“I do not think it is right to promise a certain amount,” says one, “we can not tell what we shall be able to give.” Did you hire that man to work on your farm without promising him a “certain amount?” Did you buy that farm that you are in debt for without promising a certain amount? We judge not, and not a small amount at that. Why, then, should men, constantly in the habit of promising certain amounts for everything else, be so cautious about promising the poor preacher of the word of God—the man to whom society is more indebted than any other man, for all that is pure and good, a certain amount to subsist upon while he sojourns in this life?
“I thought you said the preacher should trust to the Lord for his support,” says one? Certainly he should, just as you trust to the Lord for his preaching. You trust to the Lord to enable him to perform his preaching according to arrangements, and he trusts in the Lord that you will be enabled to support him as promised, the same as your hired man trusts in the Lord for what you promised him, or as you trust in the Lord for the products of your farm. Yet the preacher knows not the ability the Lord may give him, nor what amount of money he may need. It may be more or less, but it is not his reward for his labor, but merely his support—or, if you prefer it, his board while he labors for the Lord. But he does not intend to spend the whole reward of his labor in this life, but is laying up a good foundation against the time to come. They are prodigals who run through all their earnings as fast as earned. The Lord does not intend his servants to do this. He gives them a subsistence as they pass along, or money for their expenses, but the main bulk of their wages is laid up in heaven, and can not be estimated by dollars and cents. May God put it into the hearts of the children of God to look to the temporal wants of the young men who have entered this great work.
[SELF-LAUDATION.]
TO see the mere worldling, whether the politician, the lawyer, physician, or whatsoever, an egotist—full of self-laudation—giving himself the glory for everything good, and acquitting himself from everything evil, is contemptible enough in all conscience. Nothing can sink a man faster in the estimation of sensible men. But in the kingdom of Christ, where all is purely of the grace of God—where none has anything that he did not receive, and where all are held responsible in proportion to the ability that God gives, and where each one has to get down upon his knees, before his holy and perfect Master, and confess his weakness, imperfection, shortcomings, and nothingness in the sight of God, how transcendently ridiculous to see egotism, self-laudation and an effort to glorify the creature in the place of the Creator! And how perfectly incompatible, too, such a spirit with the meek and lowly spirit of Christ and the apostles!
[PREACH CHRIST, NOT OURSELVES.]
PAUL says, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ.” Again, he says, “I determined to make known nothing among you, but Christ and him crucified.” I come not to you with excellency of speech, and the wisdom of men’s words, but with the demonstration of the Holy Spirit and of power. He further asserts that the gospel which he preached, he did not receive from man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Many such expressions are found in the writings of the holy apostles going to show the precaution constantly used by them, lest the glory of Christ should be attributed to them. The very first sentence that escaped the lips of Peter in Solomon’s portico, was to the same effect. “Why look ye so steadfastly upon us, as if by our own power or holiness, this man had been made whole?” He proceeds: “The name of Jesus Christ, through faith in his name, hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all?”