An Extract.
LOVE is the best gift of the evangelist―love to the Saviour, love to the sinner. But when that love rises into a passion, there must be true, burning eloquence. Never, never, O my soul! be content with less than this. Love to the Saviour―love for souls is good, but the evangelist needs more; seek that thy love may rise into a fervent flame. The work demands it. Art thou an evangelist? Let everything that would hinder thy work be consumed on the altar of entire consecration. Preaching is not teaching, remember; neither is teaching preaching. Appeal to souls, plead with them, lay hold on them, agonize for them. It is a matter of life or death―of ineffable, eternal blessedness, or unutterable, eternal woe. Realize the future in the present and raise a cry to the God of all grace, that not one soul may go away unimpressed, unblessed, unsaved. More temperate hearts, and wiser too it may be, in many things, may say, “There it much of nature in such zeal, and not a little unbelief; remember, the work is the Lord’s.”
Fully admit thine own failure, and that the work is God’s from first to last; but let nothing slacken thy zeal, or damp thine energy. May the flame of thy love be unquenchable! Oh! be in earnest; heaven is in earnest, hell is in earnest, and be thou in deep, deep earnest. The Master wept over a city; thou hast a world to weep over. Love with His love, and let His tears flow through thine eyes.
Oh! speak of Jesus―of that love,
Passing all bounds of human thought,
Which made Him quit His throne above,
With God like deep compassion fraught,
To save from death our ruined race―
Our guilt to purge, our path to trace.
Oh! speak of Jesus―of His death;
For sinners such as me He died:
“‘Tis finished,” with His latest breath,
The Lord Jehovah, Jesus cried;
That death of shame and agony
Opened the way of life to me.