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See [Inner Life].
RENEWAL NECESSARY
If I have a certain sum of money, I can calculate what necessities it will meet, and how far it will go; but it will go only so far; beyond that is exhaustion. But if I have a bed of strawberries in my garden, after it has borne the crop of the season, and there is no more to be got from it, I can weed and cultivate and fertilize it, and next year it will bear again. And tho the whole bed shows exhaustion, I can set its runners in new rows and nurture them into new life, tho the old plants are only fit to be dug under; and I can renew the life of my bed and after a season it will be as young and fresh and fertile as ever. I have completely renewed its life. So I can renew the life of a note, or lease, or partnership. So bodily strength, tho exhausted every day, is renewed every night; and even if impaired by disease, it may be recovered. There is nothing necessarily hopeless in the exhaustion of anything that has life in it; but all living things need renewal.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”
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RENEWAL, SPIRITUAL
A lady calling upon a friend one day, exprest surprize that she had both windows open while the thermometer was at zero, saying that she never opened her windows in winter, adding that even then she was unable to keep warm.
“I open my windows,” was the explanation, “to warm the rooms by filling them with fresh air. It is impossible to heat dead air. To inhale the same air over and over again is to breathe in poison.”
As “it is impossible to heat dead air,” so it is impossible to incite zeal in a dead church. The breath of the Spirit is first needed to change the spiritual climate. (Text.)
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