To My Younger Brethren | Page 8

the love and joy of the Holy Ghost in my heart, and, afterwards, on my lips. Further, that I must never depend upon any previous fervour or prayers of mine, but upon God's mercy and Christ's dearly-purchased rights and holy intercession; and cherishing a burning love to Christ and to souls, I must constantly seek for wisdom and gentleness.... Finally, I would guard myself from imagining that I know beforehand what I should say, but go to Christ for every good word I have to speak, even to a child, and submit myself to the Holy Spirit, as the Searcher of hearts, who, knowing the individuals I have to do with, will guide and teach me when, where, and how to speak.
"'Be always following, never going before. It were better to be sick in a tent under a burning sun, and Jesus sitting at the tent door, than to be enchanting a thousand listeners where Jesus was not. Be as a day-labourer only in God's harvest-field, ready to be first among the reapers in the tall corn, or just to sit and sharpen another's sickle. Have an eye to God's honour, and have no honour of your own to have an eye to. Lay it in the dust and leave it there. Never let your inner life get low in your search for the lives of others.'"
I dare to say that this quotation contains no mere "counsels of perfection," but principles which are indispensable for the Minister of Jesus Christ who would be not only reputable, popular, and in the superficial sense of the word successful, but--what his dear Master would have him be for His work. And the blessed spirit it suggests and exemplifies is a thing which cometh not in "but by prayer" and by at least such fasting as takes the shape of a most watchful secret self-discipline. When von Machtholf speaks of "never depending on previous prayers" it is obvious what he means; not that prayer should not precede work, but that nothing should satisfy the worker short of a living and present trust in a living and present Lord. But that trust is the very thing which is developed, and prepared, and matured, in the life of genuine secret intercourse, in which the Lord is dealt with as man dealeth with his friend, and gazed upon and (I may reverently say) studied in His revealed Character, till the disciple does indeed "know whom he has believed," "who He is that he should believe on Him." "My soul shall be satisfied ... when I remember Thee, when I meditate on Thee, in the night watches," [2 Tim. i. 12; John ix. 36; Ps. lxiii. 5, 6.] aye, and in the Morning Watch also.
URGENT PRESENT NEED TO MAINTAIN SECRET DEVOTION.
I know not how to get away from this subject; not only because of its intense connexion with the most blissful experiences of the believing soul, but because of its unspeakably important bearing on the work of the Ministry, the Ministry of our own time and of my reader's own generation. Never was there a period when the cry for enterprize and practical energy was louder; and God knows there is occasion enough for the cry, and for the answering resolve. But never was there a time when the need was greater to distinguish true from false secrets of energy, and to be content with nothing short of the deepest and most divine as our ultimate secret. Do you not well know what I mean? Is there not far and wide in the "Christian world"--I do not speak now of the exterior regions of avowed scepticism or indifference--a tendency to merge the whole idea of religion in that of philanthropic benevolence, and thereby to draw inevitably the idea of philanthropy downward in the end into its least noble manifestations? Is it not a fashionable thing to regard the Christian Ministry, for example, as a useful and ready mechanism with which to work out the social and sanitary amelioration of the lives of the multitude, and so to take him to be the best qualified Clergyman who is, perhaps, the most "muscular" of Christians, or the cleverest at the invention or superintendence of recreations on a large scale, or the quickest student and exponent of the principles or theories of political economy, or possibly of socialistic enterprize? But all this may leave entirely out the very life-blood of what the New Testament means by the Gospel of the grace of God; and in many, many cases it does entirely leave it out.
*"NATURALISM" IN CHRISTIAN WORK.
A conception of "Church work" is widely entertained, and thought to be adequate, out of which is practically dropped all the mystery, and all the mercy; above all, the work and message of the atoning