TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
The Lord Chancellor of England
EARL CAIRNS, Lord Chancellor of England, whom Lord Macnaughton spoke of as the greatest lawyer that ever sat upon the woolsack, was a most decided and consistent Christian. Addressing a company of working men, among whom were a number of infidels and agnostics, he said: “As I am a stranger among you. I do not know that I have any right to obtrude my opinion. All I can do is to tell you how this question affects me personally. If I could take you to my home, you would think it a luxurious one, and the food on my table is abundant. You would say that with all this I ought to be a happy man. I am, indeed, a happy man, but I don’t think my furniture and food have much to do with it. Every day I rise with the sweet consciousness that God loves me and cans for me. He has pardoned all my sins for Christ’s sake, and I look forward to the future with no dread. His Spirit proves to me that all this which is, is only the beginning of joy which is to last throughout eternity.
“Suppose it were possible for some one to convince me that this happiness was all a delusion on my part, my house would give me little repose, and the food would often remain on the table untasted. I should wake in the morning with the feeling that it was scarcely worth while to get up, so little there would be to live for. The sun might rise, or it might not—all would be dark to me. You see, my friends, I could not honestly advise you to do what some of you say you wish to do—to live without God in the world when all the time my heart is crying out: ‘Without Thee I cannot live.’ It is a pleasure to me to know that the costly things in my house, which you cannot share with me, are not the things out of which my happiness is made. Were they necessary to happiness, I should look around with a sigh and wonder why they are given to so few. Had I to leave them all to-morrow and betake myself to a humble home, I should still take my joy with me. My must earnest desire and prayer for you is that Christ may reveal Himself to you, satisfying, as I know He only can every desire of your hearts.”