A Change Of Heart

A Change Of Heart

He had a desire transplant.

THE SON of a respected Scottish minister, William Chalmers Burns was not interested in following in his father’s footsteps. In 1831, after achieving success at the University of Aberdeen, Burns decided to study law. This was a great disappointment to his father, who as a minister of the Church of Scotland, desired that his son follow him into the ministry.

But his father’s faith had affected him. Shortly after Burns decided to become a lawyer because they were “rich and with fine houses,” he began to reevaluate the direction of his life.

Late one night when William heard his father praying, he whispered, “There can be no doubt where his heart is and where he is going.” Not long after that, God changed him.

Burns later recalled, “When reading Pike’s Early Piety on a Sabbath afternoon, I think about the middle of December 1831, an arrow from the quiver of the King of Zion was shot by his Almighty sovereign hand through my heart.” It was about January 7, 1832, that “first the Spirit of God shone with full light upon the glory of Jesus as a Saviour for such as I was.”

With Burns’s faith came a loss of interest in studying law and, instead, a strong, deep desire to preach to those who had not heard the gospel. After studying for the ministry in Glasgow, he was accepted by the Church of Scotland as a missionary to India. But God had another plan, and Burns became involved in the Scottish revival, which began in 1839. He spent the next eight years preaching to crowds in Scotland, England, Ireland, and Canada.

In 1847, at the age of thirty-two, Burns went to China as the first missionary of the Presbyterian Church of England. He ministered in many port cities, but his heart was set on reaching the people of inland China. Leaving the coastal mission stations, Burns’s practice was to build up native congregations, leave them in the care of other missionaries, and press on ever deeper into the heart of China. He was so dedicated to his mission work that his sole furlough lasted only one month before he returned to his work in China.

William Burns became terminally ill in December 1867 and wrote this farewell letter to his mother on January 15, 1868.

At the end of last year I got a severe chill which has not yet left the system, producing chilliness and fever every night, and for the last two nights this has been followed by perspiration, which rapidly diminished the strength. Unless it should please God to rebuke the disease, it is evident what the end must soon be, and I write these lines beforehand to say that I am happy, and ready through the abounding grace of God either to live or to die. May the God of all consolation comfort you when the tidings of my decease shall reach you, and through the redeeming blood of Jesus may we meet with joy before the throne above.

Reflection

When William Burns became a Christian, he lost his desire to make money and instead became burdened to make men and women rich in faith. In your life has God ever replaced a desire for wealth with a spiritual one? If so, how would you compare the satisfaction you received from trying to meet the respective desires?

Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves.

Matthew 6:19-20