The century plant is wonderfully suggestive and wonderfully beautiful, but I never look at it without thinking of its parsimony. It lets whole generations go by before it puts forth one blossom; so I have really more heartfelt admiration when I see the dewy tears in the blue eyes of the violets, for they come every spring. My Christian friends, time is going by so rapidly that we can not afford to be idle.
A recent statistician says that human life now has an average of only thirty-two years. From these thirty-two years you must subtract all the time you take for sleep and the taking of food and recreation; that will leave you about sixteen years. From those sixteen years you must subtract all the time that you are necessarily engaged in the earning of a livelihood; that will leave you about eight years. From those eight years you must take all the days and weeks and months—all the length of time that is passed in childhood and sickness, leaving you about one year in which to work for God. Oh, my soul, wake up! How darest thou sleep in harvest-time and with so few hours in which to reap? So that I state it as a simple fact that all the time that the vast majority of you will have for the exclusive service of God will be less than one year!
"But," says some man, "I liberally support the Gospel, and the church is open and the Gospel is preached: all the spiritual advantages are spread before men, and if they want to be saved, let them come to be saved; I have discharged all my responsibility." Ah! is that the Master's spirit? Is there not an old Book somewhere that commands us to go out into the highways and the hedges and compel the people to come in? What would have become of you and me if Christ had not come down off the hills of heaven, and if He had not come through the door of the Bethlehem caravansary, and if He had not with the crushed hand of the crucifixion knocked at the iron gate of the sepulcher of our spiritual death, crying, "Lazarus, come forth"? Oh, my Christian friends, this is no time for inertia, when all the forces of darkness seem to be in full blast; when steam printing-presses are publishing infidel tracts; when express railroad trains are carrying messengers of sin; when fast clippers are laden with opium and rum; when the night-air of our cities is polluted with the laughter that breaks up from the ten thousand saloons of dissipation and abandonment; when the fires of the second death already are kindled in the cheeks of some who, only a little while ago, were incorrupt. Oh, never since the curse fell upon the earth has there been a time when it was such an unwise, such a cruel, such an awful thing for the Church to sleep! The great audiences are not gathered in the Christian churches; the great audiences are gathered in temples of sin—tears of unutterable woe their baptism, the blood of crushed hearts the awful wine of their sacrament, blasphemies their litany, and the groans of the lost world the organ dirge of their worship.
II. Again, if you want to be qualified to meet the duties which this age demands of you, you must on the one hand avoid reckless iconoclasm, and on the other hand not stick too much to things because they are old. The air is full of new plans, new projects, new theories of government, new theologies, and I am amazed to see how so many Christians want only novelty in order to recommend a thing to their confidence; and so they vacillate and swing to and fro, and they are useless, and they are unhappy. New plans—secular, ethical, philosophical, religious, cisatlantic, transatlantic—long enough to make a line reaching from the German universities to Great Salt Lake City. Ah, my brother, do not take hold of a thing merely because it is new. Try it by the realities of a Judgment Day.
But, on the other hand, do not adhere to any thing merely because it is old. There is not a single enterprise of the Church or the world but has sometimes been scoffed at. There was a time when men derided even Bible societies; and when a few young men met near a hay-stack in Massachusetts and organized the first missionary society ever organized in this country, there went laughter and ridicule all around the Christian Church. They said the undertaking was preposterous. And so also the work of Jesus Christ was assailed. People cried out, "Who ever heard of such theories of ethics and government? Who ever noticed such a style of preaching as Jesus has?" Ezekiel had talked of mysterious wings and wheels. Here came a man from Capernaum and Gennesaret, and he drew his illustration from the lakes, from the sand, from the ravine, from the lilies, from the corn-stalks. How the Pharisees scoffed! How Herod derided! How Caiaphas hissed! And this Jesus they plucked by the beard, and they spat in his face, and they called him "this fellow!" All the great enterprises in and out of the Church have at times been scoffed at, and there have been a great multitude who have thought that the chariot of God's truth would fall to pieces if it once got out of the old rut.
And so there are those who have no patience with anything like improvement in church architecture, or with anything like good, hearty, earnest church singing, and they deride any form of religious discussion which goes down walking among every-day men rather than that which makes an excursion on rhetorical stilts. Oh, that the Church of God would wake up to an adaptability of work! We must admit the simple fact that the churches of Jesus Christ in this day do not reach the great masses. There are fifty thousand people in Edinburgh who never hear the Gospel. There are one million people in London who never hear the Gospel. There are at least three hundred thousand souls in the city of Brooklyn who come not under the immediate ministrations of Christ's truth; and the Church of God in this day, instead of being a place full of living epistles, read and known of all men, is more like a "dead-letter" post-office.
"But," say the people, "the world is going to be converted; you must be patient; the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of Christ," Never, unless the Church of Jesus Christ puts on more speed and energy. Instead of the Church converting the world, the world is converting the Church. Here is a great fortress. How shall it be taken? An army comes and sits around about it, cuts off the supplies, and says: "Now we will just wait until from exhaustion and starvation they will have to give up." Weeks and months, and perhaps a year, pass along, and finally the fortress surrenders through that starvation and exhaustion. But, my friends, the fortresses of sin are never to be taken in that way. If they are taken for God it will be by storm; you will have to bring up the great siege guns of the Gospel to the very wall and wheel the flying artillery into line, and when the armed infantry of heaven shall confront the battlements you will have to give the quick command, "Forward! Charge!"
Ah, my friends, there is work for you to do and for me to do in order to this grand accomplishment! Here is my pulpit, and I preach in it. Your pulpit is the bank. Your pulpit is the store. Your pulpit is the editorial chair. Your pulpit is the anvil. Your pulpit is the house scaffolding. Your pulpit is the mechanic's shop. I may stand in this place and, through cowardice or through self-seeking, may keep back the word I ought to utter; while you, with sleeve rolled up and brow besweated with toil, may utter the word that will jar the foundations of heaven with the shout of a great victory. Oh, that this morning this whole audience might feel that the Lord Almighty was putting upon them the hands of ordination. I tell you, every one, go forth and preach this gospel. You have as much right to preach as I have, or as any man has. Only find out the pulpit where God will have you preach, and there preach.
Hedley Vicars was a wicked man in the English army. The grace of God came to him. He became an earnest and eminent Christian. They scoffed at him, and said: "You are a hypocrite; you are as bad as ever you were." Still he kept his faith in Christ, and after awhile, finding that they could not turn him aside by calling him a hypocrite, they said to him: "Oh, you are nothing but a Methodist." That did not disturb him. He went on performing his Christian duty until he had formed all his troop into a Bible-class, and the whole encampment was shaken with the presence of God. So Havelock went into the heathen temple in India while the English army was there, and put a candle into the hand of each of the heathen gods that stood around in the heathen temple, and by the light of those candles, held up by the idols, General Havelock preached righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. And who will say, on earth or in Heaven, that Havelock had not the right to preach?
In the minister's house where I prepared for college, there was a man who worked, by the name of Peter Croy. He could neither read nor write, but he was a man of God. Often theologians would stop in the house—grave theologians—and at family prayers Peter Croy would be called upon to lead; and all those wise men sat around, wonder-struck at his religious efficiency. When he prayed he reached up and seemed to take hold of the very throne of the Almighty, and he talked with God until the very heavens were bowed down into the sitting-room. Oh, if I were dying I would rather have plain Peter Croy kneel by my bedside and commend my immortal spirit to God than the greatest archbishop, arrayed in costly canonicals. Go preach this Gospel. You say you are not licensed. In the name of the Lord Almighty, this morning, I license you. Go preach this Gospel—preach it in the Sabbath-schools, in the prayer-meetings, in the highways, in the hedges. Woe be unto you if you preach it not.