John 5:31-40 If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.… Many years ago, when the great war was raging m America between the Northern and Southern States, no cotton came to supply the Lancashire mills, and hundreds of thousands of people were reduced to great poverty and suffering for want of food and clothing. Oh! how fervently they prayed that the war might soon be over, and that God would send them "cotton." At last the war closed, and the sea was again white with the sails of cotton-bringing ships, and soon a railway train laden with the precious thing arrived at Preston, in Lancashire. The town was filled with joy, and when the first load of cotton was brought through the streets on a dray, the people went out by hundreds to welcome it. They marched on either side of it, and many of them kissed the bales of cotton as they moved along, and sang: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," for now there would be work, and food, and comfort. And when in the year 1871 the gates of the famine-stricken Paris were thrown open after the terrible siege, and a drove of fat cattle were driven along the streets to be killed for food, the women rushed from their doors and, throwing their arms around the necks of the sleek oxen, kissed them a welcome to their ruined city, for their coming was life to them and to their children. And is not Jesus "Life" to us? Is He not a thousand times more to us than cotton or cattle were to the people of Preston and Paris? And shall we refuse Him, or receive Him coldly? What think you? (R. Brewin.) Parallel Verses KJV: If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. |
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