“Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” (Job 1:8).
Wherever a godly person enters, he is a greater blessing than if the greatest monarch were entering. So let it be with you.—Jonathan Edwards.
I would give more for one poor woman, whose poverty only makes her laugh and sing; who is contented with her humble lot; who bears her burdens with cheerfulness; who is patient when trouble comes upon her; who loves everyone, and who with a kind and genial spirit goes about doing good, than for all the dissertations on the doctrines of Christianity that could be written, as a means of preventing infidelity.
I have seen one such woman, who was worth more than the whole church to which she belonged and its minister put together; and I was the minister, and my church was the church.
She lived over a cooper shop. The floor of her apartment was so rude and open that you could sit there and see what the men were doing below. She had a sort of a fiend for a husband—a rough, brutal shipmaster.
She was universally called “Mother.” She literally, night and day, went about doing good. I do not suppose all the ministers in the town where she lived carried consolation to so many hearts as she did. If a person was sick or dying, the people in the neighborhood did not think of sending for anyone else half so soon as for her.
I tell you, there was not much chance for an infidel to make headway there. If I wanted to convince a man of the reality of Christianity, I said nothing about historic evidence; I said, “Don’t you believe Mother —— is a Christian?” and that would silence him.
Where there is a whole church made up of such Christians as she was, infidelity cannot thrive. You need not be afraid of it making its way into such a church. The Word of God stands sure under such circumstances, so that nothing can successfully rise against it.—Henry Ward Beecher.