The Bishop and the Barber 
A barber, finding he had a bishop  in his chair,

after professionally enveloping his customer in the usual white sheet, thought he would conduct the conversation on the proper ecclesiastical and episcopal lines. So, as he started clipping, he asked suddenly,  "Do you believe in consecration, sir?"
 "Consecration?"  asked the Bishop.  "What do you mean?"
 "Oh, you ought to know what I mean, Sir.  I was consecrated myself once, but it never did me any good!  I never got anything out of it."
 "You were consecrated?": said the Bishop.  "Look here. Don't you mean you were confirmed?  You mean  'confirmation,' not 'consecration,' surely?"
 Yes, of course, I do Sir"  laughed the barber.  " My mistake, sir, I meant confirmation."
 "Tell me about it,"  said the Bishop.
 "Well, I was a boy at the time, and I said to another schoolmate.
'Let's get confirmed because  we'll get half holiday'; so we got
confirmed."
 "And did you get your half holiday?"
 "Oh yes."
 "Then," said the Bishop, "didn't you tell me that you didn't get anything out of it."
 "No, but I mean I didn't get anything that you would expect," protested the barber, still clipping away at the back.
 "What did you expect?"
 The poor barber was non-plussed. He had evidently expected nothing, and that is exactly what he had gotten.
 "Now listen," said the Bishop, "confirmation means strengthening. It should be the strengthening or confirmation  of one's faith and spiritual experience.  But you can't confirm what doesn't exist.  If you haven't got Christian faith, you can't confirm it.
 "Oh...."  said the barber, beginning at last to see the implications of  the term.
 "I say,"  said the Bishop, "are you going to heaven?
 "Going to heaven?"  echoed the rather startled barber.  "Why, of course  I'm going to heaven!  Why shouldn't I go to heaven?"
 "Well,  why should you?"
 "I'm as good as any other man,": said the barber.  "I've never done  anybody any harm. And I've always done my best."
 "Is that all you have to say?  For, if so, I'm afraid you haven't a  dog's chance of going to heaven on those terms."
 The barber was astonished.  "Not when I've done my best?" he protested.

 "Look here," said the Bishop.  "Suppose another customer came in and  sat in this vacant chair next to mine and said he wanted a haircut.  And  suppose I said to you,  'Here, give me the scissors and the comb, and I'll cut this fellow's hair.'  What would happen?"
 "Why you'd make an awful mess of it, Sir!"
 "Yes  but I would do my best."  The Bishop echoed the barber's last  words, but the latter protested.  "Well, sir, the more you did, the worse it would get.":
 "Exactly," said the Bishop,  for I know nothing about it. But suppose, Mr. Barber, you could give me your experience and could somehow put your  skill into my fingers. What then?"
 "Why then, sir, you could cut his hair as well as I could do it
myself."
 "Now," said the Bishop, "that's how I live the Christian life."   The  hair cut was finished now, and producing his New Testament, the Bishop read from Galatians 2:20: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I  live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
gave himself for me."
 "You see, I don't 'do my best'';  I give Him myself--my hands to work with, my eyes to see with, my lips to speak with, my mind to think  with.   That's the Christian life, to have Christ living in us."
 The barber was silent  a moment. Then he said,  I'd like to be that  sort of a Christian, sir."
 "Do you really mean it?"
 "I do ,  sir!"
 Then will you kneel down here with me and ask the Lord Jesus Christ to  come into your life and do His best in you, for he loves you and gave  Himself for you?"
 They knelt together  and the barber "received Him.":
 "Years have passed since then, " said the Bishop, as he concluded the  story, "and many and many a time when in the neighborhood of Victoria  Station  have I gone into that barber's shop and had a chat with the man  who has been living a happy and consistent Christian life by the power  of the indwelling Spirit of Christ, 'doing his best' by depending on Him
who effectually works in them that believe on His name."