Just Looking at You
Story★★★★John Taylor Smith (1860-1907) was a British bishop and Chaplain general of British forces during World War I. He died on a ship in the Mediterranean and was buried at sea, but the stories of his ministry for Christ live to this day. Here is an incident, clipped from Christianity Today, January 21, 1977: Bishop Taylor Smith was asked to preach at a jubilee celebration in Chicago. While he was crossing the Atlantic, he walked round on the promenade deck in the open air each day and lost his voice. He arrived in Chicago and preached in a whisper, with none of the modern electronic gadgets available for amplification. At the end of his address, someone came to him and said, “You have persuaded me that I must
“J. C. Macaulay and Robert H. Belton, Personal Evangelism (Chicago: Moody Press, 1956), 99-100. 2 Walter B. Knight, Three Thousand [llustrations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 387.
become a Christian.” The bishop asked, “What exactly was it that I said that brought you to this point?” The man answered, “I couldn’t hear a word you said—it was just looking at you.”
The point
A dying bishop's preaching, though inaudible from his lost voice, still won a man to Christ simply by the visible witness of his life.