_There is a manifest want of spiritual influence on the ministry of
the present day. I feel it in my own case and I see it in that of
others. I am afraid there is too much of a low, managing, contriving,
maneuvering temper of mind among us. We are laying ourselves
out more than is expedient to meet one man’s taste and another
man’s prejudices. The ministry is a grand and holy affair, and it
should find in us a simple habit of spirit and a holy but humble
indifference to all consequences. The leading defect in Christian
ministers is want of a devotional habit._--RICHARD CECIL.
Never was there greater need for saintly men and women; more imperative
still is the call for saintly, God-devoted preachers. The world moves
with gigantic strides. Satan has his hold and rule on the world, and
labors to make all its movements subserve his ends. Religion must do
its best work, present its most attractive and perfect models. By every
means, modern sainthood must be inspired by the loftiest ideals and
by the largest possibilities through the Spirit. Paul lived on his
knees, that the Ephesian Church might measure the heights, breadths,
and depths of an unmeasurable saintliness, and “be filled with all the
fullness of God.” Epaphras laid himself out with the exhaustive toil
and strenuous conflict of fervent prayer, that the Colossian Church
might “stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” Everywhere,
everything in apostolic times was on the stretch that the people of
God might each and “all come in the unity of the faith, and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of
the stature of the fullness of Christ.” No premium was given to dwarfs;
no encouragement to an old babyhood. The babies were to grow; the old,
instead of feebleness and infirmities, were to bear fruit in old age,
and be fat and flourishing. The divinest thing in religion is holy men
and holy women.
No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God.
Holiness energizing the soul, the whole man aflame with love, with
desire for more faith, more prayer, more zeal, more consecration--this
is the secret of power. These we need and must have, and men must be
the incarnation of this God-inflamed devotedness. God’s advance has
been stayed, his cause crippled, his name dishonored for their lack.
Genius (though the loftiest and most gifted), education (though the
most learned and refined), position, dignity, place, honored names,
high ecclesiastics cannot move this chariot of our God. It is a fiery
one, and fiery forces only can move it. The genius of a Milton fails.
The imperial strength of a Leo fails. Brainerd’s spirit can move it.
Brainerd’s spirit was on fire for God, on fire for souls. Nothing
earthly, worldly, selfish came in to abate in the least the intensity
of this all-impelling and all-consuming force and flame.
Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion. The spirit
of devotion is the spirit of prayer. Prayer and devotion are united
as soul and body are united, as life and the heart are united. There
is no real prayer without devotion, no devotion without prayer. The
preacher must be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion. He is
not a professional man, his ministry is not a profession; it is a
divine institution, a divine devotion. He is devoted to God. His aim,
aspirations, ambition are for God and to God, and to such prayer is as
essential as food is to life.
The preacher, above everything else, must be devoted to God. The
preacher’s relations to God are the insignia and credentials of his
ministry. These must be clear, conclusive, unmistakable. No common,
surface type of piety must be his. If he does not excel in grace,
he does not excel at all. If he does not preach by life, character,
conduct, he does not preach at all. If his piety be light, his
preaching may be as soft and as sweet as music, as gifted as Apollo,
yet its weight will be a feather’s weight, visionary, fleeting as
the morning cloud or the early dew. Devotion to God--there is no
substitute for this in the preacher’s character and conduct. Devotion
to a Church, to opinions, to an organization, to orthodoxy--these
are paltry, misleading, and vain when they become the source of
inspiration, the animus of a call. God must be the mainspring of the
preacher’s effort, the fountain and crown of all his toil. The name and
honor of Jesus Christ, the advance of his cause, must be all in all.
The preacher must have no inspiration but the name of Jesus Christ, no
ambition but to have him glorified, no toil but for him. Then prayer
will be a source of his illuminations, the means of perpetual advance,
the gauge of his success. The perpetual aim, the only ambition, the
preacher can cherish is to have God with him.
Never did the cause of God need perfect illustrations of the
possibilities of prayer more than in this age. No age, no person,
will be ensamples of the gospel power except the ages or persons of
deep and earnest prayer. A prayerless age will have but scant models
of divine power. Prayerless hearts will never rise to these Alpine
heights. The age may be a better age than the past, but there is an
infinite distance between the betterment of an age by the force of an
advancing civilization and its betterment by the increase of holiness
and Christlikeness by the energy of prayer. The Jews were much better
when Christ came than in the ages before. It was the golden age of
their Pharisaic religion. Their golden religious age crucified Christ.
Never more praying, never less praying; never more sacrifices, never
less sacrifice; never less idolatry, never more idolatry; never more of
temple worship, never less of God worship; never more of lip service,
never less of heart service (God worshiped by lips whose hearts and
hands crucified God’s Son!); never more of church-goers, never less of
saints.
It is prayer-force which makes saints. Holy characters are formed
by the power of real praying. The more of true saints, the more of
praying; the more of praying, the more of true saints.