O ever earnest flowers!
That with untiring growth
Shoot up and spread abroad
Your fragrance and your joy,
Teach me your earnest ways,
That mine may be a life of steadfast work and praise.
O ever earnest sea!
Constant in flow and ebb,
Heaving to moon and sun,
Unchanging in thy change,
Teach me thy earnest ways,
That mine may be a life of steadfast work and praise.
HORATIUS BONAR.
3. We should carry earnestness into our religious life.—This above all. There are many who tolerate earnestness in other things, but who look upon it as dangerous in connection with religion. It is regarded as of very questionable value, and spoken of with doubt and suspicion. Let a man become earnest in prayer, earnest in work, or rise in any way above the dead level in which so many are content to rest, and he will be often spoken of in tones of pity, sneered at as a fanatic, or denounced as an impostor. This suspicion with which earnestness in the Church of Christ is often regarded may be accounted for. (a) There has been a vast deal of zeal in the Church about religion which has not been zeal for religion: about matters of ritual, Church government, and the like. (b) Zeal has been often expended in contentions about small points of doctrine; often about those very points which are shrouded in mystery. (c) Zeal has been often manifested in the interest of sect and party rather than of Christ. (d) Zeal has often taken persecution for her ally, and wielded among men the weapons of earthly warfare. For these reasons its appearance in the Church is often regarded as we might regard the erection in a town of a gunpowder magazine which, at any moment, might produce disorder, ruin, and death.
Yet Scripture regards earnestness in religion as essential.—Indifference and lukewarmness it regards as hateful (Rev. iii. 15, 16). It calls us to a solemn choice and to a lifelong service. Its heroes are those who lived in the spirit of Brainerd's prayer, "Oh, that I were a flaming fire in the service of my God." There is an allegory of Luther which may be quoted here. "The devil," he says, "held a great anniversary, at which his emissaries were convened to report the results of their several missions. 'I let loose the wild beasts of the desert,' said one, 'on a caravan of Christians, and their bones are now bleaching on the sands.' 'What of that?' said the devil; 'their souls were all saved.' 'I drove the east wind,' said another, 'against a ship freighted with Christians, and they were all drowned.' 'What of that?' said the devil; 'their souls were all saved.' 'For ten years I tried to get a single Christian asleep,' said a third, 'and I succeeded, and left him so.' Then the devil shouted, and the night stars of hell sang for joy."
There are three spheres of religious life in which earnestness should be specially shown.
1. In prayer.—This is specially inculcated in the two parables of our Lord, the "unjust judge" and "the friend at midnight," and in His own words, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." One, it is said, came to Demosthenes, the great orator, and asked him to plead his cause. He heard him without attention while he told his story without earnestness. The man saw this, and cried out anxiously that it was all true. "Ah!" said Demosthenes, "I believe you now." The earnest prayer is the prevailing prayer.
2. In sacrifice.—This is in all life the test of earnestness. The student giving up time for the acquisition of knowledge; the merchant giving up his hours to the pursuit of business; the explorer braving the heat of the tropics and the cold of the arctic regions in his zeal for discovery. It is the same in religion. We must count all things, with St. Paul, "as loss, that we may win Christ, and be found in Him."
3. In impressing others.—It is "out of the heart that the mouth speaketh," and power to impress others is given only to those who do so with a full heart, and who are consumed with a burning zeal for the salvation of souls. These are they whom God has, in all ages, blessed in the conversion of men.