“Where can I find him?”
“Well,” he said, “you’ve got to look for him in some place where people are sick or hurt, or something like that. I don’t know where he is, but he’s helping somewhere.”
That ought to be the spirit animating every follower of Him who went about doing good.
LAYING DOWN RULES.
I admit one can’t lay down positive rules in dealing with individuals about their religious condition. Tin soldiers are exactly alike, but not so men. Matthew and Paul were a good way apart. The people we deal with may be widely different. What would be medicine for one might be rank poison for another. In the 15th of Luke, the elder son and the younger son were exactly opposite. What would have been good counsel for one might have been ruin to the other. God never made two persons to look alike. If we had made men, probably we would have made them all alike, even if we had to crush some bones to get them into the mould. But that is not God’s way. In the universe there is infinite variety. The Philippian jailer required peculiar treatment. Christ dealt with Nicodemus one way, and the woman at the well another way.
YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE.
It is a great mistake, in dealing with inquirers, to tell your conversion experience. Experience may have its place, but I don’t think it has its place when we are dealing with inquirers; for the first thing the man you are talking to will do will be to look for your experience. He doesn’t want your experience. He wants one of his own.
Suppose Bartimeus had gone to Jerusalem to the man that was born blind, and said:
“Now, just tell us how the Lord cured you.”
The Jerusalem man might have said: “He just spat on the ground, and anointed my eyes with the clay.”