An All-Round Ministry: Addresses to Ministers and Students

AN ALL-ROUND MINISTRY: ADDRESSES TO MINISTERS AND STUDENTS

..................

Charles Spurgeon

SCRIPTURA PRESS

Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.

This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.

All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

Copyright © 2015 by Charles Spurgeon

Interior design by Pronoun

Distribution by Pronoun

TABLE OF CONTENTS

An All-Round Ministry: Addresses to Ministers and Students

Chapter 1: Faith

Chapter 2: Forward!

Chapter 3: Individuality, and Its Opposite

Chapter 4: How To Meet the Evils of the Age

Chapter 5: A New Departure

Chapter 6: Light. Fire. Faith. Life. Love.

Chapter 7: Strength in Weakness

Chapter 8: What We Would Be*

Chapter 9: Stewards

Chapter 10: The Evils of the Present Time, and Our Object, Necessities, and Encouragements*

Chapter 11: The Preacher’s Power, and the Conditions of Obtaining It

Chapter 12: The Minister in These Times

An All-Round Ministry: Addresses to Ministers and Students

By

Charles Spurgeon

An All-Round Ministry: Addresses to Ministers and Students

Published by Scriptura Press

New York City, NY

First published 1890

Copyright © Scriptura Press, 2015

All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

About Scriptura Press

Scriptura Press is a Christian company that makes Christian works available and affordable to all. We are a non-denominational publishing group that shares the teachings of the Scripture, whether in the form of sermons or histories of the Church.

AN ALL-ROUND MINISTRY: ADDRESSES TO MINISTERS AND STUDENTS

..................

CHAPTER 1: FAITH

..................

NOW THAT THE TIME HAS come for me to address you, my beloved brethren, may God Himself speak through me to you!

The subject which I have selected for this address is FAITH. As believers in Jesus, we are all of us of the pedigree of faith. Two lines of descent claim the covenant heritage. There is the line of nature, human efforts, and works, headed by Ishmael, the son of Hagar. We own no kindred there. We know that the highest position to which the child of the flesh can attain will only end in the command, Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. We, brethren, are children of the promise, born not after the flesh, nor according to the energy of nature, but by the power of God. We trace our new birth not to blood, nor to the will of the flesh, nor to the will of man, but to God alone. We owe our conversion neither to the reasoning of the logician nor to the eloquence of the orator, neither to our natural betterness nor to our personal efforts; we are, as Isaac was, the children of God’s power according to the promise.

Now, to us the covenant belongs, for it has been decided—and the apostle has declared the decision in the name of God,—that to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. . . . And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.—Galatians 3:16, 29. We are altogether saved by faith. The brightest day that ever dawned upon us was the day in which we first looked unto Him, and were lightened. It was all dark till faith beheld the Sun of Righteousness. The dawn of faith was to us the morning of life; by faith only we began to live. We have since then walked by faith. Whenever we have been tempted to step aside from the path of faith, we have been like the foolish Galatians, and we have smarted for our folly. I trust we have not suffered so many things in vain.—Galatians 3:4. We began in the Spirit, and if we have sought to be made perfect in the flesh, we have soon discovered ourselves to be sailing upon the wrong tack, and nearing sunken rocks. The just shall live by faith, is a truth which has worked itself out in our experience, for often and often have we felt that, in any other course, death stares us in the face; and, therefore, we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.—Galatians 5:5.

Now, brethren, as our pedigree is of faith, and our claim to the privileges of the covenant is of faith, and our life in its beginning and continuance is all of faith, so may I boldly say that our ministry is of faith, too. We are heralds to the sons of men, not of the law of Sinai, but of the love of Calvary. We come to them, not with the command, This do, and thou shalt live, but with the message, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Ours is the ministry of gracious faith, and is not after man, nor according to the law of a carnal commandment. We preach not man’s merit, but Christ crucified.

The object of our preaching, as well as its doctrine, is faith; for we reckon that we have done nothing for sinners until, by the power of the Holy Ghost, we bring them to faith; and we only reckon that our preaching is useful to saints as we see them increase in faith. As faith is in our hand the power with which we sow, and as the seed we sow is received by us by faith, and steeped in faith, so the harvest for which we look is to see faith springing up in the furrows of men’s hearts to the praise and glory of God.

Interwoven, therefore, with our entire spiritual life, and with all our ministerial work, is the doctrine and grace of faith; and, therefore, we must be very clear upon it,—that is a small business; we must be very strong in it,—that is the great matter. On that topic I will speak to you, praying earnestly that we may every one of us be, like Abraham, strong in faith, giving glory to God, and, like Stephen, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost.

Our work especially requires faith. If we fail in faith, we had better not have undertaken it; and unless we obtain faith commensurate with the service, we shall soon grow weary of it. It is proven by all observation that success in the Lord’s service is very generally in proportion to faith. It certainly is not in proportion to ability, nor does it always run parallel with a display of zeal; but it is invariably according to the measure of faith, for this is a law of the Kingdom without exception, According to your faith be it unto you. It is essential, then, that we should have faith if we are to be useful, and that we should have great faith if we are to be greatly useful. For many other reasons besides usefulness,—namely, even for our being able to hold our own against the enemies of the truth, and for ability to stand against the temptations which surround our office,—it is imperative upon us that we should have abundant confidence in the living God. We, above all men, need the mountain-moving faith, by which, in the old time, men of God subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

One of the brethren observed, at last night’s meeting, that I confirmed you in the habit of saying, firstly, secondly, and thirdly. I must plead guilty to the charge, and follow the same method still; for I judge it to be no fault, but a practice helpful to the speaker in the arrangement and recollection of his thoughts, and profitable to the hearer in the remembrance of the sermon. We may risk being formal when to be formal is to be useful. Though not to be slavishly followed, the custom of announcing divisions in a discourse may be generally maintained, and we will maintain it, at any rate, today.

I. I mean first to speak, concerning faith, under the head of this question,—WHEREIN AND UPON WHAT MATTERS HAVE WE, AS MINISTERS, FAITH, OR GREAT NEED OF IT?

First, we have faith in God. We believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. We do not believe in the powers of nature operating of themselves apart from constant emanations of power from the Great and Mighty One, who is the Sustainer as well as the Creator of all things. Far be it from us to banish God from His own universe. Neither do we believe in a merely nominal deity, as those do who make all things to be God, for we conceive pantheism to be only another form of atheism. We know the Lord as a distinct personal existence, a real God, infinitely more real than the things which are seen and handled, more real even than ourselves, for we are but shadows, He alone is the I AM, abiding the same for ever and ever.

We believe in a God of purposes and plans, who has not left a blind fate to tyrannize over the world, much less an aimless chance to rock it to and fro. We are not fatalists, neither are we doubters of providence and predestination. We are believers in a God who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. We do not conceive of the Lord as having gone away from the world, and left it and the inhabitants thereof to themselves; we believe in Him as continually presiding in all the affairs of life. We, by faith, perceive the hand of the Lord giving to every blade of grass its own drop of dew, and to every young raven its meat. We see the present power of God in the flight of every sparrow, and hear His goodness in the song of every lark. We believe that the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; and we go forth into it, not as into the domains of Satan where light comes not, nor into a chaos where rule is unknown, nor into a boiling sea where fate’s resistless billows shipwreck mortals at their will; but we walk boldly on, having God within us and around us, living and moving and having our being in Him, and so, by faith, we dwell in a temple of providence and grace wherein everything doth speak of His glory. We believe in a present God wherever we may be, and a working and operating God accomplishing His own purposes steadfastly and surely in all matters, places, and times; working out His designs as much in what seemeth evil as in that which is manifestly good; in all things driving on in His eternal chariot towards the goal which infinite wisdom has chosen, never slackening His pace nor drawing the rein, but for ever, according to the eternal strength that is in Him, speeding forward without pause. We believe in this God as being faithful to everything that He has spoken, a God who can neither lie nor change. The God of Abraham is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and He is our God this day. We do not believe in the ever-shifting views of the Divine Being which differing philosophies are adopting; the God of the Hebrews is our God,—Jehovah, Jah, the Mighty One, the covenant-keeping God,—this God is our God for ever and ever: He will be our Guide even unto death.

Whether we be fools or not thus to believe in God, the world shall know one day; and whether it be more reasonable to believe in nature, or in powers that operate of themselves, or to believe in nothing, than it is to believe in a self-existent Being, we shall leave eternity to decide. Meanwhile, to us, faith in God is not only a necessity of reason, but the fruit of a child-like instinct which tarries not to justify itself by arguments, being born in us with our regenerate nature itself.

Next to this, our faith most earnestly and intensely fixes itself upon the Christ of God. We trust in Jesus; we believe all that inspired history says concerning Him; not making a myth of Him, or His life, but taking it as a matter of fact that God dwelt in very deed among men in human flesh, and that an atonement was really and truly offered by the Incarnate God upon the cross of Calvary. Yet, to us, the Lord Jesus Christ is not alone a Savior of the past. We believe that He ascended up on high, and led captivity captive, and that He ever liveth to make intercession for them that come unto God by Him. I saw, in the cathedral at Turin, a very remarkable sight, namely, the pretended graveclothes of the Lord Jesus Christ, which are devoutly worshipped by crowds of Romanists. I could not help observing, as I gazed upon these relics, that the ensigns of the death of Christ were all of Him that the Romish Church possessed. They may well show the true cross, for they crucify Him afresh; they may well pray in His sepulchre, for He is not there, or in their Church; and they may well claim His graveclothes, for they know only a dead Christ. But, beloved brethren, our Christ is not dead, neither has He fallen asleep; He still walks among the golden candlesticks, and holds the stars in His right hand.

Our faith in Jesus is most real. We believe in those dear wounds of His as we believe in nothing else; there is no fact so sure to us as that He was slain, and He has redeemed us to God by His blood. We believe in the brightness of His glory; for nothing seems to us so necessarily true as that He who was obedient unto death should, as His due reward, be crowned with glory and honor. For this reason, also, we believe in a real Christ yet to come, a second time, in like manner as He went up into Heaven; and, though we may not enquire minutely into times and seasons, yet we are looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, at which time we expect the manifestation of the sons of God, and the rising of their bodies from the tomb. Christ Jesus is no fiction to us; and, with Dr. Watts, we sing,—

"While Jews on their own law rely,

And Greeks of wisdom boast,

We love th’ incarnate mystery,

And there we fix our trust."

We have an equal confidence, beloved brethren, in the Holy Spirit. We unfeignedly believe in His Deity and personality. We speak of His influences, because He has influences, but we do not forget that He is a Person from whom those influences stream; we believe in His offices, for He has offices, but we rejoice in the Person who fills them, and makes them effectual for our good. Devoutly would each one of us say, I believe in the Holy Ghost. Yet, my brethren, do you believe in the Holy Ghost? Yes, you say unanimously, spontaneously, and emphatically. Yes, say I also; but be not grieved if I ask you yet again if you verily and indeed believe in Him; for there is a believing and a believing. There is a believing which I have concerning a man, for which I may have but slender grounds, and upon which I would not risk a single penny of my substance; but it is another form of believing in a man when I feel that I could trust my very life with him, being assured that he would be true to me, and prove both an able and a willing helper. Have we such a reliance upon the Holy Ghost? Do we believe that, at this moment, He can clothe us with power, even as He did the apostles at Pentecost? Do we believe that, under our preaching, by His energy a thousand might be born in a day? If we all so believe, we are happy to be in such an assembly, for the majority of Christians, if under one sermon even a dozen persons were to cry out, What must we do to be saved? would exclaim exactly as the unbelieving Jews did, These men are full of new wine. They would condemn the whole transaction as the result of dangerous excitement; they would never imagine it to be of the Lord. For this reason, I mournfully conclude that there is not, in the Church, such a belief in the Holy Ghost as there ought to be; and yet, as certainly as we hear the voice which saith, Power belongeth unto God; as surely as we hear the Divine voice of the Son, saying, Ye believe in God, believe also in Me; so truly does the third Person of the blessed Trinity claim our loving confidence, and woe be unto us if we vex Him by our unbelief! When we have a full faith in the Triune God, then shall we be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.

Beside this, dear brethren, you and I believe in the doctrines of the gospel. We have received the certainties of revealed truth. These are things which are verily believed among us. We do not bow down before men’s theories of truth, nor do we admit that theology consists in views and opinions. We declare that there are certain verities,—essential, abiding, eternal,—from which it is ruinous to swerve. I am deeply grieved to hear so many ministers talk as if the truth of God were a variable quantity, a matter of daily formation, a nose of wax to be constantly reshaped, a cloud driven by the wind. So do not I believe! I have been charged with being a mere echo of the Puritans, but I had rather be the echo of truth, than the voice of falsehood. It may be want of intellect which prevents our departing from the good old way; but even this is better than want of grace, which lies at the bottom of men’s perpetual chopping and changing of their beliefs. Rest assured that there is nothing new in theology except that which is false; and that the facts of theology are today what they were eighteen hundred years ago.

But, in these days, the self-styled men of progress, who commenced with preaching the gospel, degenerate as they advance, and their divinity, like the snail, melts as it proceeds. I hope it will never be so with any of us. I have likened the career of certain divines to the journey of a Roman wine-cask from the vineyard to the city. It starts from the wine-press as the pure juice of the grape; but, at the first halting-place, the drivers of the cart must needs quench their thirst; and when they come to a fountain, they substitute water for the wine which they have drunk. In the next village, there are numbers of lovers of wine who beg or buy a little, and the discreet carrier dilutes it again. The watering is again and again repeated, till, on its entrance into Rome, the fluid is remarkably different from that which originally started from the vineyard. There is a way of doctoring the gospel in much the same manner. A little truth is given up, and then a little more, and men fill up the vacuum with opinions, inferences, speculations, and dreams, till their wine is mixed with water, and the water none of the best. Many preachers—and I speak it with sorrow,—have built a tower of theological speculations, upon which they sit, like Nero, fiddling the tune of their own philosophy while the world is burning with sin and misery. They are playing with the toys of speculation while men’s souls are being lost.

Much of human wisdom is a mere coverlet for the absence of vital godliness. I went into railway carriages, of the first class in Italy, which were lined with very pretty crochet-work, and I thought the voyagers were highly honored, since no doubt some delicate fingers had sumptuously furnished the cars for them; but I soon discovered that the crochet-work was simply put on to cover the grease and dirt of the cloth. A great deal of very pretty sentimentalism and religiousness that is now preached is a mere crochet-work covering for detestable heresies long since disproved, which dared not appear again without a disguise for their hideousness. With words of human wisdom, and speculations of their own invention, men disguise falsehood, and deceive many. Be it ours to give to the people what God gives to us. Be ye each of you as Micaiah, who declared, As the Lord liveth, what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak. If it be folly to keep to what we find in Scripture, and if it be madness to believe in verbal inspiration, we purpose to remain fools to the end of the chapter, and hope to be among the foolish things of the world which God hath chosen to confound the wise, that no flesh should glory in His presence.

Brethren, our faith also, resting upon the doctrines of the gospel and upon the God of the gospel, embraces the power of prayer. We believe in the prevalence of supplication. I am afraid that this belief is going out of fashion in the so-called Christian world. The theory of some is, that prayer is useful to ourselves, but that it cannot be operative upon God; and much is said about the impossibility of the Divine purposes being changed, and the utter unlikelihood of a finite being affecting God by his cries. We also hold that the purposes of God are not changed; but what if prayer be a part of His purpose, and what if He ordains that His people should pray when He intends to give them blessings? Prayer is one of the necessary wheels of the machinery of providence. The offering of prayer is as operative in the affairs of the world, and the production of events, as the rise of dynasties or the fall of nations. We believe that God in very truth hearkens to the voices of men.

For my own part, if anyone should say to me now, God does not hear prayer; such a notion is a piece of superstition; I should reply to him, Nay, sir, but with you I have no argument at all. The whole question is a personal one which concerns my own character,—am I an honest man or no? If I am a truth-speaking person, my testimony is worth receiving; and I solemnly declare that the Lord has heard and answered my prayers scores and hundreds of times, and that the answers have come so often and so singularly that they could not have been mere coincidences. I should not argue beyond this point, Unless you are prepared to make me out to be a liar, you are as much bound to believe facts which I affirm that I have witnessed as I am to believe anything which you solemnly assert to be true.

Brethren, we ought not always to profess our ability to prove Scriptural truths to ungodly men, for many of those truths lie outside the region of their understanding. I should not try to prove to a blind man that the grass is green and the sky is blue, because he can have no idea of the proposition which I am proving. Argument in such a case is folly on both sides. To us, at any rate, prayer is no vain thing. We go to our chambers alone, believing that we are transacting high and real business when we pray. We do not bow the knee merely because it is a duty, and a commendable spiritual exercise; but because we believe that, into the ear of the eternal God, we speak our wants, and that His ear is linked with a heart feeling for us, and a hand working on our behalf. To us, true prayer is true power.

One other point, which I believe is essential to a minister’s faith, is that we believe in our own commission to preach the gospel. If any brother here is not assured of his call to the ministry, let him wait till he is sure of it. He who doubts as to whether he is sent of God, goes hesitatingly; but he who is certain of his call from above demands and commands an audience; he does not apologize for his existence, or for his utterances; but he quits himself like a man, and boldly speaks God’s truth in the Name of the Lord. He has a message to deliver which he must deliver, for woe is unto him unless he preaches the gospel! In the face of the Ritualists, who boast that they alone have the apostolical succession, we declare that ours is the true commission, and that their claim is false. We are not afraid to submit our claims to the test which the Lord Himself has appointed, By their fruits ye shall know them. We believe that God has anointed us to preach the gospel, and we do preach it; but who will testify that these priests even so much as know the gospel? Under our word, the Spirit of God regenerates men, but He does not so work through these pretenders. They do not even comprehend what regeneration is, but confound it with a ceremonial aspersion. Our gospel satisfies the heart, renews the nature, comforts the soul; but can these pretenders do so with their enchantments? If they be apostles, let them show us their signs. We claim to be the Lord’s ministers, and our epistles of commendation are written upon many hearts.

Now, having detailed the great points of our faith, let me say, brethren, we believe, hence, on account of all this, that, notwithstanding the slenderness of our stores, the Great Shepherd of the sheep will grant us an all-sufficiency with which to feed His people. Believing in God All-sufficient, we expect to see our loaves and fishes multiplied; consequently, we do not lay by in store, but deal out at this present all that we have. I saw in Rome a fountain, which represented a man holding a barrel, out of which a copious stream of water was perpetually running. There never was much at any one time in that marble barrel, and yet it has continued to yield a stream for four or five hundred years. So let us pour forth from our very soul all that the Lord imparts to us. For twenty years and more, I have told out all I know, and have run dry every time, and yet my heart still bubbles up with a good matter. I know some brethren in the ministry who are comparable to the great tun of Heidelberg for capacity, and yet the people do not receive so much gospel truth from them as from preachers of very inferior capacity who have formed the habit of giving out all they have. We believe that the Spirit of God will be in us a well of water springing up unto everlasting life, and we act according to that conviction. We do not expect to have much goods laid up for many years; but, as we live by daily bread, so upon continually new supplies do we feed our people. Away with the musty, worm-breeding stores of old manna, and let us look up day by day for a fresh supply!

Brethren, our faith discerns upon our side unseen agency. While we are at work, God also is at work. We do not reckon that the forces engaged upon our side are confined to the pulpit; we know that, all the week long, God is, by care, and affliction, and trouble, and sometimes by joy and consolation, making the people ready to receive what He has charged us to teach them. We look upon our congregations, and perhaps are ready to cry in our unbelief, Master, what shall we do? but our eyes are opened, and we see horses of fire and chariots of fire round about the prophet of the Lord; mysterious agencies are cooperating with the ministry of grace. When the Mont Cenis Tunnel was being made, a party of engineers worked from the Italian side for six years, and expected at the end of that period to see an open roadway through the mountain. They knew that the work would take, at the rate they were going, twelve years at least, and yet they knew it would be completed in six years, because there was another party, on the French side, working to meet them; and, accordingly, in due time they met to an inch. I cannot understand these miracles of engineering, and do not know how two tunnelling parties manage to meet each other in the heart of an Alp; neither do I know how the Lord’s work in men’s consciences will fit in with mine, but I am quite sure it will, and, therefore, in faith, I go on working with all my might.

Faith leads us to believe in difficulties being overruled to promote success. Because we believe in God, and in His Holy Spirit, we believe that difficulties will be greatly sanctified to us, and that they are only placed before us as stepping-stones to grander results. We believe in defeats, my brethren; we believe in going back with the banner trailed in the mire, persuaded that this may be the surest way to lasting triumph. We believe in waiting, weeping, and agonizing; we believe in a non-success which prepares us for doing greater and higher work, for which we should not have been fitted unless anguish had sharpened our soul. We believe in our infirmities, and even glory in them; we thank God that we are not so eloquent as we could wish to be, and have not all the abilities we might desire, because now we know that the excellency of the power shall be of God, and not of us. Faith enables us so to rejoice in the Lord that our infirmities become platforms for the display of His grace. Brethren, we believe that even our enemies shall, in God’s hands, subserve our highest interests; they are yoked to the car of God. Perhaps, of all the powers which effect the Divine purposes in the world, no one does more than the devil himself. He is but a scullion in the Eternal’s kitchen; he unwillingly performs much work to which the Lord would not put His own children, work which is just as needful as that which seraphim perform. Believe not that evil is a rival power of equal potency with the good God. No, sin and death are, like the Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Divine purposes; and, though they know it not, when the Lord’s enemies rave and rage most, they fulfil His eternal purposes to the praise of the glory of His wisdom and grace.

Further, brethren, we believe in the gospel as God’s power to save. We know that, for every case of spiritual sickness, we have an infallible cure; we need not say to any man, We have no good news from God for you. We believe that there is a way of getting at all hearts. There is a joint in every sinner’s harness, though he be an Ahab, and we may draw the bow hopefully, praying the Lord to direct the arrow through it. If we believe in God, nothing can be too hard or too heavy for us. If I believe only in myself, I feel that a hardened sinner may refuse to listen to my reasoning, and may not be moved by my affectionate address; but if I believe in the Holy Ghost, I feel that He can win a hearing, and carry conviction to the conscience. We believe, brethren, in the power of truth. We do not expect truth to be loved by all mankind; we do not expect the gospel to become popular amongst the great and the learned, for we remember that word of the apostle, Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; but we do not believe that the gospel has become decrepit through old age. When the foolish wise men of this age sneer at the old gospel, they render an unconscious homage to its power. We do not believe that our grand castle and defence has tottered and fallen to the ground, because men say it is so. We recollect Rab-shakeh, and how he reviled the Lord, and how, nevertheless, it happened to the king of Assyria even as the Lord said, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return. We have seen enough philosophies go back to the vile dust from whence they sprang, to know that the whole species of them is of the order of Jonah’s gourd. We, therefore, in confidence wait, and in patience bide our time. We are sure of victory ere long.

If our gospel be true, it will yet come to the front, and God will work for us; therefore are we steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. If we do not see souls saved today or tomorrow, we will still work on. Ours is not the unrequited toil of Sisyphus rolling uphill a stone which will rebound upon us, nor that of the daughters of Danaus who sought to fill a bottomless vessel. Our work may no more quickly appear than the islands which the coral insects are building below the blue waves of the Southern sea; but the reef is rising, far down the foundation of the massive structure is laid, and its walls are climbing to the surface. We are laboring for eternity, and we count not our work by each day’s advance, as men measure theirs; it is God’s work, and must be measured by His standard. Be ye well assured that, when time, and things created, and all that oppose themselves to the Lord’s truth, shall be gone, every earnest sermon preached, and every importunate prayer offered, and every form of Christian service honestly rendered, shall remain embedded in the mighty structure which God from all eternity has resolved to raise to His own honor.

II. Now, brethren, our second question will be, WHAT DOES OUR FAITH WORK IN US?

It works in us, first, a glorious independence of man. We are glad of earnest helpers, but we can do without them. We are grateful for our good deacons, but we dare not make flesh our arm. We are very glad if God raises up brethren in other churches who will fraternize with us, but we do not lean upon them. The man who believes in God, and believes in Christ, and believes in the Holy Ghost, will