I was recently given a number of books from the library of a man who passed away. I’m still sorting through them but among them I found Pulpit and Communion Table by Rev. John Duncan. Flipping through it, I came across the following:

There was lately put into my hands a very short tract of two pages, called “The Converted Negro.”

A lady called on a minister, and said, “My dear sir, I never till lately knew the importance of personal religion, till I saw it in my own negro servant. We were in a storm at sea, looking to be all drowned: I was in great alarm – all on board were – this poor negro alone was calm. She said to me when she saw my distress, ‘O missus, don’t fear; look to Jesus, see the rock.’ We were in fear of being sunk in the waters or dashed on a rock; but she said, ‘Jesus is the rock, nearer than that rock.’”

The minister called on the lady, and asked the negro when and how she came to know Jesus. She said, “Good mister Hinnican came and tell us negroes that Christ Jesus, the Son of God, came down from the good place to save us sinners. He die, or me die; He die, me no die. I weep very much – I ask Jesus – He good, He save me.” And it was asked, “Where is Mr. Hinnican now?” “O, he fall asleep.” “I see, Mr. Hinnican is dead?” “O no, he no die, He call us negroes, tell us he go to Jesus, bid us follow, then he fall asleep. He sleep till the trumpet of the archangel sound, where he arise.”

I think here is a noble specimen of the teaching of the Spirit of God – his sublime mystery in all its simplicity…
(page 86)

I was surprised by the size of Charles Spurgeon’s book Lectures to my Students. It will be a little bit before I can start digging through but so rich is its content that simply flipping open the pages and glancing at one section, the following jumped out.

What is our best argument to those who reject the truths of Scripture? Is it logic or reason? Or that these precious words have been proven through the experience of our lives? Spurgeon offers his thoughts, pages 272-273.

…They tell us sometimes that such and such statements are not true; but when we are able to reply that we have tried them and proved them, what answer is there to such reasoning? A man propounds the wonderful discovery that honey is not sweet. ‘But I had some for breakfast, and I found it very sweet’, say you, and your reply is conclusive. He tells you that salt is poisonous, but you point to your own health, and declare that you have eaten salt these twenty years. He says that to eat bread is a mistake – a vulgar error, an antiquated absurdity; but at each meal you make his protest the subject for a merry laugh. If you are daily and habitually experienced in the truth of God’s Word, I am not afraid of your being shaken in mind in reference to it. Those young fellows who never felt conviction of sin, but obtained their religion as they get their bath in the morning, by jumping into it – these will as readily leap out of it as they leaped in. Those who feel neither the joys nor yet the depressions of spirit which indicate spiritual life, are torpid, and their palsied hand has no firm grip of truth. Mere skimmers of the Word, who, like swallows, touch the water with their wings, are the first to fly from one land to another as personal considerations guide them. They believe this, and then believe that, for, in truth, they believe nothing intensely.

If you have ever been dragged through the mire and clay of soul-despair, if you have been turned upside down, and wiped out like a dish as to all your own strength and pride, and have then been filled with the joy and peace of God, through Jesus Christ, I will trust you among fifty thousand infidels. Whenever I hear the sceptic’s stale attacks upon the Word of God, I smile within myself, and think, ‘Why, you simpleton! how can you urge such trifling objections? I have felt, in the contentions of my own unbelief, ten times greater difficulties.’ We who have contended with horses are not to be wearied by footmen…