The Personal Touch   By: J. Wilbur (John Wilbur) Chapman (1859-1918)

BY

J. WILBUR CHAPMAN, D.D.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

I. A TESTIMONY

II. A GENERAL PRINCIPLE

III. A POLISHED SHAFT

IV. STARTING RIGHT

V. NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL

VI. WINNING THE YOUNG

VII. WINNING AND HOLDING

VIII. A PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION

IX. WHOSOEVER WILL

X. CONVERSION IS A MIRACLE

XI. A FINAL WORD

FOREWORD

IF

If to be a Christian is worth while, then the most ordinary interest in those with whom we come in contact should prompt us to speak to them of Christ.

If the New Testament be true and we know that it is who has given us the right to place the responsibility for soul winning on other shoulders than our own?

If they who reject Christ are in danger, is it not strange that we, who are so sympathetic when the difficulties are physical or temporal, should apparently be so devoid of interest as to allow our friends and neighbours and kindred to come into our lives and pass out again without a word of invitation to accept Christ, to say nothing of sounding a note of warning because of their peril?

If to day is the day of salvation, if to morrow may never come, and if life is equally uncertain, how can we eat, drink, and be merry when those who live with us, work with us, walk with us, and love us are unprepared for eternity because they are unprepared for time?

If Jesus called His disciples to be fishers of men, who gave us the right to be satisfied with making fishing tackle or pointing the way to the fishing banks instead of going ourselves to cast out the net until it be filled?

If Jesus Himself went seeking the lost, if Paul the Apostle was in agony because his kinsmen, according to the flesh, knew not Christ, why should we not consider it worth while to go out after the lost until they are found?

If I am to stand at the judgment seat of Christ to render an account for the deeds done in the body, what shall I say to Him if my children are missing, my friends not saved, or if my employer or employee should miss the way because I have been faithless?

If I wish to be approved at the last, then let me remember that no intellectual superiority, no eloquence in preaching, no absorption in business, no shrinking temperament, no spirit of timidity can take the place of or be an excuse for my not making an honest, sincere, prayerful effort to win others to Christ by means of the Personal Touch .

CHAPTER I

A Testimony

I have the very best of reasons for believing in the power of the personal touch in Christian work, especially as it may be used in the winning of others to Christ.

My boyhood's home was in the city of Richmond, in the State of Indiana, my mother was a devout member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in the first years of my life in company with my father and the other children of the household, I attended the church of my mother. When she was just a little more than thirty five years of age she was called home. My father in his youth had been trained as a Presbyterian; many of his ancestors having belonged to that denomination; therefore it was quite natural that he should return to the Church of his fathers when my mother had gone home.