Here, for instance, is an example of Christian non-resistance from Richard Weaver's autobiography. Weaver was a collier, a semi-professional pugilist in his younger days, who became a much beloved evangelist. Fighting, after drinking, seems to have been the sin to which he originally felt his flesh most perversely inclined. After his first conversion he had a backsliding, which consisted in pounding a man who had insulted a girl. Feeling that, having once fallen, he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he got drunk and went and broke the jaw of another man who had lately challenged him to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusing as a Christian man;—I mention these incidents to show how genuine a change of heart is implied in the later conduct which he describes as follows:—
“I went down the drift and found the boy crying because a fellow-workman was trying to take the wagon from him by force. I said to him:—
“ ‘Tom, you mustn't take that wagon.’
“He swore at me, and called me a Methodist devil. I told him that God did not tell me to let him rob me. He cursed again, and said he would push the wagon over me.
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let us see whether the devil and thee are stronger than the Lord and me.’
“And the Lord and I proving stronger than the devil and he, he had to get out of the way, or the wagon would have gone over him. So I gave the wagon to the boy. Then said Tom:—
“ ‘I've a good mind to smack thee on the face.’
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if that will do thee any good, thou canst do it.’ So he struck me on the face.
“I turned the other cheek to him, and said, ‘Strike again.’
“He struck again and again, till he had struck me five times. I turned my cheek for the sixth stroke; but he turned away cursing. I shouted after him: ‘The Lord forgive thee, for I do, and the Lord save thee.’