The new
speaker was not inclined to admit the explanation suggested by the
pastor. "Suppose," said he,
"we were to see a man in imminent danger of immediate
destruction, and there was one way of escape, and but one,
which _we_ saw and he did not, should we feel any delicacy
in running up to him and urging him to fly for his life? Is
it not a want of faith on our part that causes the
reluctance and hesitation we all feel in urging others to
avoid a peril so much more momentous?"
Mr. Beecher said the cases were not parallel. Irreligious persons, he
remarked, were not in imminent danger of immediate death; they might
die to-morrow; but in all probability they would not, and an ill-timed
or injudicious admonition might forever repel them. We must accept the
doctrine of probabilities, and act in accordance with it in this
particular, as in all others.
Another brother had a puzzle to present for solution. He said that he
too had experienced the repugnance to which allusion had been made;
but what surprised him most was, that the more he loved a person, and
the nearer he was related to him, the more difficult he found it to
converse with him upon his spiritual state.
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