the Week of Christ the King / Proper 29 / Ordinary 34
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Bible Dictionaries
Experience: Variety of
Spurgeon's Illustration Collection
or
Ruskin, that most accurate observer, says:: 'Break off an elm-bough three feet long, in full leaf; and lay it on the table before you, and try to draw it, leaf for leaf. It is ten to one if in the whole bough (provided you do not twist it about as you work) you find one form of a leaf exactly like another; perhaps you will not even have one complete. Every leaf will be oblique, or foreshortened, or curled, or crossed by another, or shaded by another, or have something or other the matter with it; and though the whole bough will look graceful and symmetrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why it does so, since there is not one line of it like another.'
If such infinite variety prevails in creation, we may reasonably expect to find the same in the experience of the saints. Uniformity is no rule of spiritual life. Let us not judge others because their feelings have not been precisely similar to ours. All the saints are led in a right way, but no two of them precisely in the same way. Far be it from us to set up a standard and expect all to be conformed to i if we reject all believers who labour under infirmities, or are marred with faults, our fellowship will be scant indeed.
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Spurgeon, Charles. Entry for 'Experience: Variety of'. Spurgeon's Illustration Collection. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fff/e/experience-variety-of.html. 1870.
