y are for the
Nations-that-were, for the Nations-that-are, and for the
Nations-yet-to-be. That Text is _EVERYBODY'S TEXT_.

II

Few things are more arresting than the way in which these tremendous
words have won the hearts of all kinds and conditions of men. I have
been reading lately the lives of some of our most eminent evangelists
and missionaries; and nothing has impressed me more than the conspicuous
part that this text has played in their personal lives and public
ministries. Let me reach down a few of these volumes.

Here is the _Life of Richard Weaver_. In the days immediately preceding
his conversion, Richard was a drunken and dissolute coal miner. It is a
rough, almost repulsive, story. He tells us how, after his revels and
fights, he would go home to his mother with bruised and bleeding face.
She always received him tenderly; bathed his wounds; helped him to bed;
and then murmured in his ear the words that at last seemed inseparable
from the sound of her voice: _God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but
have everlasting life._ The words came back to him in the hour of his
greatest need. His soul was passing through deep waters. Filled with
misery and shame, and terrified lest he should have sinned beyond the
possibility of salvation, he crept into a disused sand-pit. He was
engaged to fight another man that day, but he was in death-grips with a
more terrible adversary. 'In that old sand-pit,' he says, 'I had a
battle with the devil; and I came off more than conqueror through Him
that loved me.' And it was the text that did it. As he agonized there in
the sand-pit, tormented by a thousand doubts, his mother's text all at
once spoke out bravely. It left no room for uncertainty. '_God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life._' 'I thought,' Richard
tells us, 'that _whosoever_ meant _me_. What faith was, I could not
tell; but I had heard that it was taking God at His word; and so I took
God at His word and trusted in the finished work of my Saviour. The
happiness I then enjoyed I cannot describe; my peace flowed as a river.'

Duncan Matheson and Richard Weaver were contemporaries. They were born
at about the same time; and, at about the same time they were converted.
Matheson was Scottish; Weaver was English. Matheson was a stonemason;
Weaver was a c