Have you ever used a dictionary? If you go to school I’m sure your teacher has had you look up the spelling or the meaning of a word in a dictionary. You may even have one at home. Chances are that at least one of the dictionaries you use is a Webster’s Dictionary.
Noah Webster was the man who put together the first American dictionary. If it were not for him, people in New York might be speaking an entirely different style of English than what they speak in California. Mr. Webster was born in 1758 on a farm near West Hartford, Connecticut. As a boy he loved to read. It was all his father could do to get him away from his books long enough to help with the farm chores. Although his family did not have much money, Noah was able to earn enough money to go to college. After graduating he became a lawyer for a short time, and then he started teaching.
While teaching school in the 1780s, he wrote a beginner’s spelling book, a grammar book and then a reader for school children. Millions of copies of the speller were sold, which helped everyone in the United States to spell and pronounce words the same way. It took him more than 30 years to write what is called the dictionary, because language was changing so fast with new discoveries in almost every area of life.
When he was about 40 years old, he began to wonder if all his work was what really mattered most in life. He wondered if he had been building his beliefs on what he had done, rather than on God’s mercy toward him. One day he told his wife and three children, “Starting today, I’m going to study the Bible until I find out what really counts!”
This was the beginning of a very important time in Mr. Webster’s life. He studied the Bible as carefully as he had worked on his dictionary. God was working in his life. The more he read the more he understood what a proud sinner he really was. Late one night he kneeled down and asked God to forgive him. He confessed that he was a sinner and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour. He believed that the work that the Lord Jesus had done on the cross was everything, and that his own life and works were nothing. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:89).
The next morning Mr. Webster told his family about his Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. They began to read the Bible and pray together each day. Soon they also believed and confessed the Lord Jesus as their Saviour.
Mr. Webster found out what many of us have learned, that we can’t trust ourselves or our own ideas as to what is right or wrong. We need God’s standards as shown in the Bible. It is there we see what we are in God’s sight - “gone astray” and in need of help from Him. Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour? “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:66All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)).
ML-06/09/1996