7. Key words and key verses.
8. Make a note of any text that marks a religious crisis in your life. I once heard Rev. F. B. Meyer preach on 1 Cor. 1, 9, and he asked his hearers to write on their Bibles that they were that day “called unto the fellowship of His Son Christ our Lord.”
TAKING NOTES.
When a preacher gives out a text, mark it; as he goes on preaching, put a few words in the margin, key-words that shall bring back the whole sermon again. By that plan of making a few marginal notes, I can remember sermons I heard years and years ago. Every man ought to take down some of the preacher’s words and ideas, and go into some lane or by-way, and preach them again to others. We ought to have four ears—two for ourselves and two for other people. Then, if you are in a new town, and have nothing else to say, jump up and say: “I heard someone say so and so;” and men will always be glad to hear you if you give them heavenly food. The world is perishing for lack of it.
Some years ago I heard an Englishman in Chicago preach from a curious text: “There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise.” “Well,” said I to myself, “what will you make of these ‘little things’? I have seen them a good many times.” Then he went on speaking: “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.” He said God’s people are like the ants. “Well,” I thought, “I have seen a good many of them, but I never saw one like me.” “They are like the ants,” he said, “because they are laying up treasure in heaven, and preparing for the future; but the world rushes madly on, and forgets all about God’s command to lay up for ourselves incorruptible treasures.”
“The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make these their houses in the rocks.” He said, “The conies are very weak things; if you were to throw a stick at one of them you could kill it; but they are very wise, for they build their houses in rocks, where they are out of harm’s way. And God’s people are very wise, although very feeble; for they build on the Rock of Ages, and that Rock is Christ.” “Well,” I said, “I am certainly like the conies.”
Then came the next verse: “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.” I wondered what he was going to make of that. “Now God’s people,” he said, “have no king down here. The world said, ‘Caesar is our king;’ but he is not our King; our King is the Lord of Hosts. The locusts went out by bands; so do God’s people. Here is a Presbyterian band, here an Episcopalian band, here a Methodist band, and so on; but by and by the great King will come and catch up all these separate bands, and they will all be one; one fold and one Shepherd.” And when I heard that explanation, I said; “I would be like the locusts.” I have become so sick, my friends, of this miserable sectarianism, that I wish it could all be swept away.
“Well,” he went on again, “the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.” When he got to the spider, I said, “I don’t like that at all; I don’t like the idea of being compared to a spider.” “But,” he said, “If you go into a king’s palace, there is the spider hanging on his gossamer web, and look-down with scorn and contempt on the gilded salon; he is laying hold of things above. And so every child of God ought to be like the spider, and lay hold of the unseen things of God. You see, then, my brethren, we who are God’s people are like the ants, the conies, the locusts, and the spiders, little things, but exceeding wise.” I put that down in the margin of my bible, and the recollection of it does me as much good now as when I first heard it.
A friend of mine was in Edinburgh and he heard one of the leading Scotch Presbyterian ministers. He had been preaching from the text, “Every eye shall see Him,” and he closed up by saying: “Yes, every eye. Adam will see Him, and when he does he will say: ‘This is He who was promised to me in that dark day when I fell;’ Abraham will see Him and will say: ‘This is He whom I saw afar off; but now face to face;’ Mary will see Him, and she will sing with new interest that magnificat. And I, too, shall see Him, and when I do, I will sing: ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee.’”