“A minister of Geneva, on a trip to Paris, one day fell into a conversation with a man who began to reason with him about Christianity.  The minister answered every argument with a quotation from Scripture—­not venturing a single personal remark or application.  Every quotation his companion evaded or turned aside, only to be met by another passage.  The skeptic became enraged.  ’Don’t you see, I don’t believe your Bible!  What’s the use of quoting it to me?’ he shouted.  The minister’s reply was another thrust of the Sword of the Spirit, ’If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.’  Years passed, then one morning the minister received a letter.  Opening it he read, ’You took the Sword of the Spirit and stabbed me through and through one day, and every time I tried to parry the blade and get you to use your hands, and not the Heavenly steel, you simply gave me another stab.  You made me feel I was not fighting you, but God.’  It was signed by the former skeptic in whom the ‘seed of the Word’ had finally been mixed with faith.

“Even as the natural seed changes soil into plants, so the living seed of the Word changes the character of the individual who comes in contact with it.  For example, in the night of the Dark Ages when the Word of God was planted by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of chosen men, it brought forth the fruit of the Reformation.  There was a rediscovery of the truth, that salvation is not by ritual or works, but by faith in Jesus as our Saviour.”

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My grandson, I will close these instructions to you, as well as to all who read them, with a prayer for each one.  As a teen-ager I found that it paid to live for God.  As a mother I found that God was there to help me in all the needs of life and as a grandmother and a possible great-grandmother, I find great joy in living for God.  It pays to put God first in our lives.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you,” is the safe way to live because Jesus, our Lord and Master, who has all wisdom has told us.

—­Grandma Miles (A.  Marie Miles)