TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A Central African Pioneer
FREDERICK STANLEY ARNOT was born in Glasgow, on Sep. 12th, 1858, but the family soon removed to Hamilton. When six years old he heard an address by Dr. DAVID LIVINGSTONE, the great African Explorer, who so stirred him that from thenceforward Africa drew him like a magnet. Friendship with the Livingstones, who also lived in Hamilton, deepened his interest. Boylike, he determined that he must go out to help his hero, a resolution which coloured all his studies and thoughts and set his feet in a direction from which they never. diverged.
Arnot’s parents were Christians; he himself was converted when 10 years old. It came about in this way. One day he and a companion, Jimmie, were appropriating and eating plums from a neighbour’s garden, and Jimmie’s older brother, from a window, called them thieves. Fred Arnot felt as though a pistol had gone off at his very head. “Thief! Thief !” rang in his ears all the time. Next day he had to pass Hamilton prison, and did so in a state of terror, fearing he might be taken off to prison. To his horror he saw a policeman leading a little boy to the very place, and in his other hand the policeman held a pair of new boots which the bare-footed little boy had stolen. Fred felt that he was much more wicked than that little needy boy. He rushed off home and hid himself till bedtime. He said: “I dreaded to pass another night; I could not tell anyone what a wicked boy I was. I knew I ought to tell God about it, but I trembled to do so at my usual evening prayer, so I waited until all were in bed and the house quiet, then up I got. Now, I thought, I will ask God to forgive me, but words would not come, and, at last, I burst into a flood of tears. I felt I was too wicked even for God to forgive; yet a glimmer of light and hope came to me with this thought: ‘That is why Jesus died on the Cross for me, because I am so wicked.’ Among many texts of Scripture that my parents had taught me was John 3. 16. I repeated it to myself on my knees about two o’clock one morning, and that ‘whosoever’ took me in. I awoke next day with a light heart, the burden was gone.”
He went out to Africa in 1881, spent 33 years on behalf of the natives of that country, traversed 30,000 miles of its trodden and untrodden paths, and died at Johannesburg on 11th May, 1914, at the age of 55.
As F. S. ARNOT did, so do you. Put your name in John 3.16: “For God so loved ………………….…… that He gave His only begotten Son for ………………………….. that, if ……………………………………. believeth in Him, ……………………..…….. should not perish, but have Everlasting Life.” DO IT NOW.