A Word to Each and to All: Conclusion
“Not slothful in business; fervent in Spirit; serving the Lord.’
Christian industry is just the outlet of a fervent spirit, a Christ-devoted heart. The industry which is not fervent is not Christian, and on the other hand, the love which does not come forth in action, the fervour which does not lead to diligence, will soon die down. He who has an eye to Christ in all he does, and whose spirit is full of that energy, that love to his work and his brethren and his Master in heaven, which the Holy Spirit gives, will not soon be weary in well-doing.
Many occupy the humble station of servants, and of these, some are in families where there is no fear of God, and some of them serve employers who take no interest in them; who, however hard their toil, and however well they do their work, never thank them nor notice their exertions. This is discouraging. But we may say to such — before you entered that family, had you not entered the service of the Lord Jesus Christ? And when you came to this new place you surely did not leave this higher and nobler service. Very true, the individual from whom you receive your immediate orders may be very unreasonable, and exceedingly unamiable, and the thanks you get may be sorry remuneration for your conscientious industry. But have you not a Master in Heaven, whose eye is always upon you, who takes interested note of all you do, and who, whatever you do in secret for his sake, will reward you openly? You do not mean to say that all your end in working is to get so much wages, with a kind word or a look of approval now and then. If you carry the spirit of discipieship into your every-day duties, you will find that there is a way to make the meanest occupation honourable, and the most irksome employment easy. Work, which you do for the Lord’s sake, will never be wearisome, and however little man may notice or acknowledge it, your labour in the Lord will never be vain. And I know not if there be any department of life where there is more abundant room for a truly-Christian ambition than the calling which you occupy.
Whether like Eliezer of Damascus, you serve a Father of the Faithful, or like Joseph and the Israelitish maid, you are in the household of a pagan or a worldling; you have singular opportunities for adorning the doctrine of your God and Saviour. Good man as Abraham was, and good man as Eliezer was, there was once a time when Abraham, in a tone of evident disappointment, said, “Behold, to me thou hast given no seed, and lo, one born in my house is mine heir.” But so completely had the consistent kindness and fidelity of Eliezer won the affection of his chief, that, at the last, Abraham could scarcely have wished a better heir than his servant, or Eliezer found a more indulgent father than his master.
Joseph had no motive for serving Pharaoh, except that anxiety to fulfil an important office well, and that hearty love of labour which distinguish men of a healthy mind and conscientious spirit. But such a zealous charge did he take of Pharaoh’s interests, so intelligently and sleeplessly did his eye travel through the realm, that Egypt wore another aspect under Joseph’s rule, and its revenues became as rich as a provident and benignant administration could make them.
The little maid of Israel was a captive, and if the joy of the Lord had not been her strength, she would have had no spirit to work. She would have pined after her home among the hills of Samaria, and when she thought of the pleasant cottage from which fierce ruffians had torn her away, and named over to herself, one by one, the playfellows whom she would never see again, she would have broken her young heart and sat down in sulky silence, or perhaps have died. But she loved the Lord God of Israel; and as he had sent her to Damascus and into the house of a heathen lady, she made up her mind and set to work right earnestly, and soon began to take a real interest in her new abode. She loved her mistress, and was sorry for the deplorable sufferings of her afflicted lord, and suggested the visit to Elisha which resulted in his wondrous cure. And both Joseph and the little maid, by serving the Lord with a fervent spirit, not only made their own life pass pleasantly in a foreign land, but they made a great impression on those around them. Joseph’s God was magnified in the eyes of Pharaoh, and the little maid soon saw Naaman a worshipper of the true Jehovah.
And you who are in the service of others, seek to serve the Lord. Perhaps like Joseph and the little maid you are far from home. Perhaps like them you are doing work for those in whom you had no interest formerly, and who even now have not the fear of God before them. But your Lord paramount is the Lord Jesus himself; the real Master who has sent you here and given you this uphill work to do is Christ; and if you only set about it for his sake, with a happy, interested, resolute mind, your work will grow every day easier; your conscience will sing; the light of the Lord’s presence will gild the dim passages and stranger-looking chambers of your place of sojourn; your character will ere long commend itself, and better still, may commend your Master in heaven. “For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.”
3. Some of us are scholars either receiving the education which fits for ordinary life, or which may quahfy us for some particular profession. Here too we have need of industry. I hope you love learning for its own sake; I hope you love it still more for the Lord’s sake. The more things you know, and the more things you can do, the more respected, and consequently, the more influential and useful will you hereafter be. If you grow up in ignorance, few will care for your company. People will be laughing at your mistakes and your blunders. And even if you should be wishful to do good, you will scarcely know how to set about it. The usefulness and happiness of your future life depend very much on the amount of sohd learning and graceful accomphshments, and above all, on the extent of Bible knowledge which you presently acquire, and if you be only willing you may acquire as much as ever you please. “Nothing is denied to well-directed dihgence.” Long ago, a little boy was entered at Harrow School, in England, He was put into a class beyond his years, and where all the scholars had the advantage of previous instruction, denied to him. His master chid him for his dulness, and all his own efforts could not raise him from the lowest place on the form. But, nothing daunted, he procured the grammars and other elementary books which his class-fellows had gone through in previous terms. He devoted the hours of play? and not a few of the hours of sleep, to the mastering of these; till in a few weeks he gradually began to rise, and it was not long before he shot far a-head of all his companions, and became not only leader of that division, but the pride of Harrow. That boy, whose career began with this fit of energetic application, lived to be the greatest oriental scholar of modern Europe, and most of you have heard his name — It was Sir William Jones.
God denies nothing in the way of learning to well-directed diligence. It is possible that you may be rather depressed than stimulated when asked to contemplate some famous name in literature or science. When you see the lofty pinnacle of attainment on which that name is now reposing, you feel as if it had been created there rather than had travelled thither. No such thing. The most illustrious in the annals of philosophy once knew no more of it than you now do. And how did he arrive at his peerless proficiency? By dint of diligence, by downright pains-taking.
When Newton was asked how he came by those discoveries which looked like divination or intuitions of a higher intelhgence rather than the results of mere research, he declared that he could not otherwise account for them unless it were that he could pay longer attention to the subject than most men cared to do. In other words, it was by dihgence in his business that he became the most renowned of British sages.
The discovery of gravitation, the grand secret of the universe, was not whispered in his ear by any oracle. It did not drop into his idle lap, a windfall from the clouds. But he reached it by self-denying toil, by midnight study, by the large command of accurate science, and by bending all his powers of mind in the one direction, and keeping them thus bent.
And whatever may be the subject of your purs’.iit, if y011 have any natural aptitude for
A WORD TO ALL. Ill
it at all, there is no limit to your proficiency except the limits of your own pains-taking. There is no wishing-cap which will bring you knowledge from the east or west. It is not likely to visit you in a morning dream, nor will it drop through your study roof into your elbow chair. It is not a lucky visiter which will aliglu on your loitering path during some twilight, like Minerva’s owl, and create you an orator, an artist, or a scholar on the spot. It is a point of excellence which you must make up your mind that it is worth your while attaining; and trudge on steadily towards it, and not count that day’s work hard, nor that night-watching long, which advances you one step towards it, or brings its welcoming beacon one bright hope nearer.
3. Some of us are teachers. It is much to be lamented that there are so feA’- enthusiasts in this honourable and important work. Many who are engaged in it regard it as a bondage, and sigh for the day which shali finally release them from its drudgery and din. They have never felt that theirs is a high calling, nor do they ever enter the school-room with the inspiring consciousness, that they go as missionaries and pastors there. They undervalue their scholars. Instead of regarding them as all that now exists of a generation as important as our own; instead of recognising in their present dispositions the mischief or beneficence which must tell on wide neighbourhoods ere a few short years are run; instead of training up immortal spirits and expansive minds for usefulness now and glory afterward, many teachers have never seen their pupils in any other light than as so many rows of turbulent rebels, a rabble of necessary torments, a roomfuU of that mighty plague with which the Nile of our noisy humanity is all croaking and jumping over.
And many undervalue themselves. Instead of recollecting their glorious vocation, and eyeing the cloud of teacher-witnesses with whom they are encompassed; instead of a high-souled zeal for their profession, as that which should form the plastic mind after the finest models of human attainment and scriptural excellence, many regard their office as so menial that they have always the feeling as if themselves were pedants. To prescribe the task, to hear the lesson, to administer monotonous praise and blame, is the listless round of their official doings. But there are few fields of brighter promise than the calling of a teacher. If he give himself wholly to it, if he set before him the highest object of all tuition, the bringing souls to Christ; if he can form a real affection for his scholars, and maintain a parental anxiety for their proficiency and their principles; if he has wisdom enough to understand them, and kindness enough to sympathize with them; if he has sufficient love for learning to have no distaste for lessons, he will be sure to inspire a zeal for study into the minds of many, he will win the love of all except the very few whose hearts are deaf-born, and in a short time the best features of his own character will be multiplying in spheres far-sundered, in the kindred persons of grateful pupils. Should he live long enough, they will praise him in the gate of public life, or cheer his declining days in the homes which he taught them to make happy. Or should he die soon enough, the rest from his labours will ever and anon be 10^ heightened by the arrival of another and another of the children whom God hath given him.
But without descending to more minute particulars, let me remind all who are members of the church that they have a special “business” as the professed disciples of Jesus Christ. In the day when Christ said to you, “Arise, follow me,” he called you to a life like his own, a life of industry and self-denial, and continual doing good. You are a consistent Christian in proportion as you resemble him whose fervent spirit poured out not more in his midnight prayers than in his daily deeds of mercy, and who, whether he disputed with the doctors in the Temple, or conversed with the ignorant stranger at the well, or fed the five thousand with miraculous loaves, or summoned Lazarus from the tomb, was still about his Father’s “business.”
They little understand the Christian life, who fancy that a slothful or languid profession will secure an abundant entrance into the heavenly kingdom. If the believer’s progress from the cross to the crown be, as it is again and again represented, a race, a wresthng, a warfare, a fight, a continual watching, and a constant violence, there is good reason for the exhortations, “give diligence to make your calling and election sure. We desire that every one of you do show diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end; that ye be not slothful but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Wherefore, brethren, seeing that you look for such things, be diligent that you may be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless.” It needs dihgence to keep the conscience clean. “Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men.” It needs dihgence to keep up a happy hopefulness of spirit. “Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end.” It needs dihgence to maintain a serene and strenuous orthodoxy. “Watch ye; stand fast in the faith; quit you like men; be strong.” It needs diligence to maintain a blameless life. “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” It needs dihgence to lead a life conspicuously useful and God-glorifying. “Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, (as Abel, and Enoch, and Noah and Abraham, and Moses,) let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.” And it needs diligence to attain a joyful welcome from Jesus and a full reward. “And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue (fortitude); and to fortitude, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly-kindness, charity. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give dihgence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things (fortitude, &c.) ye shall never fall: for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” “And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.” “Let us labour, therefore, to enter into that rest.”*
* 2 Pet. i. 5 — 7, 10, 11. Rev. xiv. 13. Heb. iv. 11.
To labour in the word and doctrine is the business of one; to feed the flock of God and rule the Church of Christ is the business of others; to “serve tables,” to care for and comfort the poor, and see that all things be done decently and in order, is the business of yet others; to teach the young and instruct the ignorant is the business of some; and to train up their households in the nurture and admonition of the Lord is the business of others; to obey their parents and to grow in wisdom — in favour with God and man — is the business of many; and to do work for others, with a willing hand and a single eye, is the business of many more. The work of the day needs diligence; much more does the work of eternity. It needs fervent diligence to be constantly serving our fellows; and it needs no less diligence to be directly serving Christ. To tend the sick, to visit the widows and fatherless in their affliction, to frequent the abodes of insulated wretchedness or congregated depravity, to set on foot schemes of Christian benevolence and still more to keep them going — all this needs diligence. To put earnestness into !?9cret prayer; to offer petitions so emphatic and express, that they are remembered afterwards, and the answer watched for and expected; to commune with one’s own heart, so as to attain some real self-acquaintance; to get into that humble, contrite, confessing frame, where the soul feels it sweet to lie beneath the cross, and
“A debtor to mercy alone,
Of covenant mercy to sing;”
to Stir up one’s soul to a thankful praising pitch; to beat down murmuring thoughts and drive vexing thoughts away; to feel assurance regarding the foundations of the truth, and clear views of the truth itself; to have a prompt and secure command of scripture; to possess a large acquaintance with the great salvation, and a minute acquaintance with all the details of Christian duty; — all this needs no less diligence on our part, because God must give it or we shall never show it. To put life into family worship; to make it more than a duteous routine; to make its brief ej)isode of praise and prayer and Bible-reading a refreshful ordinance, and influential on the day; to give a salutary direction to social intercourse, and season with timely salt the conversation of the friendly circle; to drive that “torpid ass,” the body, to scenes of duty difficult and long adjourned; to make a real business of public worship; to scowl away all pretexts for forsaking- the solemn assembly; to spirit the reluctant flesh into a punctual arrival at the house of prayer, and then to stir up the soul to a cordial participation in all its services; to accompany with alert and affectionate eyes the reading of God’s word, and listen with wakeful ear to the exposition and application of its lively oracles; to contribute a tuneful voice and a singing heart to our new testament offering of praise, and to put the whole stress of an intelligent and sympathizing and believing earnestness into the supplications of the sanctuary, so that each petition shall ascend to the throne of grace with the deliberate signature of our Amen — all this requires a diligence, none the less because unless God work it in us, we shall never of ourselves muster up sufficient fervour thus to serve the Lord.
Dear Christian readers, consider what I say. There is little time to apply it; but you have received from this passage pf Holy-Scripture some hints of important truth — apply them for yourselves. As reasons why we desire to see the church more industrious and not less fervent and unworldly than the church has usually been, and as motives why each right-hearted man among us should this day start afresh on a career of busy devotedness and fervent industry, let me remind you,
1. Herein is the Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.
2. Herein will you truly resemble, and in measure re-exhibit the character of your blessed Lord and Master.
3. Hereby will yourselves be made far happier.
4. Hereby will the world be the better for your sojourn in it.
5. Hereby will the sadness of your departure be exceedingly alleviated.
6. And hereby will your everlasting joy be unspeakably enhanced.
Forbearing to dwell on these difierent considerations, let me revert for a little to the latter two.
A life of diligence and holy fervour prepares the believer for a peaceful departure. ‘’ Father, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do; and now I come to thee.” It was with unspeakable satisfaction that the Saviour corUemplated his return to the Father’s bosom; and the reason was, because he knew so well that he had finished his Father’s business. He could look back on the weary days and sleepless nights of his ministry, on the long years of his incarnation, and he saw that there was no righteousness which he had not fulfilled, no precept of the holy law which he had not magnified. His memory could not recal an idle word or a wasted hour; and even from the solemn twilight of Gethsemane his eye could trace serenely back the whole expanse of his earthly history, and see not one word which he would wish to recal, not one act which he could desire to alter; no sermon which, if he had to preach it over again, he would make more plain or more importunate; no miracle which, if it had to be performed afresh, he would do in a more impressive or effectual manner. He knew that there was no 11 omission, no defect, and though the whole were to be done anew, he felt that the words could not be more gracious, nor the works more wonderful than they had actually been. “Father, I have glorified thee on earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do; and now I come to thee.”
The Lord Jesus was the first and the last who ever was able to say this; but through his strength made perfect in their weakness, some have made a nearer approach to this blessedness than their more remiss and indolent brethren. It was the grief of the pagan emperor Titus, when a day transpired in which he had learned no knowledge or done no good, “I have lost a day.” And
“‘Tis a mournful story Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell Of morning’s firm resolves the vanish’d glory,
Hope’s honey left within the with’ring bell, And plants of mercy dead, that might have bloom’ d so well.”
But it is a far more mournful story when the eve of life arrives, to be constrained to sigh, “I have lost a lifetime.” “God gave me one lifetime, and it was once in my power to spend it as Aquila and Priscilla spent their’s, as Paul spent his, as Phebe spent her’s. But now, that only life is closing, and wo is me! how have I bestowed it? In making pincushions and playing the piano; in paying morning calls and evening visits.” “And /? — I have spent it in reading newspapers and novels, and dancing and singing songs, and telling diverting stories.” “And / have spent it in drinking and smoking, in games of cards and bilhards, in frequenting taverns and theatres, in reading coarse tales and books of blasphemy.” Yes; and though you should not need to look back on a life thus sinfully spent, it will be sad enough to review a life let idly slip. To think that by a right starting and a persevering continuance in well-doing, it was once in your power to have proved the large and permanent benefactor of your generation — to think that had you only begun with the Lord and held on in fervour of spirit, you might by this time have finished works which would make many bless your memory, and planted seeds of which hundreds would reap the pleasant fruits when yourself were in the clay; and then to remember that once on a time you had it in contemplation, it was all planned out and resolved upon and day-dreamed over and over, but never resolutely gone about — how dreary it will make your death-bed, if capable of deliberate reflection then! How disconsolate it will render the retrospective evening of your days, should you reach old age! And how diflerent it will make your exit from his, who, looking back on his eventful career, could say, “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.”
A life of Christian diligence is followed by an abundant entrance and a full reward. There are two principles deep-seated in our nature. Philosophy has got no name for them, but the Bible has an eye to each of them, and the gospel speaks to bolh of them. The possessions which we chiefly prize are either those which we have earned by our own industry, or gifts we have got from those we truly love.
Perhaps there is some little shde in your desk, some secret drawer in your cabinet, which you do not often open; — but when on a quiet holiday you pull it gently out and look leisurely at it, your eye fills with tears. You read the date on the faded book-marker with a pensive smile, or you press the little picture to your hps and drop upon your knees, to pray for him whose image that little picture is. But a hard-visaged stranger peering over your shoulder might marvel what all this emotion meant; for he would not give even a few shillings for the whole collection, and would think it more like the thing to be affected by the bunch of bank-notes and bills and government-securities in the adjacent locker.
And why do you prize it so? That picture was a keep-sake from your brother 11*
1JJ6 LIFE IN EARNEST.
when he crossed the wide ocean ten summers since; — that broidered ribbon is the only rehc of the sister’s Jove, who made you many a like remembrance, but whose mouldering fingers will make no more. Love lingers in these relics, and that is the reason why, when you stuff the bank-notes in your pocket, you clasp these trifles to your heart.
Far more, if the gift or the bequest be one of vast intrinsic value. The estate, the house, the lands which a fatherly kinsman or a dear friend conveyed to you — you prize them infinitely more than if they had come to you in the course of nature or by the laws of ordinary succession. You delight to show people over these grounds, and when they ask how long they have been in your family, your voice falters when you tell how they came to be yours. Sometimes when you look over the pastures and corn-fields, the water trickles from your eye; for you feel that you are looking not at vulgar roods and common enclosures, but are gazing on acres of affection, on an expanse of unaccountable kindness. You commemorate the unusual gift by the giver’s name. By some adjective of gratitude you connect it with his dear memory; and much as you may value it for its intrinsic worth, it is more precious still for the beloved donor’s sake.
Then next to the possessions round which there hovers some symbol of living affection or departed kindness, we prize those possessions in which we recognise the fruits of our own dihgence, the purchase of our own painstaking. Next to the keepsakes of friendship, we delight in the rewards of personal industry. What a bright coin was that first dollar which your own diligence ever earned! How sohd and weighty did it feel! How fair did the imiage and superscription shine on its fresh-minted face, and how endless did its capabihties appear! Was there any thing which that wonderful coin could not acon.- plish, any object of desire which it could not purchase? And wherefore such overweening affection for that one piece, for had you not possessed from time to time pocket-money of your own before? Yes — but it came too easily; it wanted the pleasant zest of industry; it did not bring into your bosom, as this one does, a whole freight of happy recollections, frugal hours, and self-denying labours, condensed into one solid equivalent, one tangible memento.
What are the books in your library which you chiefly prize? Next to the gift-bible which solemnized the first birth-day when you could read it; next to the book which your dying friend lifted from his pillow, and, with your name tremulously inscribed, handed you on your last visit, when he had strength to do it; are they not the books which rewarded your blushing proficiency at the vil — lage school, or commemorated your nightly labours in the first and happiest years of college life, or those which your long-hoarded savings first enabled you to purchase? Why do you look with a kindlier eye on that juvenile literature than on the long rows of glittering learning and august philosophy which fill your crowded shelves? Why, but because there is something of a pleasant personal peculiar to them. The fight of early days and industrious hours still floats around them. They are the sunny sepulchre in which much of your former self hes pleasantly embalmed, ready to start into a mellower life the moment memory bids it.
Or why — to take the case already supposed, the opulent possessor of estates, which the love of another gave him — why is it that in the midst of luxuries and accommodations as abundant as wealth can purchase or ingenuity suggest: why is it that fruit from trees of his own planting, or from a garden of his own tending, tastes so sweet? Why is it that the rustic chair of his own contriving, or the telescope of his own constructing, so far surpasses any which the craftsman can send him? Why, the reason is, those apples have an aroma of industry, a smack of self-requiting dihgence peculiar to themselves. That rustic seat is lined with self-complacent labour, and the pleasant consciousness of having made that telescope himself has so sharpened the maker’s eye as greatly to augment its magnifying power. God has so made the mind of man, that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.
I repeat, that the possessions which we chiefly prize — those of which the heart keeps the most tender yet tenacious hold — are not the windfalls of fortune, nor the heir-looms of regular succession, but the gifts of affection and the fruits of pains-taking; those in which something of our-self, or a dearer than ourself, still lives, and speaks, and feels.
Now in regard to the supreme possession, the inheritance of heaven, the God of Love has consulted both of those deep-seated principles of the human soul. The heaven itself, the passport through its gates, and the right to its joys are the purchase and the gift of another. Nor is it to the believer the least enhancing element in its priceless possession, that it is entirely the donation and bequest of his dearest friend. Looking forward to the pearly gates and golden streets of the celestial city, its love-built mansions and its life-watered paradise, the believer in Jesus delights to remember that they are purely the purchase, and as purely the gift of Immanuel. To think that he shall yet have his happy home on that Mount Zion; that with feet no longer sin-defiled he shall tread its radiant pavement and stand on its glassy sea; that with fingers no longer awkward he shall tell the harps of heaven what once he was and who made him what he is; that with a voice no longer trembling he shall transmit along the echoes of eternity the song of Moses and the Lamb; to think that his shall yet be a brow on which the drops of toil will never burst, and an eye which tears will never dim; that he himself shall wear a form that years shall never bend, and a countenance which grief can never mar; that his shall yet be a character on which the stains of time will leave no trace, and his a conscience pure enough to reflect the full image of him who sits upon the throne — the thought of all this is amazement, ecstasy. But there is one thought more which puts the crown upon this blessedness — the cUmax on this joy:
“These glorious hopes we owe
To Jesus’ dying love.”
Heaven is doubly dear, as the heritage purchased for him by his divine Redeemer; and all its glory is so heightened and solemnized, when he connects it with that adorable Friend who acquired it for him and conveys it to him, that though another heaven were in his offer, that other he would not accept. That heaven to which Immanuel is the living way, — on whose earthward entrance atoning blood is sprinkled, on whose manymansions and amaranth crowns are the symbols which connect them with Calvary, and amidst all whose countless joys, the river of deepest pleasure is the love of Jesus, — this is the only heaven to which the believer expects an entrance, and is the one of which his intensest longings say, “Would God that I were there!”
But even in this purchased possession there are ingredients of delight of an origin more personal to the believer himself, — details of special blessedness, for the germ of which he must go back to his own earthly history; and just as the sweetest surprisals here below are those in which some effort of benevolence, long by-gone, reverts upon you in its happy results — when you meet a stranger, and are charmed with his Christian intelligence and spiritual congeniality, and lo! it turns out that his religious history dates from a casual conversation with yourself in the guest-chamber or the public conveyance; or when you take refuge from the storm in a wayside cottage, and surveying with eager interest its arranjrements of unwonted comfort and tastefulness, or listening to the Bible lesson of its little children fresh from school, mysterious hints of some similar yet different scene steal in upon your memory, till you begin to think, “I have surely been here before;” and anon the full truth flashes out; you have been there before, when it was a very different scene — when a drunken husband and ragged children and broken furniture aroused your desponding commiseration; but the tract which you that day left has introduced sobriety, and a Sabbath, and a family Bible into that abject home, and made it what your grateful eyes now see; — so the sweetest surprisals of eternity will be similar resurrections of the works of time.
When the disciple has forgotten the labour of love, he will be reminded of it in the rich reward; and though he never thought any more of the cup of cold water which he gave, or the word in season which he spake in Jesus’ name — though he made no memorandum of the visits of mercy which he paid, or the asylums which he founded for the orphan and the outcast — it seems that they are registered in the Book of Remembrance, and will all be read by their happy author in the reviving light of glory.*
To find the marvellous results which have accrued from feeble means — to encounter higher in salvation than yourself those of whose salvation you scarcely ever hoped to hear, and learn that an entreaty or prayer, or forgotten effort of your own had a divine bearing on the joyful consummation — to find the prosperous fruit already growing on the shores of eternity, from seeds which you scattered on the streams of time — with what discoveries of unexpected delight it will variegate the joys of the purchased possession, and with what accessions of adoration and praise it will augment the exceeding weight of glory! Strive to obtain an abundant entrance and a full reward. Seek to be so useful that the world will miss you when away; or whether this world miss you or not, that in a better world there may be many to welcome you as you enter it, and many to follow you when you have long been there. And above all, so live for Christ, so travail in
* Dan. xii. 3. Matt. xxv. 34 — 40. Matt. x. 42.
his service, that when you fall asleep, a voice may be heard from heaven, saying, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their LABOURS, and their works do follow them.”