The Visible and Invisible Life.—Men see Christ’s Gospel in us. We are the visible representatives of an Invisible Presence. Thousands read us who never read their Bibles.
Questions.
Is there the same desire for salvation of souls when others preach?
Is there never pleasure in finding others less than ourselves?
Is there real gratification in the progress and success of others?
“Search me, O Lord” (Psalm cxxxix.). “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts.” Lev. xxii. 2: “Profane not,” etc.
“Pardon iniquity of our holy things.” “Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord.”
Pardoned sinners the only witnesses to converting grace.
CHAPTER IX
WORK IN VARIOUS PLACES
Those who knew the subject of this memoir only in his later years were often struck by his physical strength and vigour. Yet from his earliest years and up to middle life there were signs of constitutional delicacy which caused anxiety. On various occasions he was laid by through attacks of illness, and it is plain from passages in his journal that, although physically an athlete, he quite expected that his life would be a short one. But God had other plans for His young servant: true, he was to be disciplined by frequent illnesses—Pakefield had to be resigned in a year owing to delicacy of the chest; his work at Richmond (where he caught smallpox in his parish-visiting), and Holloway, and Ramsgate, was interrupted by periods of ill-health; but these were perhaps the training by which faith was strengthened and spirituality deepened for the great work of middle life, and a hale and saintly old age.