Converted The Regular Way


He believed in the regular Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and that

was the place for him to be converted.



The employer tried every way he could to get him to attend the

meetings, but he wouldn't come.



After we left that town and went away up to Inverness, the employer

had some business up there, and he sent this employee to attend to

it in the hope that he would attend some of our meetings




One night as I was preaching on the banks of a river I happened to

take this for my text: "I thought; I thought." I was trying to take

men's thoughts up and to show the difference between their thoughts

and God's thoughts. This man happened to be walking along the banks

of the river. He saw a great crowd, and heard some one talking, and

he wondered to himself what that man was talking about. He didn't

know who was there, so he drew up to the crowd, and listened. He

heard the sermon, and became convicted and converted right there.

Then he inquired who was the preacher, and he found out it was the

very man that he said he would not hear--the man he disliked. The

very man he had been talking against was the very man God used to

convert him.



Whilst Naaman was thus wavering in his mind, and thinking on what

was best to be done, one of his servants drew near and made a very

sensible remark:



"My lord, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest

thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he saith to thee,

Wash, and be clean?"



There is a great deal of truth in that.



If Elisha had told him to go back to Syria on his hands and knees,

one hundred and fifty miles, he would have done it and thought it

was all right. If he had told him to go into some cave and stay

there a year or two, he would have done it and thought it was all

right. If he had told him that it was necessary to have some

surgical operation performed, and that he had to go through all the

torture incident to it, that would have suited him. Men like to have

something to do about their salvation; they don't like to give up

the idea that they can't do anything; that God must do it all. If

you tell them to take bitter herbs every morning and every night for

the next five years, they think that's all right, and if he had told

Naaman to do that he would have done it. But to tell him merely to

dip in the river Jordan seven times, why, it seemed absurd on the

face of it! But this servant suggested to him that he had better go

down to the Jordan and try the remedy, as it was



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