Luke 11:52 Woe to you, lawyers! for you have taken away the key of knowledge: you entered not in yourselves… Some unpublished thoughts on "Hinderers and Hindrances," written by Frances Ridley Havergal, were forwarded by her sister Maria V. G. Havergal to the editor of The Sunday Magazine. We glean the following from the second paper, which appeared in the September, 1885, issue: — "A letter from Ernest at last! And the sister eagerly gives her father the morning budget at the breakfast table. Her mother watches, for gloom gathers on the father's face as he reads it. Silently the letter is given to the mother, and he passes through the open window to the pleasant terrace-walk beneath. The sister guesses in vain, 'What can Ernest have written?' The father paced up and down, thinking of the position he himself had won, and which he had hoped would be a stepping-stone for his son to one far higher, in which his many gifts of mind and heart would shine with no common effulgence. He had hoped his son would carry out and develop many schemes of benevolence he had set on foot. But that morning's letter was as a mighty crucible, wherein the man's devotedness to Him who had given him that darling son was to be tested and analyzed. What was that letter?' — College, Cambridge. DEAR FATHER, — Will you listen to your son's request for your consent, your blessing, your prayers? Father, there is a burning impulse within me, a new life-pulse seems beating in my soul, a still deep voice ever sounding in my ears, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Years ago that same voice called me, when I first heard stories about the heathen and their idols, and when standing by my mother I looked at the Church Missionary Society's green picture-book ("Juvenile Instructor"), of white men preaching to the heathen. Silently, but surely, has that call followed me. I have cried earnestly, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" and again the heavenly whisper comes, "Go ye." Therefore, though never before breathed to any but God, this is no sudden thought, no unconsidered plan. Father, let me go, let me take the cup of living water to him that is ready to perish. I should like to tread the very footsteps of Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost, to search in His name for the "other sheep, which are not of this fold." I know the hopes and the intentions which you have cherished for my future; but is not a missionary's joy a nobler gain, the missionary's crown a nobler ambition than any ether? And what if the time came when, among the multitude out of all nations and kindreds and tongues, I might be permitted to recognize some who first heard a Saviour's name from my unworthy lips! My own dear mother! her heart will be with me in this; I know she lent me to the Lord. Dearest father, I believe Christ has called me; will you let me obey His voice? Your loving son, ERNEST.'" Reader, what would your answer have been? Would you have hindered? The father could not brook that the talents of his son, the pride of his ancestral hall, should go forth into the gloom and obscurity of distant shores. But who can tell how bitterly that question, "Father, will you hinder me?" returned to his mind when the bell tolled for the early death of that loved and devoted son! Parallel Verses KJV: Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. |
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