February 6

The power of association

“We saw certainly that the Lord was with thee” (Gen. 26:28).
“And the master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight” (Gen. 39:3-4).
“It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done” (Ruth 2:11).

When Lord Peterborough once visited the godly Archbishop Fénelon, he remarked: “If I stay here any longer, I shall become a Christian in spite of myself.”

A friend of Bernard of Clairvaux remarked that as soon as he had entered Clairvaux, he felt that God was in the place. “Whichever way I turned, my eyes marveled and I thought I saw a new heaven and a new earth.”
A peasant once told Erskine, “There is always a sense of God where you are.”

And a doctor coming away from the dying bed of Horace Bushnell wrote, “Felt as I left the house a mighty conviction of spiritual realities and a desire to live in them.”

The godly McCheyne once said, “How few believers carry much of the odor of Heaven along with them!”

A Persian fable says: One day
A wanderer found a lump of clay
So redolent of sweet perfume,
Its odor scented all the room.

“Who art thou?” was his quick demand,
“Art thou some gem from Samarkand,
Or Spikenard in this rude disguise,
Or other costly merchandise?”

“Nay! I am but a lump of clay.”
“Then whence this wondrous sweetness—say?”
“Friend, this the secret I disclose:
I have been dwelling with the rose.”

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