No love to give, no soul to save."
But now I must call your attention to his Sermon on the Mount. This is the most instructive, truth-abounding and love-abounding sermon the world has ever heard. It is a summary of the love, the truth, the purity of heart, the humility of soul, the poverty of spirit, the hungering and thirsting for righteousness, the forgiveness, the charity, the meekness of the true child of God. Hence our blessed Lord says right at the close: "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock." I want to tell you right here that Jesus fulfilled every jot and tittle of its truth in all its varied and minute applications, in the pure and holy life he lived on earth. He thus became the way.
I have sometimes been accosted by others on this wise: "You teach a doctrine of works! You teach that people must do so and so to be saved. I understand the Word to teach that Christians are saved by faith without works." I have occasionally answered such accusations, I fear, perhaps, in not the true spirit of meekness, by retorting that if some professing Christians are ever saved at all it will surely be without any works on their part. But usually, when I am rightly at myself, or better, when my heart is with the Lord, both in answering and preaching, I say, We as Brethren believe and teach that "faith without works is dead." All good works are done in faith. And no man can believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with his heart, without loving him; because faith is a loving acceptance of all the truth revealed by the Lord to man. Our heartfelt reception of that truth leads to obedience, and obedience is good works. For "by works faith is made perfect." When he says: "This do, and thou shalt live," he does not lose sight of the loving faith in which it is to be done. When he says: "So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify"—you? No!—"your Father, which is in heaven." It is by good works, then, that we are to glorify our Father which is in heaven.
Again to the Sermon on the Mount. I told you a while ago that this sermon sets forth the living way, or the living Christ. All the parables and miracles aim at nothing higher than to prepare the minds and hearts of the people to do, in an enlightened way, the things commanded and taught in that wonderful sermon. Obedience to all the ordinances of God's house is but a showing to the life and in the life that meekness, that state of heart purity, that forgiveness, that charity or brotherly love, that heavenly mindedness, which shine forth in clear light there. But all the good there is in that sermon consists in the doing of it. I may think of loving my enemy, and of praying for him, and of forgiving him, but will the thought avail anything, unless I carry my thought out in the acts of my life? Our Lord prayed for his enemies even on the cross. They had nailed him there, so unjustly too; but in the anguish of his distress he said: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do."
One thought more, and I will close. We must not forget that the Lord, by his Holy Spirit, is the life of the way. Of ourselves, and left to ourselves, we could never enter the way. Without the Lord's power in us through his Holy Spirit we can do nothing. This great truth in its fullness, accepted and believed in the heart, is the highest attainment in faith that man is capable of. The deeper and warmer our love for the Lord is, the clearer and stronger our faith grows; and the clearer and stronger our faith is in him, the firmer are our assurances that he is our life. We feel so free, so at liberty to do just what we will, either good or bad, that the truth of our absolute dependence upon God for every good affection and thought, for every good motive and its attainment, is a lesson we are slow to learn. Peter had not learned this lesson when, confident in his own strength, he declared that he would not forsake the Lord. It is this sense of our own weakness that leads us to pray. Prayer must proceed from the heart. Otherwise it is not prayer, but a mere form of words. The Lord will never help any one spiritually who does not feel the need of divine help. Saul was struck down when the divine light flashed upon him with a radiance above the brightness of the sun; but that light only blinded him. The Lord then sent Ananias to inquire in the house of Judas in Damascus for one called Saul of Tarsus: "For," said he, "behold he prayeth." Without this prayer Saul would nevermore have seen anything. This prayer was the opening of his heart to do the will of the Lord, for in it he said: "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" I need only add here that the very first thing he was commanded to do was: "Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord."
Sunday, November 5. The two brethren had meeting at Isaac Shobe's and stayed all night at Jacob Bargdoll's. On
Monday, November 6, they had morning meeting at Isaac Dasher's, and night meeting at Nimrod Judy's, where they stay all night.
Tuesday, November 7. They dine at William Hevner's in Brock's Gap, and reach home in the evening.
The editor is making these transcripts from the Diary January 26, 1899; just a little over fifty years after the entries were made. He was then a young man; and the current of life's forces, like a mighty river, has borne him on its bosom over a large part of the territory—especially in the two Virginias—traveled over and preached over and prayed over by our long since sainted brother, Elder John Kline. He lived to see good results from his labors, but they were not strikingly conspicuous. As the Diary shows, now and then a brother, a sister, applies for, and receives baptism at his hands. But we must not overlook the truth that he was breaking the ice of indifference to all the claims of religion in the minds and hearts of these people. He was the very first minister in the Brotherhood to begin and carry on what may be called an aggressive effort to spread a knowledge of gospel truth through the present counties of Pendleton, Hardy, Grant, Hampshire, Mineral, Randolph and Pocahontas in what is now West Virginia. Other active and able ministers of that day, a few of whom I will here name, all living in the Shenandoah Valley, would cheerfully go with him; but he led the way. Those whose names I will give were Benjamin Bowman, Daniel Miller, Abraham Flory, Isaac Long, father of the very excellent and able preacher Isaac Long, Jr., Martain Miller, brother of Daniel; John Harshbarger, and a little later on Jacob Wine and Christian Wine. These are all gone to the heavenly shore, to live in the paradise of God. But their works do follow them. They follow them, and will follow them to the end of time, in the form of new houses of worship erected by a largely increased and increasing membership; by an increase of enlightened piety, as exemplified in its possessors by their nonconformity to the world and their attendance upon the ordinances of God's house. Here, however, we see only the beginning of the good fruits from their sowings. The records of the book of life; the palms; the white robes and crowns; the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb will better tell than we ever can here the exceeding preciousness and excellence of their works.
Thursday, December 7. Perform the marriage ceremony of Benjamin Wampler and Anna Driver at Mother Wampler's; also the marriage ceremony of Eli Summers and Sophia Frank.