Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/235

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CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON.
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of it unless you look to Christ.' And then, lifting up his hands, he cried out as only, I think, a Primitive Methodist could do, 'Look, look, look! It is only "look,"' said he. I saw at once the way of salvation. Oh, how I did leap for joy at that moment! I knew not what else he said. I did not take much notice of it, I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, they only looked and were healed. I had been waiting to do fifty things; but, when I heard this word 'Look!' what a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away; and in heaven I will look on still in my joy unutterable."

Here, then, is an authentic narrative of the election of Charles Haddon Spurgeon; and what could be more ingenuous? He was converted by the word "look," as the sinful old Scotchwoman was brought from nature to grace by the solemn emphasis with which Dr. Chalmers pronounced the word Mesopotamia. In a similarly unhappy frame of mind George Fox sought advice from a clergyman, and was admonished to "drink beer and dance with the girls." There is in truth a great variety of cures for such spiritual maladies. Edward Spencer Beesly finds great joy in believing in Comtism, John Henry Newman in embracing Romanism, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon in flying to the iron rock of Calvinism. They are all converted from uncertainty to certainty. O ter quaterque beati! I would to Heaven I were as sure of any thing as these men are of every thing. Similar phenomena are common among Mohammedans and Buddhists. The great mistake that is made by such religionists as Mr. Spurgeon is to suppose that there is no law of conversions as of other