Then, further, the second qualification for successful labor is power to get the truth home to the heart.
Not to deliver it! I wish the word had never been coined in connection with Christian work. "Deliver" it, indeed—that is not in the Bible! No, no; not deliver it; but drive it home—send it in—make it felt. That is your work;—not merely to say it—not quietly and gently to put it before the people. Here is just the difference between a self-consuming, soul-burdened, Holy Ghost, successful ministry, and a careless, happy-go-lucky, easy sort of thing, that just rolls it out like a lesson, and goes home, holding itself in no way responsible for the consequences. Here is all the difference, either in public or individual labor. God has made you responsible, not for delivering the truth, but for GETTING IT IN—getting it home, fixing it in the conscience as a red-hot iron, as a bolt, straight from His throne; and He has placed at your disposal the power to do it, and if you do not do it, blood will be on your skirts! Oh! this genteel way of putting the truth! How God hates it! "If you please, dear friends, will you listen? If you please, will you be converted? Will you come to Jesus? or shall we read just this, that, and the other?"—no more like apostolic preaching than darkness is like light.
God says, "GO AND DO IT: compel them to come in. That is your work. I have nothing to do with the measures by which you do it providing they are lawful."
"Use just the same diligence, earnestness, and determination that you would if you were resolutely set on any human project, and always be sure that I will be with you to the end of the world. Never doubt My presence when you are set on My business. I will be with you, and I will succeed you." Do it—the Lord help us to get the truth home!
This was the way with Paul, and this was the way with Jesus. Paul says: "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Oh! what a beautiful insight this gives us into the ministry. Why do you persuade men, Paul? "Because I know the terror of the Lord that is coming on, and because we thus judge that, if One died for all, then were all dead. Therefore, I persuade men." He did not give up when he had put it before them. He carried them on his heart, and he says, "That by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears." He wept it in, as well as drove it in, with his logic, and his eloquence, and with the power of the Holy Ghost in him. Make it go in—make your words felt; don't talk to them in that sickly, languid way that makes no impression—make them know it. If you have not enough of the Holy Ghost for this, go to your closet till you have, and then come and drive the Word home to their conscience as a two-edged sword, dividing asunder soul and spirit.
The second thing indispensible to success is simplicity:—naturalness in putting the truth.
You have not only to get it home, but, in order to do this, give it them simply and naturally. If I were asked to put into one word what I consider the greatest obstacle to the success of Divine Truth, even when uttered by sincere and real people, I should say, stiffness. It seems as if people, the moment they come to religion, assume a different tone, a different look, and manner—short, become unnatural.
People sometimes come to me and say, "Oh! I would give the world to be natural, but I have got into this way of talking to people. It seems as though I cannot be natural. Can you help me?" I say, "Yes, I can help you, by this advice—Determine, by the help of God, that you will break the neck of this bondage. I will tell you how to begin. Begin with your family. Break off right in the middle of conversation on earthly matters, and begin to talk about their souls, or your own experience, or drop down on your knees, and begin to pray." "Oh! but it would be such a break." It should not be a break to talk to your Father. If you are in the spirit of it there will be no break. This will help you, more than anything else. Determine that you will overcome this sanctimoniousness, which is the curse of a great deal of the religion of this day. We want SANCTIFIED HUMANITY, not sanctimoniousness. You want to talk to your friends in the same way about religion, as you talk about earthly things. If a friend is in difficulties, and he comes to you, you do not begin talking in a circumlocutory manner about the general principles on which men can secure prosperity, and the sad mistakes of those who have not secured it; you come straight to the point, and, if you feel for him, you take him by the button-hole, or put your hand in his, and say, "My dear fellow, I am very sorry for you; is there any way in which I can help you?" If you have a friend afflicted with a fatal malady, and you see it, and he does not, you don't begin to descant on the power of disease and the way people may secure health, but you say, "My dear fellow, I am afraid this hacking cough is more serious than you think, and that flush on your cheek is a bad sign. I am afraid you are ill—let me counsel you to seek advice." That is the way people talk about earthly things. Now, do exactly so about spiritual things. If your friend is a spiritual bankrupt, tell him so. Tell him where he is going, and that the reckoning day is coming, and that he will be in God's prison-house very soon, and that, if the creditor once gets hold of him, and shuts him up, he will never get out till he has paid the uttermost farthing. If your friend has a spiritual disease, tell him so, and deal just as straight and earnestly with him as you would about his body. Tell him you are praying for him, and the very concern that he reads in your eyes, will wake him up, and he will begin to think it is time he was concerned about himself. Try to attain this simple, easy, natural way of appealing to people about their souls. I believe if all real Christians would attain this, and act upon it, this country would be shaken from end to end!
Thirdly, you must be in earnest—desperate, I would like to say.
And, indeed, friends, settle this as a truth, that you will never make any other soul realize the verities of eternal things, any further than you realize them yourself. You will beget in the soul of your hearer, exactly the degree of realization which the Spirit of God gives to you, and no more; therefore, if you are in a dreamy, cosy, half-asleep condition, you will only beget the same kind of realization in the souls who hear you. You must be wide awake, quick, alive, feeling deeply in sympathy with the truth you utter, or it will produce no result.