IT matters not from what cause we suffer, whether inability on the part of brethren, or parsimoniousness, we must bear hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, suffer and toil on, for we shall reap if we faint not. We must not raise up a money-loving and worldly people; and in order to this end we must not be money-loving preachers, nor worldly men ourselves. This is our security against the evil of covetousness.
We do not believe the Lord will accept meeting in two or three conventions in a year, and making three or four contributions and a few speeches for missionary work. We must have more telling evangelizing than this. This kind of work is demoralizing the brethren and drying up all the veins of generosity in them. We shall have more and more dying churches till we change our course and go out into the field as we did thirty-five and forty years ago, and hunt up these churches and wake them up. We must not live with the idea of sending some one to them, but we must go to them; and they must not be helpless creatures, and think to support those who go to their relief by relating their stories about their being few and poor, but do according to their ability, and not let the preacher who visits them sacrifice more than a dozen of them, and they only do their little occasionally, and he making his sacrifices every meeting. This will not stand in the day of judgment.
[HOW A PREACHER MAY STAND FAIR.]
ALL we have to do to stand right before the people, is to be sound in heart, in the faith, in the life; true to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; honest and faithful in the whole matter; maintaining, defending, advocating it, as the only divine and gracious system for the salvation of a lost world; enforcing it on men for its own sake, and for the sake of humanity. Our safety is not in a tribunal of learned men, who are censors for us, but in the judgment of an intelligent and enlightened brotherhood. They render no hasty judgment and make no uncertain decisions. They do not anathematize nor hate any man. They do not pronounce on a man for a single utterance or an inadvertence. But when a man becomes perverse, his general course and bearing evincing alienation, and a disposition to be in the wrong—an aversion to the good, the true and the faithful—they begin to lose their interest in him. Every step he takes in the wrong direction lessens the affection for him in the hearts of the people of God, till he finds himself cut off, if not literally by the action of a church, that which is equally as fatal, the general turning away from him, and utter failure in any sense to support him.
May we all maintain soundness in the faith, in the gospel, integrity to it, faithfulness to it in all things, soundness in character, purity and holiness. May we strive to live nearer and still nearer to God.