; but taking our eyes off Him we shall cry, as he did, ‘Lord save me, or I perish.’”
My arm improved but slowly, and it was more than eight months before I could use it to any advantage.... The money I brought home, with the little we had saved besides, was all gone.... I wrote to my uncle and appealed to his generous heart.... He opened my letter and put it into another envelope and returned it to me without paying the postage.
Soon after this I received a visit from a very learned Jew. He told me that as my uncle had heard of my poverty, he had sent him to argue with me on the errors of my way, and to try to bring me back to Judaism.
“You see,” he said, “the wretched state you have brought on yourself by believing on that Jesus. There is still time for you to recant, and your uncle is quite willing and ready to help you and your family.”
I told him to thank my uncle for his kindness, at the same time to assure him that as I did not become a believer in Christ for the sake of gain, I could not think of leaving Him on account of my poverty, and that I would rather be poor with Christ than rich without Him, which he evidently could not understand, for he kept on saying, “Rather be poor with Christ than rich without Him! This is against reason. You see,” he said, after a pause, “it is just as your uncle so very forcibly remarked to me. When you believed, he said, in the one true God you lived in affluence, but since you have believed in three Gods you have lost all, and you are now in abject poverty. This very fact, he thought, ought to convince you that your doings are displeasing to the God of Abraham.”
“I must beg your pardon,” I replied. “Christians do not believe in three Gods, as the Jews imagine they do, but in the triune Jehovah or in a Trinity in Unity. I admit that the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity is one of the principal objections of Jews against the Messiahship of Jesus; and while I also admit that we cannot comprehend how the Godhead subsists in a plurality, because this is far above man’s reason which, being naturally limited, cannot grasp infinity, yet if it can be clearly proved, as I am persuaded it can, that a plurality of persons in the Godhead was taught by Moses as well as by Jesus, then the Jews must either acknowledge this doctrine as perfectly consistent with that of the unity of God; or if, on account of it, they will reject the religion of Jesus, they must, on the same account, reject the religion of Moses also. You, as a Hebrew scholar, must know that God is frequently spoken of in the scriptures in the plural number. Moses, in his history of the creation of man, tells us (Gen. 1:2626And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:26)) that Elohim (which is the plural form) said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’”
Here he interrupted me and said, “I know that Elohim is a plural form of Eloah, but this manner of speaking is only adopted to express the excellency of the Divine Being, as with an earthly monarch; or God may have spoken it, which it is very probable He did, to the holy angels.”
I told him it was absurd to suppose God speaking in the style of a king, when He was not exercising the functions of a king, but of the Creator of the universe, and before there was a king or even a human being in the world. “Besides, it was not the custom of kings to speak in this dignified style, neither before Moses’ time, as appears from Abraham’s interview with Abimelech, king of Gerar (Gen. 20) nor in Moses’ own time, as appears from his interview with Pharaoh, king of Egypt (Exod. 5-9), nor for some hundreds of years after Moses’ death, as is evident from the decrees and proclamations of Babylon and Persia (Dan. 3, 4 and 5; and Ezra 1, 4, 6, and 7), among whom if anywhere we might expect to find this dignified form of speech; but on the contrary, they speak in the singular number: ‘I, Nebuchadnezzar,’ ‘I, Darius,’ ‘I, Artaxerxes.’ This, I think, is very conclusive. Neither were the words, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,’ addressed to holy angels, for this would necessarily imply that angels were to be joint creators of man along with God, and that man was to be created in the image of both God and angels, which would flatly contradict what is said in the very next verse, ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.’ You will, I am sure, agree with me that the words, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,’ and those in Gen. 3:2222And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: (Genesis 3:22), ‘And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us,’ must have been addressed by one person of the Godhead to the other person of it, and consequently Moses taught that there is a plurality of persons in the Godhead, and Christians believe that Jesus is the Immanuel, God with man, or God and man, in one person.”
After a pause, he earnestly said, “Sir, your argument has not only silenced me, but in some measure convinced me. I know not what is the matter. I find a strange and unwonted working within my mind. I came here for the express purpose of bringing you back to Judaism, instead of which you have almost persuaded me to be a Christian.”
I implored him not to stifle his convictions, not to be ashamed to be truth’s captive, and to be conquered by it. “Truth is mighty, and will prevail.” What if you should from this day forward become a Christian? You will never repent it. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
He grasped my hand, and with great emotion said, “I wish I could believe as you do. Goodbye,” thus speaking, he gave me a beautiful pencil-case as a souvenir of the pleasant conversation we had together, and so we parted.
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