GLADSTONE: RISK FOR THE GREATER VICTORY
WILLIAM GLADSTONE, a prime minister of England in the nineteenth century, one night was working late on an important speech he was to give to the House of Commons the next day. At about two o'clock in the morning a woman knocked on his door, asking the servant if Mr. Gladstone would come and comfort her young crippled son who lay dying in a tenement not far away.
Without hesitation the busy man set his speech aside and went. He spent the rest of the night with the boy, comforting him and leading him to accept Jesus Christ as Savior. The boy died about dawn, and Gladstone returned home. He told a friend later that morning, "I am the happiest man in the world today."
The true greatness of Gladstone was not in his political position or attainments but in his great love, a love that would risk his political future to show the love of Christ to a young boy in great need. As it turned out, that morning he also made what some historians claim was the greatest speech of his life. He gained that victory, too, but he had been willing to lose it for the sake of a greater one. Love endeavors to see things as they are. To love a person to heaven is getting all the facts right.
On the other hand, love
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