THE KING’S BUSINESS
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I’ll go and sit in the coal house till I ’m a bit cleaner,’ what would she think ?” “Why, she’d think I was a fool, ’cause i should nivver get cleaner sitting ith coil hoil.” “Then, is it not just as foolish to stay in the filth of sin, in the vain hope of getting better ?” He soon afterwards found his way to the front, when he earnestly sought and soon found the Saviour; and on my speaking to him before he left the chapel, he said: “Bless th’ Lord, sir, I ’m weshed cleaner na’ than ivver I was i’ my life afore.” Enduement By A. T.
get better by keeping back, and he said he thought he should. I quoted the verse: “Come ye, weary, heavy laden, Lost and ruin’d by the fall, If you tarry till you’re better, You will never come at all. Not the righteous, Sinners, Jesus came to call.” As he still hung back, I said to him: “Now, look here, you work in a coal p it; suppose that when you come home tomorrow, all black with coal dust, you sit by the fire, and when your wife says, ‘Now, lad, get thee washed,’ you say, ‘I ’m too dirty to wash just yet, so T HE supreme lack, even of missionaries, is an enduement of the Spirit for themselves. Scores of men and women are drawn to the foreign field with little knowledge of facts and less heart- training for the work. They have been attracted by the halo and romance that invests missions, when Seen afar off, but which fades like the purple vestments of the mountains as one draws near and looks on the dark, rough, forbidding crags. They are disappointed with the real conditions and the slow progress which the actual field presents. Too often they lapse into a mere perfunctory routine of work which is, in all fields, the subtlest snare for the worker for Christ. The one and only thing that can prevent this result, or cure this disease of practical formation, is the baptism of the Holy Ghost. There are many disciples and ministers who honestly believe the truth arid are regenerate servants of God, zealous for sound doctrine and loyal to duty, but who know little of either love or liberty, passion for souls or victory over.sin. All these the Holy
PIERSON "Spirit brings, nay becomes, in those whom he fills. No one can read the lives of Martyn and Payson, Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, Charles G. Einney and Andoniram J. Gordon without seeing how the dynamic force in all service is found not in truth alone, but in the “Spirit of truth.” These men, and many others like them, were endued with power from on high. “There is no mistaking either the fact or the effect of such endueing. With Henry Martyn it became a consuming fire of passion for souls. With Payson, a peculiar spiritual ardor and fervor in preaching. With Edwards it was the power to shake a whole congregation like a giant. In John Wesley it was a contagious enthusiasm for sanctity of heart and life. To Finney it imparted a convicting and converting energy, like that of a sharp sword. To Gordon it became a dynamic force, like the contact of the trolley with the wire. While theologians are contending as to what the baptism of the Holy Spirit means, thousands of men and women are now receiving a supernatural power that revolutionizes their character, conduct, temper and usefulness.
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