^';?><y;^^'f?sy-??•,^y^^^■-^ atx" 
 
PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OP 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGIML SEMINARY 
 
 BY 
 
 jy[ps. Rle3<^andei? Pfoudfit. 
 
 BV 4520 .C9 1888 
 
 Cuyler, Theodore L. 1822- 
 
 1909. 
 Newly enlisted 
 
NEWLY ENLISTED 
 
 A SERIES OF TALKS 
 
 WITH 
 
 Young Gonvrrts. 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. D., 
 
 PASTOR OK LAFAYETTE AVENUE CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. V, 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
TO MY BELOVED FRIEND 
 
 Dw^iglit L. Moody, 
 
 WHOSE SINGI.E AIM IS TO LEAD SOULS TO JESUS, 
 
 THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1888, 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 NEWLY ENLISTED 5 
 
 ENLISTING FOR LIFE 12 
 
 HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT? 19 
 
 GIRDING THE LOINS 25 
 
 SHOW YOUR COLORS! 31 
 
 TRAINING CONVERTS 17 
 
 SPIRITUAL HEALTH 44 
 
 SOUL-FOOD 51 
 
 WHERE IS YOUR PLACE? 56 
 
 CONSCIENCE IN RELIGION 62 
 
 THE MIGHTY WORD "NO" 67 
 
 WATCH! 74 
 
 THE THOUGHT-MILL 80 
 
• 
 
 4 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE 85 
 
 THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE 93 
 
 FOR CHRIST'S SAKE 100 
 
 CONSECRATION 107 
 
 MORE ABUNDANT LIFE 114 
 
 PREPAID PRAYERS 121 
 
 A CHRISTIAN'S STAYING POWER 127 
 
 BRIGHT CHRISTIANS 134 
 
 LABOR FOR SOULS 141 
 
 THE WISE AND WINSOME WALK 147 
 
 KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS 154 
 
NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 During a public ministry which has ex- 
 tended beyond forty years I have been brought 
 into contact with thousands of persons who were 
 just commencing the Christian life. No portion 
 of that life is more vitally important than its 
 early stages. A new convert to Christ — whether 
 he or she is young in years or not — has had but 
 a very limited experience; and experience is like 
 the stern-light of a vessel; it only shows the path 
 that has already been sailed over. But every 
 voyager may profit by the experiences of others 
 who have sailed the same track and encountered 
 the same difficulties or perils. Every word of 
 counsel therefore which is in accordance with 
 
6 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 God's Book and with the actual lives of his peo- 
 ple may be of great value to those who are just 
 setting out. It is my aim in the following pages 
 to present a few such frank and fatherly counsels. 
 Some of the chapters may be equally applicable 
 to those who are farther advanced in Christian 
 growth. But my chief aim is to reach and to 
 instruct those who have nezvly enlisted in the ser- 
 vice of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 My dear friends, you must bear in mind that 
 conversion is simply an enlisting in the army of 
 Jesus. The battles and the hard bivouacs are yet 
 before you. "Let not him that girdeth on his 
 harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." 
 We w^ant to impress it upon the mind of every 
 young convert that the real conflict has only be- 
 gun, and they have done no more than to put on 
 their armor and enroll their names. Supposing 
 you to be truly regenerated by the divine Spirit, 
 what next? 
 
 We would reply that the sowing-time of your 
 spiritual spring has just begun. Don't repeat 
 the current prattle about being a "harvested 
 
NHWI.Y EN1.1STKD. 7 
 
 soul gathered into the garner." The church is 
 not a granary. You are just beginning to sow 
 for yourself; and whatsoever you sow you will 
 surely reap. You are forming new habits of 
 thinking and acting. You are an utterly inex- 
 perienced beginner in an entirely new line of 
 life. The first year of your Christian life will 
 have a mighty influence on all your future. 
 Many a wedlock has been spoiled by a bad hon- 
 eymoon. Many a promising convert has been 
 ruined by an unhappy start, or at least his hopes 
 of spiritual power and usefulness have been 
 blasted. 
 
 Begin with a determination to learn Christ's 
 will and to do it. This is what that famous con- 
 vert near Damascus was aiming at when he in- 
 quired so anxiously, " Lord, what wilt thoii have 
 me to do ?" It is very well to know what a Bun- 
 van or a Finney or a INIoody has written or said 
 about the Christian life. But go to the foun- 
 tainhead. Go to Jesus in a humble, docile spirit 
 and ask him in fervent prayer to guide you. 
 Bend your will to his will. He is perfectly will- 
 
8 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 inof to miide the meek and the teachable in the 
 right way. I honestly believe that, when a do- 
 cile heart sincerely asks to be led and then obeys 
 the voice of conscience, that heart seldom takes 
 a false step; yea, never does. Jesus promises to 
 lead you in the way of all truth. Trust him. 
 
 Conscience is the vital point. You need not 
 trouble yourself much about your feelings or your 
 frames as long as conscience turns as steadily 
 towards Christ as the needle towards the North 
 Pole. It is the office of conscience to detect sin 
 and righteousness, to decide for one and to reject 
 the other. Feelings are very fallacious. Some 
 Christians are very devout in their feelings and 
 wretchedly deficient in their daily conduct. They 
 forget that the best proof of love to Christ is to 
 *' keep his commandments." Fervent Christians 
 in the prayer-meeting, they are sorry specimens 
 of Christians outside of it. There is a lamenta- 
 ble lack of conscience in too much of the flaming 
 piety which burns out all its oil in the prayer- 
 room or the " praise-meeting." We do not won- 
 der at the sneers which are often levelled by 
 
NEWLY ENLISTED. 9 
 
 shrewd men of the world at this sort of *' revival 
 religion." See to it that you give no occasion 
 for such sneers. See to it that Jesus is not be- 
 trayed before his enemies by your inconsistency. 
 The best thing you can do for your Saviour and 
 your Master is to live an honest, truthful, pure, 
 and godly life. Others are watching you. Then 
 watch over yourself. 
 
 In putting on your armor don't forget that 
 the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. Be 
 not content with merely reading your Bible; 
 study it. Instead of skimming over whole acres 
 of truth, put your spade into the most practical 
 passages and dig deep. Study the twenty-fifth 
 Psalm and the twelfth chapter of Romans, as 
 well as the sublime eighth chapter. Study the 
 whole Epistle of James. It will teach you how a 
 Christian ouo:ht to behave before the world. As 
 you get on farther you may strike your hoe and 
 your mattock down into the rich ore-beds of the 
 book of John. Saturate your heart with God's 
 Word. 
 
 As for your field of Christian work, you ought 
 
 2 
 
lO NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 not to have much trouble about that. Follow 
 God's leadings and go into the first field of labor 
 which opens to you. Do not seek easy posts or 
 those which will flatter vanity. Brave Mary 
 Lyon used to tell her pupils at Mount Holyoke 
 to "go where no one else was willing to go." 
 Threescore of her graduates became missionaries 
 for Christ Jesus. As soon as you begin to think 
 that you are too good for your place, then the 
 place is too good for you. Do what you can do 
 best. A converted inebriate in mv conofrcQ^ation 
 has found his field in a praying band for the ref- 
 ormation of drunkards. While you are working 
 for the Master do not neglect the inner life of 
 your own soul. If you do not keep the fountain 
 well filled with love of Jesus, the stream of your 
 activities will run dry as soon as the novelty is 
 over. 
 
 Your daily battle will be with the sins that 
 most easily beset you. The serpent often scotched 
 is not killed. Paul himself had to give his car- 
 nal appetites the "black eye " pretty often. You 
 will never get your discharge from this war with 
 
NEWLY ENLISTED. II 
 
 the old Adam until you enter heaven. The mo- 
 ment you fall asleep the Philistines will be upon 
 you. Challenge every tempter that approaches 
 you. The dangerous devil is the one that wears 
 the white robe and cozens you with a smooth 
 tongue. 
 
 Finally, strive to be a Christian man every- 
 where. Carry the savor of your communion 
 with Christ wherever you go. Jacob brought 
 into his old blind father's presence such an odor 
 of the barley-ground and the vineyard that he 
 had "the smell of a field which the Lord had 
 blessed." Every place you enter ought to be 
 the better for your presence. Never disappoint 
 the expectation of your Master. He is the best 
 master in the universe. Having put on the uni- 
 form of his glorious service, wear it until you 
 are laid in your coffin. Carry his banner up to 
 the heavenly gate. When Death calls your 
 name on the roll be ready to answer, " Here!" 
 
12 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 ENLISTING FOR UFE. 
 
 Many of my readers may be agitating the 
 question in their minds, Ought I to enlist pub- 
 licly in the service of Jesus Christ and unite 
 with his church ? A vitally important ques- 
 tion this for all who are considering it; a very 
 important one also for parents and teachers to 
 whom the young may apply for counsel in re- 
 gard to such a decisive step. An immense ma- 
 jority of those who unite with our churches by 
 confession of faith are under twenty-five years of 
 age. The impulsiveness and the inexperience 
 of youth are elements of danger; on the other 
 hand, the fact that the young have not yet rooted 
 down so deeply into old habits of sin is an ele- 
 ment of hopeful encouragement. Every pastor 
 can find on his muster-roll more or less names 
 of those who enlisted for Christ and then drifted 
 away as deserters. The list of the wounded and 
 
ENLISTING FOR LIFE. 13 
 
 *' missing" is sadly large in almost every large 
 church. The time for careful inspection on the 
 part of a pastor and for thorough self-inspection 
 on the part of the candidate is the time of enlist- 
 ment. 
 
 The first question of all with you, my friend, 
 if you propose such an important step, is this: 
 Have I joined my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ? 
 Have I been born into a new life by his Spirit? 
 Have I found in him what my soul most needs, 
 and surrendered that soul, without any reserva- 
 tions, to his keeping and control? The heart 
 union to Christ must precede any public union 
 with his church. If you wnll turn to an unno- 
 ticed incident in Old Testament history, you 
 will see an illustration of what I mean. Ittai of 
 Gath, a blunt honest soldier, led his regiment of 
 Gittites in review before King David at a very 
 critical time during Absalom's rebellion. The 
 old king frankly and generously tells him that 
 there is dano^er ahead if he enlists for the cam- 
 paign. But the plucky Philistine has so knit his 
 heart to the exiled monarch that his prompt re- 
 
T4 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 ply is: "As the Lord liveth and as my lord the 
 king liveth, surely in what place my lord the 
 king shall be, whether in death or in life, even 
 there also will thy servant be." That solemn 
 oath of loyalty came from the heart. If others 
 turn traitors, Ittai means to stick. He can die 
 for the "old flag," but he will never desert. A 
 few days later on, and the body-guard of Gittites 
 with the valiant Ittai at their head, march back 
 triumphantly into Jerusalem, bringing the exiled 
 David to his palace and his throne. 
 
 The prime essential with you is that you 
 shall put your Saviour just where that loyal sol- 
 dier put his sovereign — in the core of your heart. 
 You must be ready to say, "Wherever Christ 
 leads, I will follow; whatever he commands, I 
 will obey." For bear in mind that the chief 
 thing you do when you enlist in Christ's service 
 is not to subscribe to a system of sound doctrine 
 (important though that may be), but to confess 
 Jesus as your Saviour and Lord and to pledge 
 to him lifelong loyalty and obedience. You join 
 your weakness to his strength, your ignorance to 
 
ENLISTING FOR LIFE. 15 
 
 his wisdom, your iinworthiness to his merits, 
 your interests to his oversight, your poverty to 
 his resources, your whole self to his service. If 
 you do that sincerely, Christ becomes responsi- 
 ble for you. He will provide for you spiritual 
 armor. He will furnish you the daily rations of 
 truth and grace to feed you. His precious prom- 
 ise is, '*My grace is sufficient for you." His 
 guaranty is, *' No man shall pluck you out of my 
 hands; because I live ye shall live also." Christ 
 accepts no volunteer for six months or for a sin- 
 gle campaign. If you enlist, you must enlist for 
 life. On the blade of that sword of the Spirit 
 which the Captain of your salvation hands to 
 you is inscribed: "He that endureth unto the 
 end shall be saved." 
 
 But you may inquire, "Just how ought I to 
 feel and just what should I be when I take the 
 lifelong obligation of church membership on my- 
 self?" God's Word crives a verv brief answer 
 when it declares that if you trust in the Lord 
 Jesus Christ you shall be saved. This inward 
 faith must be evidenced by daily conduct. ]\Iy 
 
1 6 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 own custom as a pastor is to put into the hands 
 of every applicant for admission into the church 
 a brief statement of the nature of church mem- 
 bership and the following six questions: i. Have 
 you seen yourself to be a sinner against God? 
 
 2. Have you not only repented of your sins and 
 sought forgiveness, but do you hate all manner of 
 sin and pray to be delivered from its dominion? 
 
 3. Is your hope of acceptance with God founded 
 upon the Lord Jesus as your atoning Saviour, 
 and upon him only ? 4. Have you given 3'our 
 heart to Christ, and are you willing to follow 
 him whithersoever he shall lead you? 5. Is it 
 your honest purpose — in reliance on his grace — 
 to cleave to Christ as your Redeemer and your 
 Guide to the end of life ? 6. In order to main- 
 tain your Christian life do you conscienciously 
 practise the duties of prayer and the study of 
 God's Word as your daily rule of conduct? 
 
 You will notice that these interrogatories im- 
 ply an enlistment for life. Also that they em- 
 brace the two core ideas of Christianity, which 
 are to abhor sin and to love CJirist — to turn from 
 
ENLISTING FOR LIFK. 17 
 
 sin and to follow Christ. These seem to my 
 mind to be the Scriptural evidences of regenera- 
 tion. The new life in your soul may as yet be 
 very feeble; it may be only the weak pulse-beat 
 of an infant; the blade of grace may, like the 
 blades of grass in IMay, be very small; but if the 
 life imparted by Jesus is there^ then you may 
 strengthen it by an open confession of Him. 
 When Christ bestows converting grace he de- 
 mands confession. Love prompts it. A fire 
 kindled in a stove reports itself; concealment is 
 impossible. If nobody among your associates 
 ever suspects or supposes that you are a Chris- 
 tian, then you ought to doubt if you are one. 
 Be honest with yourself and with God. Ask 
 him to search vou and to gfuide vou ario^ht; and 
 if after self-examination and testing you are per- 
 suaded that Jesus Christ has begun to live in your 
 soul, then openly enlist in his service. " Do you 
 think that you love Christ?" I asked a young 
 convert recently. The prompt answer was, "I 
 knoiv it." Why should he not know it; for love 
 is a conscious emotion and act of the heart. Do 
 
 Newly F.nlisfei. 1' 
 
l8 NEWI.Y ENUSTED. 
 
 not hold back because enlisting for Christ in- 
 volves responsibility and will excite the watch- 
 ful observation of others. You need that ; wit- 
 nesses are intended to be w^atched and examined. 
 If enlistment puts you into hard battles, all the 
 better. Cowards and shirks win no victories 
 and wear no crowns. 
 
 Pitch your standard high and then push on 
 and fight on up to your colors. Do not be dis- 
 heartened by some failures and repulses; there is 
 no soldier who has not known some defeats. 
 Peter was badly defeated in Pilate's hall; but it 
 made him a more watchful and a stronger war- 
 rior ever afterward. In religion as in war, it is 
 going "under fire" that makes the true soldier. 
 The Bible phrase "a perfect man" really signi- 
 fies a ftdl-grown man, but how can you reach 
 that unless vou beo;in ? 
 
 Do you desire to be on Christ's side at the 
 Day of Judgment? Then enlist on that side 
 now, and say to your Master, " Lord, wherever 
 thou art, whether in life or death, there will tin- 
 servant be !" 
 
HOW MUCH IIAVK YOU GOT? 19 
 
 HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT? 
 
 *' How many loaves have ye?" was our 
 Lord's question to his disciples as he was con- 
 fronted by a hungry multitude on the far shore 
 of Gennesareth. He might have brought down 
 a shower of manna from the heavens or called 
 up a miraculous growth of laden fruit-trees from 
 the earth. But he never displayed a wanton su- 
 perfluity of power; to make the utmost of what 
 tliey had was a lesson he often taught to his fol- 
 lowers. The disciples reply to him that they 
 have only seven loaves and a few little fishes. 
 He immediately seats the crowd and begins to 
 distribute the scanty supply, which wonderfully 
 increases in his hands, and again increases still 
 more in the hands of the distributers, until the 
 whole four thousand are satisfied. Here was a 
 miracle of creative power, for at the end of the 
 feast there are seven rope-hampers filled with the 
 yet untasted food. 
 
20 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 An admirable lesson does this deed of mercy 
 teacli to every new convert at the very start. 
 How much have you got already? Then, with 
 the Spirit's help, strive to make it more. This 
 is the lesson for you to learn and to put into 
 prompt practice. You have discovered a new 
 and fresh truth in some texts of God's Book. Let 
 this slight taste of the sweetness and meatiness 
 of the Bible stimulate you to wider and deeper 
 study. A Bible-diet strengthens for Bible-duty. 
 To a certain degree you have been convicted of 
 your own sinfulness, and have exercised some 
 degree of penitence. Probe deeper yet; pray for 
 more thorough self-knowledge, and lop off un- 
 sparingly every sin that doth easily beset or en- 
 trap you. It is a shocking mistake for young 
 converts to imagine that they have done up their 
 repentance once for all. Friend, those two men 
 had got many stages on their journey who gave 
 utterance to the fifty-first Psalm and the seventh 
 chapter to the Romans, Have you opened your 
 lips in a prayer-meeting or to an unconverted 
 friend, or laid hold of some effort to do good ? 
 
HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT? 21 
 
 Then don't be disconraged by your poor suc- 
 cess; push on, and find that there is downright 
 luxury in shaming down self and trying to serve 
 Christ. Your faith may yet be a mere sprout or 
 bulb ; but just as nature is busy in evolving into 
 growth the roots and seeds and bulbs she lias (not 
 in trying to create new ones), so be thou busy in 
 exercising the faith thou hast and asking Jesus 
 to enlarq-e it. Observe that Christ said to his 
 disciples, " Bring the loaves hither to me." So 
 you must take all your faculties, all your gifts, 
 all your endeavors — yes, and all your poor insuf- 
 ficiencies—right to your Master. 
 
 Having a capital of grace to start with, de- 
 termine to increase it. If one had asked young 
 John Jacob Astor, the German emigrant, " How 
 much have you got?" he would have replied, 
 "Nothing but my brains and my hands." A 
 little later he might have said, '' I have laid up 
 one thousand dollars." But out of the seven 
 loaves and few fishes of his scanty youth grew 
 the magnificent possessions of real estate that 
 made him the richest man of his day in America. 
 
22, NEWLY EN LISTED. 
 
 You have got to become "rich towards God " by 
 the same simple principle of economically using 
 the gifts which the Holy Spirit has bestowed 
 upon you. Every answered prayer must increase 
 your faith to pray. Every slip you make, every 
 tumble through carelessness or self-confidence, 
 should teach you to walk more circumspectly. 
 All the satisfaction you feel in being a young 
 beginner for Christ should fire you to become 
 a larger, deeper, wiser, holier Christian. A rock 
 has been smitten in your heart by the hand of 
 Christ, and it has begun to give out streams. 
 Remember that he who smote the rock that the 
 waters gushed out can give you bread also for 
 your whole life-journey. I beg you do not be 
 satisfied with a dwarfish piety. Some converts 
 never grow an inch; they are planted in the 
 church and then stunted for life. Their seven 
 loaves get stale and dry and their few little 
 fishes shrivel up; if they had been distributed in 
 God's service they would have multiplied. 
 
 Diffusion brings increase. The more you 
 give, the fuller-handed you are. If Andrew or 
 
now ML'CII IIAVK YOU GOT? 23 
 
 Peter had slipped off out of the crowd with a 
 piece of barley-loaf and said, " I will make sure 
 of this for myself," they would have had only 
 that morsel, and when it was gone there were 
 nothing for anybody else. There is that scatter- 
 etli and yet increaseth; there is that withhold- 
 eth, and it tends to penury. I wish I had the 
 space to write out here the history of a certain 
 gold coin which a poor, hard-toiling young girl 
 gave to the Lord; it would be a beautiful illus- 
 tration of the multiplication of one loaf into a 
 basketful of blessings. Sow plentifully if you 
 want a harvest. You are serving: a jjenerous 
 Master. The harder 3'ou work, the better pay; 
 the more you do for Jesus, the more you will 
 love him. 
 
 I verily believe that the richest joys of heav- 
 en will be the simple enlargement of what we are 
 on earth. The few oriq-inal loaves will be multi- 
 plied. The joys of household love will be per- 
 petuated and purified. The thirst for divine 
 knowledge will be infinitely increased and satis- 
 fied. Whatever we did for Jesus here will be 
 
24 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 our "treasure in heaven" when we get there. 
 Death is not the end of serving Christ; it is only 
 the transfer to a higher and wider reahn in 
 which they all "serve him day and night in his 
 temple, and he that sitteth on the throne shall 
 spread his tabernacle over them." If we have 
 desires after holiness here, we shall there attain 
 unto the spotless robe and to the perfect likeness 
 of our Lord. The faint glimpses of Jesus here, 
 as "through a glass darkly," will then become 
 the enrapturing sight of the King in his beauty. 
 All this exceeding weight of glory will only be 
 the natural outcome and enlargement of* what 
 began here zvheii ive began with Clwist^ and he in 
 lis. Then, young friend, how many loaves have 
 you to start with? See to it that they are all 
 brought to your Master, and by the multiplica- 
 tion-table of grace you will bless others around 
 you and have several full hampers for heaven. 
 
GIRDING TIIK LOINS. 25 
 
 GIRDING THE LOINS. 
 
 "Wherefore, gird up the loins of your 
 mind," is the stirring exhortation of that same 
 enthusiastic disciple who had once girded his 
 fisherman's tunic about him and leaped out of 
 the boat to swim to his Master. The ancients, 
 as our readers know, were accustomed to wear 
 loose, flowing garments, and when any strenuous 
 exertion was required, they gathered the folds 
 of their drapery and bound a girdle about their 
 waist. A spiritual process similar to this is es- 
 sential to a vigorous, effective Christian life. 
 
 Jesus Christ does not put you or me into his 
 church just to make us comfortable. Nor is get- 
 ting to heaven the sole object or even the chief 
 object of becoming a Christian. Obedience to 
 Jesus Christ is the first thing. This is the core 
 of Christianity. The phrase "girding the loins " 
 implies readiness for duty. On that last night 
 
 4 
 
26 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 in Egypt the children of Israel were commanded 
 to stand with girded loins and sandalled feet, 
 with staves in their hands, ready to be off on 
 their exodus at a moment's notice. Paul at the 
 start of his grand career inquired, "Lord, what 
 wilt thou have me to do ?" At the finish he ex- 
 claimed, "Now I am ready to be offered up!" 
 We pastors soon discover who are the minute- 
 men in our churches. Whether it be work or 
 money or service of any kind that is required of 
 them, their cheerful response proves that Christ 
 has the first hold on their hearts. Eagerness for 
 the fight marks the true soldier; eagerness for 
 the run made the successful Olympic racer; eag- 
 erness to do Christ's will, or even to endure 
 hard blows for his Master, marks the happy, 
 ready-hearted Christian. The moment that a 
 minister counts sermon-making a drudgery his 
 girdle has broken. 
 
 2. Another idea, suggested by the apostle's 
 phrase is the compacting of all our powers upon 
 the work we have in hand. Consecration is not 
 enoug-h without concentration. Paul's "this one 
 
GTRDIXG TIIK LOIXS. 2'] 
 
 tiling I do" tightened his resolves and kept him 
 from fritterinof awav life on trifles. Sir Isaac 
 Newton's secret of success was "intending his 
 mind upon the thing." Pericles only knew one 
 street in Athens, the street that led from his own 
 house to the Executive Chamber. At this sea- 
 son of the year the feeble sun-rays may be so 
 focused by a burning-glass as to set wood on fire. 
 I know some men and women of moderate abili- 
 ties, who under the concentrating power of the 
 love of Christ make wonderfully useful Chris- 
 tians. This compacting of one's self for the 
 duty at hand is well described by the current 
 phrase of a man's "pulling himself together." 
 Some church members go to pieces for want of 
 a stout girdle. 
 
 3, Loin-girding also implies a wholesome 
 idea of restraint. Laxity is the curse of the times 
 in doctrine, in preaching, in social life, and in 
 church life. Loose thinking leads to loose liv- 
 ing. The very word " religion" signifies some- 
 thing- that holds us together and binds us to God. 
 We cannot do just as we like. The people who 
 
28 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 clamor for liberty to do as tliey please and who 
 scout at Bible restraints as a yoke of bondage, 
 are the very people who drift away into vaga- 
 bondage. A robust Christian, like a robust sol- 
 dier, understands the value of drill and disci- 
 pline, and learns to obey the higher powers. It 
 is not a good sign when a follower of Christ be- 
 gins to loosen his girdle. He is preparing to 
 shirk or skulk or go to sleep. Tighten the loins, 
 brother, and make up your mind that a noble, 
 victorious Christian life is not the easiest thing 
 in this world. 
 
 Easy things, like cheap things, are of small 
 value. The best attainments must be paid for. 
 God has put some pretty steep hills on his road 
 to heaven, and vou will need to o^ird vour loins 
 if you expect to climb them. He provides the 
 girdle; you have but to clasp it about you. He 
 offers you a belt embroidered with these words: 
 *' My grace is sufficient for thee." Clap it on, 
 and you will find that the things which seem 
 impossible become possible to a resolute, un- 
 shrinkiuQ: faith. Mr. Moodv's nes^ro woman 
 
GIRDING THE LOIXS. 29 
 
 was about right when she said that if God or- 
 dered her to jump through a stone wall, the jump- 
 ing was her part, and the getting through was 
 his look-out and not hers. God promises that 
 he will "gird us with strength," and that 
 strength is always equal to the load to be car- 
 ried or the cliff to be clambered. 
 
 It may be a timely text to preach about in 
 this ao^e of "liberal" thinkino;- and mucila2:inous 
 theology. Some people are falling all apart and 
 going to pieces from very looseness of principles. 
 Weakness becomes wickedness. All backsliding 
 in the church starts from looseninof the hold on 
 Christ. Conscience loosens its grip. The very 
 garments which the Christian wears become en- 
 tangled in all manner of worldly and sinful prac- 
 tices, until he can no longer make headway. 
 
 Wherefore, let us gird up the loins of our 
 souls and "be sober," Life is not a frolic, and 
 the service of our crucified Lord is not child's 
 play. The end of all things is at hand with 
 each of us. There is an exultant joy in the 
 daring and the dash, the push and the climb, the 
 
30 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 conflict and the victory, of a well-girded soul on 
 his way to his crown. The prize is for the racer 
 and none else. They who would fain go to 
 heaven in what Rutherford calls a "close-cov- 
 ered chariot" may not gain admission at the 
 gate; or if they do, they will be ashamed to look 
 God's heroes there in the face. Let your loins 
 be girded and your lamps be burning, and ye 
 yourselves be like unto men who wait for their 
 Lord. "Blessed are those servants whom the 
 Lord when he cometh shall find watching; he 
 shall gird himself and make them to sit down to 
 meat and will come forth and serve them." 
 
SHOW YOUR colors! 31 
 
 SHOW YOUR COLORS ! 
 
 The name of Capt. Hedley Vicars, the Chris- 
 tian hero of the Crimean war, is familiar to most 
 of our readers. On the morninof after his con- 
 version he bought a large Bible and placed it 
 open on the table of his room. He was deter- 
 mined that an open Bible for the future should 
 be his "colors." "// was to speak for me," he 
 said, "before I was strong enough to speak for 
 myself" His military comrades came in and 
 laughed at him, nicknamed him the MetJiodist^ 
 hinted to him that he had better not turn " hyp- 
 ocrite;" but in spite of a perpetual guerilla war- 
 fare of sneers and scoffs, he nobly stood by his 
 colors. Having "clean hands, he waxed stronger 
 and stronger." In time he became a spiritual 
 power in his regiment, simply by a steadfast, 
 bold, decided witnessing for Christ. 
 
 To his early disciples Jesus Christ said, 
 
32 NEWLY KNLISTKD. 
 
 "Whosoever shall confess me before men, him 
 will I confess also before my Father which is in 
 heaven." Confession is a broad, far-reaching 
 word as the Saviour employed it. It refers first 
 to the heart, then to the lips, then to the life. 
 Whosoever would be saved must embrace Christ 
 in the heart: this was conversion. Next, he 
 must acknowledge him with the tongue: this 
 was confession, or what we style a "profession 
 of faith." Chiefest of all, he was to honor Christ 
 by his daily living: and this was vital Christian- 
 ity. 
 
 Jesus did not refer to the first point when he 
 gave the command to confess him ^^ before men.^^ 
 He pre-supposed the secret interior work of con- 
 version; he pre-supposed the root. What he de- 
 manded was the leafing out and the fruit-bearing 
 of the tree. He demanded a bold, resolute, out- 
 spoken, love-inspired acknowledgment of him as 
 their Saviour and their King from every man 
 who expected to be acknowledged in turn before 
 the Father and the holy angels. This confession 
 was to be open, spontaneous, and sincere. Has 
 
SHOW YOUR colors! 33 
 
 the reader of this paragraph never made such an 
 acknowledgment of Christ? Then, my friend, 
 you must not be astonished if Christ refuses to 
 recognize you in the last decisive hour of judg- 
 ment. It will then be too late to take the oath 
 of loyalty. He who does not confess Christ in 
 this world will be lost in the world to come. 
 
 In nearly every community there are a few 
 halting, timid, irresolute persons who have a 
 trembling faith in Christ, but who do not come 
 out decidedly and confess him. They may be 
 Christians, but the world is not allowed to 
 know it. They carry dark lanterns. ^'Shining 
 lights" they certainly are not. No one is the 
 better for their secret, clandestine attempts to 
 steal along quietly towards heaven without let- 
 ting any one overhear their footsteps. Now this 
 is a miserable — we were almost ready to say con- 
 temptible — mode of living, this concealment of 
 the colors when danger threatens, this following 
 along after the church with a vague hope of 
 being counted in among God's people when 
 heaven's prizes are distributed to the faithful. 
 
 Newly Enlisted. f 
 
34 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 We do not say that no one can be saved who 
 does not openly join some Christian church.; but 
 we do say that the person who expects Christ to 
 acknowledge him in heaven and yet refuses to 
 acknowledge Christ "before men" is a self- 
 convicted coward, and while disobeying his Mas- 
 ter's orders has no right to expect his Master's 
 blessing. After over forty years of pastoral ob- 
 servation we have come to the conclusion that 
 every day spent by the genuine convert outside 
 of the church of Christ is almost a day lost. He 
 loses the sense of responsibility that he needs to 
 feel; he loses the opportunity of doing good; he 
 loses in self-respect, in the respect of others; he 
 loses the approbation of Him who has so impres- 
 sively said, " Whosoever is ashamed of me before 
 men, of him will I be ashamed when I shall 
 come in my own glory." When God gives con- 
 version he demaitds confession. To be effective 
 and useful this must be prompt, open, hearty, 
 and decided. 
 
 But confession does not end with the public 
 acknowledgment of Christ before the church. It 
 
SHOW YOUR colors! 35 
 
 only begins there. This is one decisive step, to 
 be followed by a thousand other steps in the 
 same direction. We do know, however, of many 
 church members whose single solitary act of 
 loyalty to Christ was their standing up to re- 
 spond to a church covenant before the pulpit; 
 from that moment onward all that the church 
 had of them was their idle names on the roll. 
 Like too many of the boasted recruits in new 
 regiments, they enlisted, drew their "bounty," 
 and then "straightway are heard of no more." 
 In the campaign for Christ and the truth they 
 never answer to the roll-call of duty. It is very 
 certain that their names will not be called when 
 the victorious Immanuel announces the rewards 
 to his faithful followers on " the sea of glass like 
 imto pure gold." 
 
 We are all guilty of too much time-serving, 
 too much concealment of truth, too much com- 
 promise with Christ's enemies. The boldest are 
 not bold enough, and the cowards are as much 
 despised by themselves as loathed by their Mas- 
 ter in heaven. When will we learn that the 
 
36 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 only course for a Christian is to "stand up for 
 Jesus"? Men expect it of us; they despise us 
 for our shamefacedness, and doubt the sincerity 
 of our professions. 
 
 " Last night," said a Christian soldier to his 
 chaplain, "in my barrack before going to bed I 
 knelt down and prayed, when suddenly my com- 
 rades raised a loud laugh and began to throw 
 boots and clothes at me." "Well," replied the 
 chaplain, "suppose you defer your prayers till 
 after you retire, and then silently lift up your 
 heart to God." 
 
 Meeting him soon after, the chaplain said, 
 "You took my advice, I suppose. How did it 
 answer?" "Sir," replied the soldier, "I did 
 take your advice for two or three evenings; but 
 I began to think it looked like denying my Sa- 
 viour; so I once more knelt down and prayed as 
 at first." " What followed ?" "Why, sir, not 
 one of them laughs now. The whole fifteen nozv 
 line el down too, and I pray with them." 
 
TRAINING CONVERTS. 37 
 
 TRAINING CONVERTS. 
 
 A VERY large proportion of members in our 
 churches count for very little except upon the 
 muster-roll. When that roll is called for practi- 
 cal service they do not answer, "Here!" The 
 lamentable statistics of contributions — for exam- 
 ple, only eighty cents annually per member to 
 the great work of Home IMissions — show how 
 small are the pecuniary gifts of those comatose 
 Christians. The thin attendance at prayer-meet- 
 ings in too many churches, the fewness of those 
 who take part in them, or in any kind of personal 
 effort for souls and the spread of Christ's king- 
 dom, are illustrations of the same fact. A larire 
 portion of the power in the church is a latent 
 power. The stream is diverted upon the water- 
 wheels of the world, or else runs to waste, less 
 than half of it turned upon spiritual machinery. 
 One reason, among many, is that new converts 
 
38 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 are not trained into Christian activity from the 
 start. 
 
 Many converts to Christ are still in the morn- 
 ing of life, although they may have outgrown 
 the Sunday-school. Under thirty years of age 
 the habits of individuals are easily moulded; and 
 during the thirty years after that they ought to 
 be set to work for their Master. The true time 
 to enlist a Christian in active service is when he 
 enlists in the visible army of Christ by a public 
 confession of Christ. If a new convert does not 
 open his lips in some devotional meeting during 
 the first thirty days, he is apt to remain tongue- 
 tied for life. If he or she is not called into some 
 sort of service, then doth he or she become a 
 drone in the hive. One of the most effectual 
 methods that I know of for training new converts 
 is by the agency of a " Young People's Associa- 
 tion," organized in the church and under the 
 oversight of the pastor. There has been such an 
 association in the church which I have the honor 
 to serve for about twenty-two years. Sometimes 
 its membership runs as high as seven hundred. 
 
TRAINING CONVERTS. 39 
 
 It embraces three classes of members — active, 
 associate, and honorary. Any member of our 
 church between the ages of fifteen and forty-five 
 may be chosen an " active " member of the asso- 
 ciation. Any person of good moral character 
 may become an associate member, entitled to all 
 privileges except that of holding office. The fee 
 of membership is fifty cents annually, and ten 
 dollars secures a membership for life. The ob- 
 jects of the Association are to hold weekly devo- 
 tional meetings, to promote social intercourse, to 
 visit the sick, to search out and bring in young 
 people, to labor for their conversion, and to do 
 whatever will develop the spiritual life of new 
 converts. There is a "Devotional Committee," 
 which has charge of the Monday evening meet- 
 ing, which is held in the houses of the congrega- 
 tion. This committee must select the house, 
 have it announced from the pulpit, and see to it 
 that the camp-stools and hymu-books are taken 
 to the said house in season. 
 
 That meeting lasts just one hour. The leader 
 of the service is allowed to occupy fifteen min- 
 
40 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 utes in opening the exercises. As soon as possi- 
 ble after a person is converted he is requested to 
 take charge of the meeting; this breaks him into 
 the harness at once. No one is allowed to oc- 
 cupy more than three minutes in an address or 
 a prayer. At the close of the service a half-hour 
 is spent in giving introductions and in social 
 intercourse. In pleasant weather we expect the 
 house to be crowded; but we have seldom had 
 the spiritual thermometer so high as to pack a 
 house on a stormy evening. Only a pleasure- 
 party or a political caucus can do that. 
 
 In these social meetings all are made wel- 
 come, and new converts are encouraged to take 
 part. There is a freedom felt in a private house 
 which cannot be felt by a beginner in the pub- 
 lic lecture-room of the church. Most persons of 
 modesty and common sense are apt to feel a cer- 
 tain diffidence in speaking or praying for the 
 first time. Some of our most effective speakers 
 made an unpromising start and had one or two 
 break-downs before they could, as the oarsmen 
 say, ''pull themselves together." But it is not 
 
TRAINING CONVERTS. 4I 
 
 simply a public speaking and praying service 
 into which the Association trains its members. 
 They are organized for various kinds of work. 
 There is a Visiting Committee to look after the 
 sick. There is an Entertainment Committee 
 who arrange music, readings, and other pleasant 
 features for a monthly sociable — to wdiich the 
 whole congregation are invited. The monthly 
 entertainments commonly crowd the lecture- 
 room or the Sabbath-school hall. There is a 
 Temperance Committee which oversees that 
 branch of Christian labor. Last eveninor a meet- 
 ing of our young ladies who are interested in this 
 blessed work w^as very largely attended. For 
 years we had an efficient corps of tract-distribu- 
 ters in the Association; but the removal from 
 town of its moving spirits has left this depart- 
 ment rather feeble at present. There is also a 
 "Relief Committee" for cases of poverty, and 
 another one which provides flowers every Sab- 
 bath for the pulpit and then sends them to the 
 rooms of the sick. 
 
 We have entered more into the details of this 
 
 6 
 
42 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 Association because it has yielded such precious 
 spiritual fruits. Its graduates are all over the 
 West as active Christians ; some of them have 
 entered the gospel ministry. It has been a train- 
 ing-scJiool for converts^ and as such deserves a 
 place beside the Sabbath-school in the affections 
 and prayers of the church. I should almost as 
 soon think of conductinof a church without the 
 regular officers as without this educational insti- 
 tution for new-born souls. It helps to solve sev- 
 eral such questions as — how to develop the lay- 
 element ; how to cultivate social intercourse ; 
 how to save the young for Christ and keep them 
 out of the clutch of the devil. In the apostolic 
 churches the new material was put to immediate 
 use. That was one reason why the word grew 
 mightily and prevailed. If the machinery in 
 those days was simpler than now, still there 
 was organized effort, and that was built on per- 
 sonal consecration to Christ. Give us but that, and 
 we shall have few drones in the hive. Conver- 
 sion without consecration sio:nifies birth without 
 growth — blossoms without fruit. 
 
TRAINING CONVERTS. 43 
 
 We have drawn upon our personal observa- 
 tion in this outline of the work done by the 
 Young People's Association of the Lafayette 
 Avenue Church; but the same style of work is 
 beingr done in manv hundreds of churches bv the 
 admirable "Societies of Christian Endeavor." 
 Every new convert should enroll himself or her- 
 self in such a societv if it is within reach. Wher- 
 ever the circumstances permit we also cordially 
 commend the " YounQf Men's Christian Associa- 
 tion " as a most excellent training-school in the 
 service of Christ. There need be no clash, or col- 
 lision between the " Y. M. C. A." and the or- 
 ganization in each individual church. 
 
44 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 SPIRITUAL HEALTH. 
 
 "One hundred able-bodied men wanted," 
 was the announcement we lately saw at the head 
 of an advertisement for recruits in the Govern- 
 ment service. No invalids could pass muster. 
 It was duty on deck and among the rigging that 
 was required, and not a berth in the hospital. 
 As we ministers are recruiting-officers for the 
 Kine, it occurred to us that an announcement 
 would not be out of place on the doors of the 
 churches, "A hundred able-hearted and able- 
 handed men and women wanted for duty." 
 There are quite enough now who never answer 
 to roll-call, or are stowed away in the berths of 
 the sick and sleeping. The essentials demanded 
 for eood service are these four: the Christians 
 needed by the King should be prayerful (i. e., 
 full of praying without ceasing), patient, per- 
 severing, and powerful with the indwelling 
 
SPIRITUAL HEALTH. 45 
 
 Spirit. These four P's constitute the healthy 
 Christian. _ 
 
 Such God commands every redeemed and re- 
 newed soul to be. His injunction is, "Be ye 
 holy." Holiness signifies health of heart and 
 daily life. It is equivalent to the Saxon word 
 wJiolth^ and therefore to be holy is to be healed 
 from the deadly disease of sin and to be luJiole 
 in the inner man. Regeneration is the recovery 
 from the only disease which can cast both body 
 and soul into hell. There are several character- 
 istics of this healed or renewed state. One is a 
 faith which can overcome the world and the 
 powers of darkness. A second is a good con- 
 science — a conscience illuminated by God's 
 Word, kept sweet and wholesome by prayer, a 
 conscience alert as the needle to the magnetic 
 pole, and one that is a comfort to its owner, and 
 not a tormentor. Just what a disordered liver is 
 to the body is a bad conscience to the soul. 
 One chief cause of the spiritual dyspepsia which 
 makes so many professors of religion wretched 
 and worthless is an ill-conditioned conscience. 
 
46 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 A third evidence of soul-health is a strong 
 appetite for the Word and for work. There is 
 a hunger for the manna from heaven, and no 
 lusting for the flesh-pots of the world. It is not 
 the confectionery of fiction or the "mixed wine'* 
 of sensual amusements, or even the spiced stim- 
 ulants of sensational sermons, that such a soul 
 hungers for, but for the strong meat and the 
 honeycomb of the inspired Word. An appetite 
 for Bible-diet on the Sabbath and Bible-duties 
 all through the week keeps a Christian athletic. 
 He can mount up with an undipped wing, as 
 well as run with an unwearied foot. You never 
 find such Christians hobblino^ on crutches or 
 with limbs bandaged from a bad fall. 
 
 Since spiritual sickness is the fruit of sin, 
 and spiritual health is both possible and obliga- 
 tory upon every Christian, how shall the in- 
 valids be recovered? "I will restore health 
 unto thee, saith the Lord." God works cures 
 not by miracles, but by means and by medi- 
 cines. One of these is the purgative of truth 
 faithfullv administered. Finnev understood how 
 
SPIRITUAL HEALTH. 47 
 
 to apply this heroic treatment; but with some 
 pulpit-practitioners we fear that it is a lost art. 
 Ministers ouf^ht to read his "Lectures on Re- 
 vivals" at least once every year. Our Heavenly 
 Father in his restoring processes often employs 
 the sharp surgery of trials^ and He always knows 
 where to apply the lancet. Many a chastised 
 Christian, as the bad blood was drawn from him, 
 has cried out, "Thy hand presseth me sore!" 
 and the answer has been, "I wound that I may 
 make whole; I can restore unto thee the joys of 
 salvation." 
 
 Christ Jesus is the great health-giver and 
 health-preserver. Do we often enough take in 
 the full scope of that wonderful expression, "the 
 Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in 
 his wings" ? There is hygienic power in phys- 
 ical sunshine; it brings not only light and heat, 
 but health. It would bring quick recovery for 
 many an enfeebled and diseased soul to come 
 back into the lio;ht of Christ's countenance. A 
 great deal of spiritual sickness springs from bad 
 atmosphere ; and the heavenly winds of the 
 
48 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 divine Spirit alone can sweep away this mala- 
 ria. With the powerful breath of the Holy 
 Spirit comes a new and purified and bracing at- 
 mosphere. We remember addressing a crowded 
 audience once in a country schoolhouse on a 
 winter night, and the air became so foul that the 
 candles went almost out. " Please to open that 
 door. ' ' 
 
 The moment that the opened door let in the 
 oxygen of the wintry air, every candle flamed 
 up immediately. Perhaps one reason wdiy the 
 lights are so deplorably low, and almost gone 
 out, in too many churches, is that the atmos- 
 phere has become heavy with w^orldliness and 
 unbelief and indifference to the salvation of sin- 
 ners. Oh, what a glorious oxygen would pour 
 into our churches and prayer-meetings and 
 hearts if the Holy Spirit should come like a 
 mighty rushing wind, purifying, arousing, and^ 
 quickening unto the very life of God in the soul ! 
 This would be a revival^ a living again, a recon- 
 version from dead and decaying works into the 
 muscle and the glow of a vigorous health. 
 
SPIRITUAL IIKALTII. 49 
 
 Such recovery is not to be reached by a 
 wholesale process ; it must be the individual 
 repentance and restoration of each invalid for 
 himself or herself. God says to each one, "Re- 
 turn unto me, and I will heal thy backslidings." 
 The lepers that came to Christ were not afraid 
 to show their loathsome diseases right before the 
 very face of the compassionate Son of God. We 
 must not be gingerly in our confessions, or seek 
 to cover our sins with bandages or pull a plaster 
 of apology over the leprous spots. "Wash me 
 thoroughly from my iniquities" is the true prayer 
 of penitence. This means (as Maclaren has well 
 put it), "Wash me, beat me, tread me down, 
 hammer me with mallets, rub me with caustic 
 nitre; do anything, anything with me, if only 
 those foul spots melt away from the texture of 
 mv soul." 
 
 Such penitence, such prayer, brings pardon. 
 Not only pardon for the past, but purity and 
 peace with God, and power. Then the penitent 
 soul can cry, "Restore unto me the joys of thy 
 salvation," and the joys will pour in like fresh, 
 
 Newly Enlistcl. 7 
 
50 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 full streams after a drought. A church thus 
 purified aud empowered from heaven will teach 
 transgressors God's ways, and once more sinners 
 will be converted unto Him. Brethren, this is 
 the revival we need; this we can have if we take 
 God's plan to secure it. He is the almighty 
 and the all-loving Healer. Hope ye in God; 
 and we may yet praise Him who is the health of 
 our countenance and our God. 
 
SOUL-FOOD. 
 
 51 
 
 SOUL-FOOD. 
 
 Every living organism feeds on something 
 outside of itself Even the trees would wither 
 and die if they could not draw sustenance out of 
 the air and sap out of the earth. The human 
 soul is a feeding creature. " Hearken diligently 
 unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let 
 your soul delight itself in fatness." A still more 
 remarkable expression occurs in the fifteenth 
 chapter of Jeremiah: "Thy words were found, 
 and I did eat them.^'' We often employ the same 
 figure of speech. A ship-master, hungry for 
 tidings from home, lands at a port where he finds 
 a letter from his wife. It is only so much paper 
 and ink, but by a sort of magical process it not 
 only talks to him, but transports the whole 
 home-circle before his loncjing: eves, and he is 
 ready to say to his far-away wife, "Thy letter 
 was found, and I devoured it." 
 
52 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 So does the hungry heart of a Christian de- 
 vour the words of Him who is the Bread of Life. 
 When first awakened to a sense of sin, his mind 
 opened its mouth and swallowed eagerly the in- 
 vitation, Come unto Me, and I will give you rest. 
 The truth thus taken and digested became a 
 part of the fibre of the new man in Christ Jesus. 
 One reason why multitudes remain impenitent 
 and w^ithout any hope for eternity is that they 
 revolt at unpalatable truths. When their utter 
 depravity is set before them, and their condemna- 
 tion already before a holy God and the reality of 
 a " wrath to come," they revolt, and say, '' I can- 
 not swallow that." They must take God's bread 
 or starve, for he will not change it to suit their 
 sinful tastes; they must swallow pungent truths 
 or die, for God will not sweeten a bitter medicine 
 to please a sinful palate. We ministers or Sab- 
 bath-school teachers commit a fatal mistake 
 when we dilute or adulterate any bitter doses 
 which God puts into our hands as spiritual phy- 
 sicians. When the faithful, searching, purging 
 truths have been swallowed and have done their 
 
SOUL- FOOD. 53 
 
 blessed work, the healed heart has been ready to 
 exclaim, " I found Thy words, and did eat them, 
 and they have been to me the joy and rejoicing 
 of my heart!" 
 
 What delicious feeding there is on the Prom- 
 ises! The soul delio:hts itself with them as with 
 marrow and fatness. There is no end to the hon- 
 ey-comb that distils from the fourteenth chapter 
 of John. We can feed more than five thousand, 
 besides the women and children, with the sin- 
 gle big loaf — "This is the promise which He 
 hath promised us, even eternal life." There was 
 a great weight of Christian experience in the 
 homely vernacular of Uncle Johnson, the vet- 
 eran negro, when he said to his pastor, " I 's 
 tinking dat if de crumbs of joy dat fall from de 
 ]\Iassa's table in dis world am so good, what will 
 de great loaf in glory be? I wants to get hold 
 ob de full dish. O massa, ef you gets home afore 
 I do, tell 'em to keep de table standin', for old 
 Johnson is on his way and is bound to be dere." 
 
 There is a sufficient reason why so many 
 members of our churches are so pitiably weak, 
 
54 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 either to work or to resist temptation. Starva- 
 tion has reduced them to living skeletons. A 
 Christian soul cannot keep fat and strong on 
 daily newspapers or on the best of secular litera- 
 ture. Such self-weakening is wickedness. Food 
 is fuel to the body, repairing what is burnt away 
 by various vital processes. How can a soul be 
 either fed or warmed that seldom touches the 
 Bread of Life ? All the most growing Christians 
 are large feeders on the Word of God. 
 
 The breakfast which I ate this morninof is 
 driving ray pen now over this sheet of paper; 
 the same meal sent hundreds of my flock across 
 the ferry, and is moving: hands and feet and 
 brains for the whole day. The food put in comes 
 out in physical activities. In like manner a nu- 
 tritious sermon may be roast beef to a toiling and 
 tempted soul for the whole w^eek; in the strength 
 of that strong meat he goes many days. God 
 only knows how many slips, how many weak 
 acts and utterances, and how many falls, have 
 overtaken professed Christians during the week 
 simply because they neglected to eat their spirit- 
 
sou I.- FOOD. ^2 
 
 ual rations on the previous Sabbath. They lost 
 the very truths and the conscience-strength they 
 needed; their sin found them out. 
 
 The words of Jesus, his whole code of duty, if 
 eaten and digested and assimilated, come out in 
 the daily conduct. Every act of unselfish service 
 to others, every triumph over temptation, every 
 word spoken for the blaster, every submissive en- 
 durance of heavy trial, every push upward to- 
 wards a higher degree of holiness, is the out- 
 come of Christ's commandments and promises, 
 wrought into the fibre of the daily life. Paul 
 realized the vital importance of this soul-food 
 when he exhorted his brethren to " let the words 
 of Christ dwell in you (i. e. , stay in you as a 
 strengthener) abundantly.'* God's people can- 
 not live on husks. An ill-fed army must either 
 flee or surrender. Blessed be the hunger that 
 sends our souls to Christ ! 
 
56 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 WHERE IS YOUR PI.ACE? 
 
 A PLACE for every man, and every man in 
 liis place! This motto is as good for Christ's 
 church as it was for the army during the war. 
 But what is every Christian's right place? 
 
 We answer that it is the one for which God 
 made him and for which the Holy Spirit con- 
 verted him. To mistake it is a sad blunder; to 
 desert it is a disgrace. The Bible acknowledges 
 that God made his servants for some special 
 *' niche," for it says, '' Having then gifts differ- 
 ing according to the grace that is given us, let us 
 wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth, on 
 teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation; 
 he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he 
 that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth 
 mercy, with cheerfulness." The principle here 
 laid down is that every man or woman who loves 
 Jesus should select and should fill that post of 
 
WHERE IS YOUR PLACE? 57 
 
 duty for which his or her gifts have fitted them. 
 But "let no man neglect the gift that is in 
 him." 
 
 Some men — like Spurgeon and Newman Hall 
 and Bishop Simpson — were created for the pul- 
 pit. God gave them clear heads, warm hearts, 
 strong lungs and eloquent tongues, and a hunger 
 for saving souls. To possess such gifts is a clear 
 call to the ministry. And thousands of humbler 
 preachers who cannot attract Spurgeon' s crow^ds 
 are yet as clearly called to the ministry of the 
 Word as the London Boanerges was himself. 
 But the vainglorious creature who cannot attract 
 an audience except by sensational "clap-trap" 
 or by Barnumish advertisements was certainly 
 never called of God to the sacred ministry. He 
 may draw auditors, but he commonly draws 
 them away from places where they w^ould be 
 more profited. 
 
 Suppose a man feels convinced, after deep 
 prayer and self-examination, that God has not 
 called him to the pulpit; what then? ]\Iust 
 he be silent? Are all the speaking gifts of the 
 
58 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 pious lawyer or doctor or merchant or mechanic 
 to run to waste? No, verily! Let such pro- 
 claim the glad tidings of Christ and the story of 
 their own Christian experience in the prayer- 
 meetinof or the mission-school or the cottag^e con- 
 ference-meeting, or wherever they can find souls 
 to plead with. How successful this lay -labor 
 may be made, let such men as Harlan Page and 
 Richard Weaver and George H. Stuart and D. 
 L. Moody and John Wanamaker bear witness. 
 Let the powerful lay-preaching heard every day 
 in "Fulton Street" answer. Some of the best 
 discourses I have ever heard were but five or ten 
 minutes long and were delivered in my own 
 prayer-meeting. Christian lawyers ought to do 
 more of this tongue-work. As a class they are 
 too silent in our meetings and Sunday-schools. 
 God is opening a wide field for laymen to act on 
 "picket-duty" and as skirmishers and sharp- 
 shooters in the spiritual warfare. 
 
 What our churches most need (next to the 
 baptism of the Holy Ghost) is the development 
 of all the members. So much is thrown upon 
 
WHKRE IS YOUR PLACK ? 59 
 
 the ministry that some of us can hardly catch a 
 spare hour for our own family and fireside. A 
 city pastor is often expected to prepare three ser- 
 mons or lectures, to visit the flock, to see the 
 sick, to bury the dead, and to act on a dozen 
 committees and to make two or three speeches, 
 all in a single week! The church becomes Dr. 
 
 T 's church or Mr. B 's church or Dr. 
 
 C 's church, or some other man's church, 
 
 instead of being the people's church, with some 
 gifted man as its overseer and pastor. 
 
 Now I love to work exceedingly, but not one 
 whit more than I love to see my congregation 
 work. And no man in my flock has any more 
 right to turn his spiritual work over upon me 
 than he has a right to send me to market for him 
 or to cook or eat his dinner for him. He needs 
 his work as much as I need mine. In revival 
 times the whole church is alive and busy. But 
 where and when did the Master ever give a 
 ' ' furlough ' ' to three-fourths of our people to 
 quit the ranks just as soon as a revival campaign 
 is over ? 
 
6o NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 A Christian who is keen for work will soon 
 find his place. If he is "apt to teach," he or 
 she will soon gather the Sabbath-school class, 
 and will be there, Bible in hand, every Sunday, 
 even though the rain is pattering on the pave- 
 ments. Commend me to the teacher who wears 
 a "waterproof" and always consults conscience 
 sooner than the barometer. 
 
 Whoever has the gift of song should join 
 God's great choir and sing at every religious ser- 
 vice. The owner of a good voice must give 
 account for that voice at the day of judgment. 
 We never shall have genuine congregational 
 singing until every redeemed child of Christ 
 sings from duty and consecrates the gift of music 
 to the Lord. Those who expect to sing in 
 heaven had better practise here. 
 
 Tract distribution is going too much out of 
 fashion. It is a blessed and heaven-honored 
 agency for doing good. Every one who has 
 some spare time and a tongue and a little pious 
 tact can go out with a bundle of tracts to the 
 abodes of ignorance and irreligion. 
 
WHERE IS YOUR PLACE? 6r 
 
 Those who cannot exhort or teach in a Sun- 
 day-school or distribute tracts, can at least live 
 for Jesus at home and come and join in the pray- 
 ers of the prayer-meeting. The oldest, the tim- 
 idest, the least gifted, can do surely as much as 
 this. Every one too can give something when 
 the contribution-box is passed. The gift of a 
 "cup of cold water" in Christ's name has its 
 reward. Every one whom Jesus saves has a 
 place assigned to him in the vineyard. An idle 
 Christian is a monster! 
 
 Friend, havejw^ found your place? 
 
62 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 CONSCIENCE IN REIvIGION. 
 
 Men of the world are ready to admit the 
 genuineness of the piety which speaks the truth 
 and pays its honest debts. But when a man is 
 fervid in the prayer-meeting and frigidly selfish 
 outside of the meeting — when he can sing a 
 psalm or swindle a neighbor in a bargain with 
 the same smooth tongue — he must expect to be 
 held "at a discount." This is but right. The 
 world is warranted in lookinof for a hig^h stand- 
 ard of character and conduct from those who 
 profess to follow the pure and holy Jesus. Chris- 
 tians must not find fault with the unconverted 
 who find fault with them for any inconsistencies 
 of conduct. It is a tribute of solid respect for 
 Christianity that is paid to it by those who ex- 
 pect its professors to be upright and conscien- 
 tious. "By their fruits ye shall know them," 
 said the Master. Jesus expects and demands 
 
CONSCIENCE IN RELIGION. 63 
 
 that his followers shall live up to the clear bright 
 standard of his Word. 
 
 To do this the conscience must be well edu- 
 cated and thoroughly obeyed. A conscience is 
 to its owner what a compass is to an ocean 
 steamer. Some Christians' moral compasses are 
 so constantly deflected by the presence of dis- 
 turbing elements in the heart that they "steer 
 wild," and often run on rocks. A conscience 
 that does not point squarely and unvaryingly 
 towards the pole-star of God's truth is a danger- 
 ous one to steer the life by. Bible-study is 
 necessary to keep our consciences w^ell adjusted. 
 A careful man often sets his watch by the sun. 
 A careful Christian will be constantly setting his 
 conscience by the Bible. Then he can go by it 
 without any fear of going astray. Paul makes 
 much, but not too much, of having ''a good con- 
 science." The characteristics of a good con- 
 science are quick discernment of sin even when 
 it wears a white raiment, and a loud voice to 
 warn its possessor when sin is getting too near. 
 The office of the conscience is to detect sin and 
 
64 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 to sound the alarm-bell; then it becomes the 
 duty of the will to seize the helm and steer clear 
 of the danger. 
 
 What a beautifully-adjusted conscience Jo- 
 seph had ! Behind the captivating smile of his 
 wanton temptress he detects a lurking devil. 
 There is no spectator present except One. God 
 is in that chamber. Joseph's first question is 
 not, "How shall I do this wrong to Potiphar?" 
 but, " How shall I do this great wickedness and 
 sill against GodV If he had stopped to calculate 
 the chances of Potiphar' s ever finding him out, 
 he would have probably wrecked himself on the 
 spot. He would have taken hell-fire into his 
 bosom, as every young man or woman does who 
 commits this deadly sin. The first trait of a 
 good conscience is that it keeps God ever before 
 the eye. 
 
 But of what value is the best instructed con- 
 science if it is not obeyed? It was Joseph's one 
 decisive act of obedience to conscience which, in 
 the end, seated him on the Prime Minister's 
 throne in Egypt. It was King Saul's constant 
 
CONSCIENCE IN RELIGION. 65 
 
 tlirottling of his own conscience that made him 
 the gloomy wretch that he was. Paul and Silas 
 made the old Bastile of Philippi ring with their 
 joyful hymns at midnight, because their spirits 
 were in sweet harmony with God. On the 
 other hand, it was Judas Iscariot's constant fight 
 aeainst conscience which made his career so 
 wretched; and conscience got her revenge when 
 she twisted a suicide's rope around his worthless 
 neck. 
 
 If the secret could be known, this is the rea- 
 son why many Christian professors have such a 
 sorry time of it and know nothing of joyous sun- 
 shine in their relio:ion. Thev are at war with 
 their own consciences. They slip into this sin 
 and into that, resolving every time, " This shall 
 be the last." But it is not the last. Every vio- 
 lence done to their own moral sense makes them 
 the weaker and the more wretched. Jesus hides 
 his face from them. They take but little com- 
 fort in any religious duty, and even come to the 
 communion table with the guilty feeling that 
 they are ''dipping the hand into the dish" only 
 
 Nawly Knllated. Q 
 
66 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 to betray their Lord. Unless we are very mucli 
 mistaken, the real reason for so much iinhappi- 
 ness in the tempers and the lives of many church 
 members is that their consciences are ill at ease. 
 Instead of being a trusted guide and comforter, 
 conscience becomes a constant tormentor. Such 
 a wounded spirit who can bear ? 
 
 We throw out these few hints with a hope 
 that they may discover to certain unhappy and 
 unhealthy professors the real reason for their 
 dark and dreary condition. No man can be 
 happy unless he sets his conscience "in time'* 
 with the teachings of Christ and then goes by it. 
 He will then find himself in the right frame for 
 prayer. He will enjoy his own meditations and 
 his communion with his Master. He will be a 
 living witness for Christ, never a stumbling- 
 block for others. His life, instead of being a 
 jangling discord of inconsistencies, will be a 
 beautiful harmony, both with the inner voice of 
 a pure conscience and with the heavenly voice 
 of his beloved Lord. 
 
THE MIGHTY WORD " NO. " G-] 
 
 THE MIGHTY WORD "NO. 
 
 As we walk through history with a Diogenes' 
 lantern in our hand it is always pleasant to come 
 upon an honest and a noble man. Such a one 
 was Nehemiah, the rebuilder and reformer of 
 Jerusalem. He stands in the Scripture gallery 
 of characters as John Hampden's statue stands 
 in the line of illustrious worthies which flanks 
 the entrance to the British Parliament. 
 
 Nehemiah was a man who understood the 
 power of that prodigious word "^V^. " When he 
 left the Persian capital at Shushan, he went 
 down to Jerusalem determined to do something 
 to relieve his suffering people there. The dear 
 old city was in ruins. The Jews who had re- 
 turned thither from Babylon were oppressed and 
 plundered. The same kind of abuses had crept 
 in which have disgraced some of our city gov- 
 ernments. Nehemiah lays hold of practical re- 
 
63 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 forms with an unsparing hand. First he rouses 
 the people with a trumpet-peal to "rise up and 
 build" the ruined walls. Then he abolishes 
 the oppressive taxation and the desecrations of 
 the Sabbath and the temple. His predecessors 
 in office had been receivinof bis: salaries and had 
 allowed their underlings to fleece the people. 
 Nehemiah might have cited their example as a 
 precedent and followed in their wake — after the 
 manner in which greedy office-holders or plun- 
 derers thrust their arms into public treasuries in 
 our day. But his simple, manly statement is, 
 ^^ So did not /, because of the fear of God." 
 Nobly said! We wish every young man would 
 write those sharp, ringing words in his note-book 
 and determine to make the same answer when- 
 ever he is tempted to do a selfish or a wicked act. 
 The most tremendous word in the English 
 language is the short yet mighty word NO, It 
 has been the pivot on which innumerable des- 
 tinies have turned for this world and the next. 
 Spoken at the right moment, it has saved multi- 
 tudes from disgrace, from ruin — yes, from an 
 
THE MIGHTY WORD " NO. " 69 
 
 endless hell! The splendid career of Joseph 
 turned on the prompt "No" spoken at the very 
 nick of time. Had he stopped to parley with 
 that wanton woman (as too many young men 
 stop to talk with a bright-eyed temptress in the 
 street), he would have been lost. "How can I 
 do this great wickedness and sin against God?" 
 saved him from the dizzy edge of the precipice. 
 Daniel might easily have said to himself, "Oh! 
 everybody about the court here drinks wine and 
 lives hi2:h on the kino:'s meat. I do not want to 
 be thought queer or puritanical." He dared to 
 be singular. At the end of two weeks he had a 
 cleaner countenance and a sweeter breath than 
 any of the fast livers in the palace. "So did 
 not I" was the motto of this sturdy vounof tee- 
 totaler. If he had yielded to the current of 
 temptation and drifted with it, we never should 
 have heard of such a man as Daniel. 
 
 All the people who make a marked success 
 in life and who achieve any good work for God 
 are the people who are not ashamed to be thought 
 singular. The man who runs with the crowd 
 
70 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 counts for nothino-. It is when he turns about 
 
 o 
 
 and faces the multitude who are rushins: on to 
 do the evil that he commands every eye. Then 
 by a bold protest he may "put a thousand to 
 flight." So the young monk, Luther, turned 
 about and faced the hosts of the Papacy. His 
 heroic "No," nailed up on the church-door of 
 Wittenberg, aroused Europe from its delusive 
 and deadly dreams. Standing alone, he was re- 
 inforced by the Almighty. 
 
 But it is not only the Luthers, the Wilber- 
 forces, the John Quincy Adams and the Sum- 
 ners, who make their mark by being singular. 
 Every young man and woman, in their humbler 
 spheres, must come out and be separate from the 
 company of sinners if they w^ish to save their 
 characters and their souls. The downward pull 
 of sin is tremendous. To be able firmly to say, 
 "Yet will not I," requires the grace from above 
 in the heart. There is a subtle pull also in the 
 drift of simple fashion and usage which carries 
 away every one who is not well established on a 
 Bible conscience. Three-fourths of all the per- 
 
THE MIGHTY WORD " NO. " 7I 
 
 sons who are drowned on the seashore are swept 
 out by the undertow. This is the secret influence 
 which takes hold of so many church members 
 and carries them off into extravagant living-, into 
 sinful amusements and all manner of worldly 
 conformities. Every true Christian is bound to 
 be a "nonconformist." If he is not well an- 
 chored for Christ he is swept away by the 
 undertow. The bottom of the great deep is 
 strewed with such backsliders. 
 
 I would press this truth home upon every 
 young man who reads this page: your salvation 
 depends on your ability to say "No." When 
 your principle is put to the test, ask God's 
 help and stand firm. The messmates of Capt. 
 Hedley Vicars sneered at him as a "Methodist" 
 and a fanatic. He put his Bible on the table in 
 his tent and then stood by his colors. A British 
 soldier once told me that Vicars was a spiritual 
 power in his regiment. We had just such Chris- 
 tian heroes in our armv durinof the war. 
 
 In every school the difference is clearly 
 marked between the boy who has moral pluck 
 
72 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 and the boy who is mere pulp. The one knows 
 how to say "No." The other is so afraid of 
 being thought "verdant" that he soon kills 
 everything pure and fresh and manly in his 
 character and dries up into a premature hard- 
 ness of heart. Five lads were once o^athered 
 into a room at boarding-school, and four of them 
 engaged in a game of cards, which was expressly 
 forbidden by the rules. One of the players was 
 called out. The three said to the quiet lad who 
 was busy at something else, " Come, take a hand 
 with us. It is too bad to have the game broken 
 up. We will show you how to play. Come 
 along." Now that was a turning-point in that 
 lad's life. He nobly said, "My father does not 
 wish me to play cards, and I will not disobey 
 him." That sentence settled the matter and 
 settled his position among his associates. He 
 was the boy who could say "No;" and thence- 
 forward his victories were made easy and sure. 
 I well remember the pressure brought to bear in 
 college upon every young man to join in a wine- 
 drink or to take a hand in some contraband 
 
u 
 
 THE MIGHTY WORD ''NO." 73 
 
 amusement. Some timber got well seasoned. 
 Some of the other sort got well rotted through 
 sensuality and vice. The Nehemiahs at college 
 have been Nehemiahs ever since. The boy was 
 father of the man. 
 
 The only motive that could hold back the 
 brave "nonconformist" at Jerusalem was a 
 godly conscience. "So did not I, because of the 
 fear of God.'''' This ever-present principle held 
 him firm when temptation struck him as the 
 undercurrents strike against the keel. What the 
 fear of God did for Nehemiah, faith in the Lord 
 Jesus will do for you. Christ must be to you a 
 pattern, and he must be to you a power. It is 
 not enough to believe on Jesus. You must 
 "add to your faith courage'''* (for that is the real 
 meaning of the word translated " virtue" in our 
 English Bibles). Then, with Christ as your 
 model and Christ as your inward might, you will 
 always be able to face down temptation with the 
 iron answer, " So will not I." 
 
 10 
 
74 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 WATCH ! 
 
 Some bells require to be rung very often. 
 As there is constant danger from certain quar- 
 ters, so there must be constant warnings. When 
 our Lord repeats an admonition five times over 
 within the space of a dozen lines, we may be 
 quite sure that he regarded it as one of supreme 
 importance. If we turn to the thirteenth chap- 
 ter of St. Mark we discover that he repeated his 
 injunction to watchfulness several times, and 
 then closed his solemn discourse with the sharp 
 stroke on the alarm-bell, '' I say unto you all, 
 watch P ' 
 
 Those of us who have crossed the ocean in a 
 steamship have always gone down to our berths 
 on a dark nio^ht with a more comfortable sense of 
 security from having seen a "lookout" posted 
 on the ship's bow. It is the business of that 
 sailor to do two things, viz., to keep wide awake 
 
WATCH ! 75 
 
 and to report instantly any glimpse of a vessel 
 or an iceberg before the steamer's path. His sig- 
 nal is the security of every soul on board. Con- 
 science is the lookout on the bow in the voyage 
 of life. Some people with sinful infatuation put 
 conscience at the stern; it may utter its shriek of 
 remorse when the sin has been committed and 
 the craft has struck the temptation which stove 
 in the bow. But a conscience that can do no 
 more than moan and weep over sins already com- 
 mitted is of little worth; for even that process is 
 a very hardening one if continued very long. 
 
 I have observed one verv undeniable fact in 
 my own experience and in my observation of 
 others: this fact is that everything depends on 
 the manner in which first sins and first slips 
 from the right path are treated. If a first false 
 step is promptly met by a thorough repentance 
 (as in the case of Peter's lie in Pilate's Hall), 
 then the mischief ends. The soul soon recovers 
 its healthy tone, and is sometimes the wiser and 
 stronger for its sad experience. But if the first 
 sin is followed bv a second and a third and a 
 
"jG ' NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 fourth Y/ithout any contrition before God, then 
 conscience soon becomes benumbed and power- 
 less. In time it is seared as with a hot iron. 
 This is the case with those professed Christians' 
 who lapse into sensual vices or who are detected 
 in dishonest defalcations or breaches of trust. 
 All these men could have been easily saved rig^ht 
 after the first transgression; but when that was 
 passed without compunction, the rapids soon 
 whirled them over the cataract. It is astonish- 
 ing to observe how fast sin w^ll anodyne even a 
 Christian's conscience. 
 
 I. It is the office of a healthy conscience not 
 only to feel keen compunctions when wrong has 
 been done, but to detect sin in advance and to 
 sound the alarm to the will, which has its hand 
 on the helm. The truly righteous man has just 
 as many temptations floating across his weather- 
 bow as the ungodly or the backslider has. The 
 difference is that the good man's conscience de- 
 tects the dauQ^er and o:ives the sio-nal to the will 
 to "steer clear" of the enemy. Nay, more; 
 such a conscience reports the danger to God in 
 
WATCH ! 77 
 
 prayer, and prompt help comes from heaven to 
 the hand on the hehn. Wherefore the Master 
 commands us to both " watch and pray." 
 
 2. The eye must be open towards more di- 
 rections than one. While a sentinel is steadily 
 looking in the quarter whence he expects the 
 enemy, he may be surprised by a hand laid on 
 his shoulder from behind, and as he turns around 
 he finds the foe already inside the ramparts! He 
 was watching, but in the wrong direction. The 
 devil is a master of strategy. He always finds 
 out what gate is unguarded. We are often 
 shocked at the fall of certain much-trusted per- 
 sons into heinous sin; but not more than the 
 persons are themselves when they get their eyes 
 open to see "whence they have fallen." The 
 fatal mistake of all such is that they did not 
 keep the eyes open when the first temptation 
 came. 
 
 3. It is always unwise to despise an enemy. 
 We never know how many guns he carries un- 
 til he has stolen a march on us and opens fire. 
 King Edward's garrison fell asleep in Edin- 
 
78 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 burgli Castle because they fancied it impregna- 
 ble, and despised the little band of Scottish sol- 
 diers who were prowling about below the cliff. 
 But when Randolph's thirty men had scaled the 
 precipice and leaped the walls, they w^ere an 
 overmatch for a whole garrison who were asleep. 
 The simple reason why the Englishmen did not 
 watch that night was that they did not regard a 
 score or tw^o of Highlanders worth the watching. 
 You and I, dear reader, have sometimes caught 
 our hardest blows from the foes whom we under- 
 rated. Our Lord himself did not underrate the 
 adversary on the mount of temptation. 
 
 4. The best preventive against spiritual as- 
 sault and overthrow is to keep up constantly 
 the tone and fibre of a truly godly character by 
 perpetual living close with God. Multitudes 
 live as if there were no God in the broad world.: 
 They act as if the Master were away and w^ould 
 never return. "Blessed is that servant whom, 
 when the Master cometh, he finds watching." 
 It is not only the enemy whom we are to be 
 looking after, but our Lord himself. I never 
 
WATCH 
 
 know when he will come to inspect my poor 
 work, or when he will come with the orders to 
 drop the tools into the grave. But a perpetually 
 vigilant life of communion and Word-study and 
 holy intercourse with him will keep us ever 
 ready for " the last call." If we watch thus for 
 him he will be ever watching over tis^ and then 
 no deadly danger shall ever befall us. It ought 
 to be not only a duty but a delight to be watch- 
 ful. For there are so many mercies constantly 
 coming in sight, so many opportunities to do 
 good, so many beautiful views of God's provi- 
 dence, and so many foretastes of heaven, that we 
 lose more than we can afford to if we fall asleep 
 on our homeward way. Can we "not watch 
 with him ojie hour^^ ? It wdll soon be over. 
 
So NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 THE THOUGHT-MILL. 
 
 Every one of us carries in his or her person a 
 more marvellous apparatus than human skill 
 ever conceived. It may be likened to a mill 
 which is running without any pause, unless it be 
 during the unconscious hours of sleep. The 
 Creator who fashioned this wonderful mill has 
 provided the wheat and corn, which, if well 
 ground, furnish food to nourish and strengthen 
 and make us happy. But the evil one is ever 
 on the watch to throw in worthless chaff or poi- 
 sonous tares, which if ground out and consumed 
 are fatal to health, and may breed disease and 
 death. This marvellous mill is the mind — fear- 
 fully and wonderfully made. Fill it with the 
 golden wheat of pure and noble thoughts, and 
 the outcome of it will be a life worth carrying 
 up to the judgment-seat. If selfishness and Satan 
 supply the grist, then the outcome will be mis- 
 
THE THOUGHT-MILL. 8l 
 
 chief, misery, and perdition. Keep thy heart- 
 mill with all diligence and watchfulness; for out 
 of it are the issues of thy life. As a man think- 
 eth in his heart, so is he. 
 
 A person is known by the company he keeps. 
 So the thoughts which we harbor within us, and 
 which go out through the door of our senses, de- 
 cide our characters. Let me but know what 
 thoughts occupy most your mind when you are 
 alone ^ and I will determine what manner of per- 
 son you are. A true child of God gives house- 
 room to pure, quickening, and holy thoughts; 
 and he is constantly striving to bar up door and 
 windows against wicked intruders. He watches 
 his heart-mill lest the tempter fill it with net- 
 tles or clo": it with o:ravel. 
 
 Habitual thinking determines whether we are 
 Christ's servants or Satan's bond-slaves. A sen- 
 sualist is only a filthy thinker. The walls of his 
 mind are hung around with lascivious pictures; 
 his very soul becomes a brothel, and it is no easy 
 task after conversion to clean this house of un- 
 clean imagery. Do a man's thoughts run every 
 
 Kewly En:ist«<l. I J 
 
82 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 day upon the bottle? Then he is a tippler era 
 sot. A miser's mind is simply a money-bag. 
 Does another man's mind-mill welcome every 
 golden thought from God's Word, from nature, 
 and from the workings of the Holy Spirit? 
 Then as the sweet, nutritious flour pours from 
 between the rollers of a Minnesota grain-mill, so 
 do inspiring words and useful plans and godly 
 deeds stream out from that Christian's consecra- 
 ted heart. 
 
 One of the highest of spiritual luxuries is the 
 companionship of pure, exhilarating, and holy 
 thoughts. "I thought of Jesus," said devout 
 Samuel Rutherford, "until every stone in the 
 walls of my prison cell shone like a ruby." We 
 can imagine how the white doves fluttered in 
 and lighted on John Bunyan's rude table in his 
 little Bedford gaol. No king entertained such 
 royal guests as the poor tinker, when he set open 
 his soul's windows towards heaven. 
 
 On the other hand, there is no greater tor- 
 ment than to be an unclean or intensely selfish 
 or profane thinker. Such a man is "grievously 
 
THE TIIOUGHT-MILI.. 83 
 
 vexed with a devil." Out of siidi hearts pro- 
 ceed evil thoughts, revenges, cruelties, fornica- 
 tions, pride, and blasphemies. What a hell iu 
 advance to have such a heart ! To carry such a 
 heart into eternity, and to be locked up with it 
 there, would be the worm that dieth not and the 
 fire that is never quenched. 
 
 Do you say that you are troubled wath im- 
 pure and defiling thoughts? Then doii^t think 
 tJiem. Are vou haunted with doubtino;- and dis- 
 trusting and skeptical thoughts against God and 
 his promises? Doiit think them. Watch the 
 mill and fiiner them out. All thouQ:hts have 
 their germs. The surest way to kill a sin is to 
 kill it in the ^%%. At the very moment when 
 a wricked thought is conceived, or is thrust into 
 your mind, cj'iish it ! The little serpent will 
 soon become the anaconda which will enfold 
 you and strangle you like the fabled Laocoon in 
 the embrace of the sea-monsters. 
 
 How important, too, is it to nurse into vigor- 
 ous life every germ of pure and heaven-inspired 
 thought! Your whole spiritual life will depend 
 
84 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 Upon the reception and the treatment you give 
 to every good idea born in your soul or awa- 
 kened there by the divine Spirit. To smother a 
 good thought is often a quenching of the Holy 
 Spirit; it has cost the eternal ruin of millions; it 
 may rob you of a heavenly hope. 
 
 A wonderful apparatus indeed is this thought- 
 mill within our breasts. We cannot guard it too 
 carefully. Christ offers us his precious truth to 
 supply it, his help to keep it clear from the 
 wretched garbaofe which the evil one would 
 fling into it, and his propelling power to drive it 
 with all useful and holy activities. The hand of 
 Death cannot destroy this marvellous piece of 
 God's workmanship; for it is immortal. Keep 
 this ever-busy, ever-tempted, ever-active heart of 
 thine with ceaseless care and with prayer; and in 
 heaven you will find that the pure in heart shall 
 see God. 
 
SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 85 
 
 THE SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTI- 
 NENCE. 
 
 A YOUNG man who had just lost an excellent 
 situation by a two days' "spree" came into my 
 study lately and said to me, " Doctor, I cannot 
 understand how it is that I should have made 
 such a fool of myself and thrown away my 
 chance for a living. This is almost killing my 
 little wife." I replied to him, "There is no 
 mystery about your case. You have been tam- 
 pering with drink a long while, trying to jump 
 half way down Niagara. You ought to have 
 stopped before you began. It would not have 
 cost you one-hundredth part as much effort to 
 have signed a total abstinence pledge several 
 years ago as it will now to break loose from this 
 terrible habit." I entreated my friend to grap- 
 ple his weakness to God's strength. He signed 
 a pledge of entire abstinence, and went away 
 
S6 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 with the desperate look of a man who is pulling 
 for life in the rapids in full sight of the cataract. 
 That young man is a fair representative of a 
 sadly numerous class who "lock the stable-door 
 after the horse is stolen." He may possibly be 
 Saved, but so as by fire. My plain talk to-day is 
 with those who have not yet flung themselves 
 into the rapids. I wish to give half a dozen 
 common-sense reasons for letting every intoxica- 
 ting drink (whatever its name) entirely alone. 
 He who never touches a drop will assuredly 
 never become a drunkard. Prevention is easy, 
 is safe, is sure; reformation is difficult, and with 
 some persons is well nigh impossible. The Jews 
 were commanded to build battlements around 
 the flat roofs of their dwellings in order to pre- 
 vent the children from falling over into the 
 street. To put up the parapet cost but little, 
 but the want of it might cost broken bones; and 
 alas! what human power could recall a dead dar- 
 ling to life? I am always thankful that I took 
 a pledge of entire abstinence in early boyhood. 
 But for that battlement I mig^ht have been ruined 
 
SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINE.N'CH. 8/ 
 
 by the drinking usages which were deplorably 
 prevalent in my college. "Stick to the teeto- 
 tal," said a shrewd old kinsman to me when I 
 started for college; and now, after forty years, I 
 wish to commend the bridge that carried me 
 safely over. 
 
 I. The first argument, my friend, for total 
 abstinence is that no healthy person needs an 
 alcoholic beverage; and even invalids had better 
 be careful how they tamper with it as a medi- 
 cine. Sir Henry Thompson and several other 
 distinguished British physicians have deliber- 
 ately declared that "alcoholic beverages cannot 
 in any sense be considered necessary for the 
 maintenance of healthy life, that it is not a food 
 in any true sense of that term, and that the 
 steadiest and best work is best done without it." 
 Livingstone, the heroic explorer of Central Af- 
 rica, was both a physician and a teetotaler. His 
 testimony was, "I find that I can stand every 
 hardship best by using water, and water only." 
 I entreat you not to fall into the delusion that 
 you can do any honest work the better by firing 
 
88 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 Up your nerves with alcohol. If you do, you 
 will have to increase the fuel constantly in order 
 to produce the effect. Solid food and sound 
 sleep are all you require. Even as a tonic medi- 
 cine wine and bourbon may cover up a great 
 deal; they awe but very little. Several friends I 
 have known to be decoyed by them into drunk- 
 enness and disQfrace. 
 
 2. Therein lies a second reason for avoidino- 
 all intoxicants. They are deceitful. Not only 
 the sting of the serpent, but the subtlety of the 
 serpent, is in them. The deception lies in the 
 fact that the Jiabit of drinking will become con- 
 firmed before you suspect it. That young man 
 who came into my study so tortured with the 
 adder's bite never dreamed at the outset that he 
 was playing with a rattlesnake. Every alcoholic 
 drink has in it this quality, that it never satisfies, 
 but awakens a constant demand for more. A 
 small glass creates a thirst for a larger; one 
 draught only whets the appetite for a second. 
 This is not the case with any wholesome food or 
 beverage. Bread and beef do not breed excess; 
 
SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 89 
 
 one glass of milk does not arouse a morbid thirst 
 for two the next time. But this horse-leech 
 quality in alcoholic liquors, which cries, " Give, 
 give," and is never satisfied, is the very thing 
 that makes them so daufjerous. That it is which 
 makes it so difficult to drink wine or brandy 
 moderately, and so easy to fall into drunkenness. 
 A healthful beverage satisfies appetite; a hurtful 
 one, like wine or brandy, stimulates appetite 
 until it becomes an imcontrollable frenzy. This 
 I regard as the Creator's law against alcohol ; and 
 when you take your first social glass you begin 
 to play with a deadly serpent. 
 
 You may say, " Every one who drinks liquors 
 does not become a sot." Very true, but every 
 sot drinks liquors; and not one in a million ever 
 expected to become a sot when he began with his 
 champagne or his "sherry cobbler." Will you 
 run the risk ? I would not. The most deplor- 
 able wrecks are those of men or women who 
 at the outset considered themselves perfectly 
 strong and invulnerable. Nothing from the pen 
 of Dickens can surpass a heart-rending letter 
 
 12 
 
90 NEWLY EX LISTED. 
 
 which I received from a cultured gentleman 
 (then in an almshouse), who declared that he 
 traced all the misery of his life directly to the 
 
 "first glass he ever drank at the N House, 
 
 in the capital of Ohio." First glasses have peo- 
 pled hell! With whatever "odds" in your 
 favor, will you run the fearful hazard? Then 
 stop before you begin. 
 
 3. A third reason why alcoholic drinks are 
 dangerous is that it is the peculiar property of al- 
 cohol to strike directly to the brain. Some drugs 
 have an affinity for the heart, others for the 
 spine. The glass of brandy aims for the brain 
 as a hound makes for a hare. In striking the 
 brain it overturns the throne of the reason and 
 makes a man a maniac. Like the shot in a 
 naval battle which hits "between wind and 
 water," the alcoholic death-shot strikes where 
 body and mind meet, and sends both to the bot- 
 tom. No brain is proof against it. 
 
 The mightiest man intellectually whom I 
 ever saw in America, I once saw pitiably drunk ! 
 Alcohol is no respecter of persons; the giant and 
 
SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINEXCF:. 9I 
 
 the idiot are struck down alike by its stiletto. 
 You might as well put the pistol to your brain 
 and make swift, sure work with it as to poison 
 your brain by the slower and equally deadly pro- 
 cess of the bottle. Ninety-nine hundredths of all 
 the suicides in the land began with a thoughtless 
 glass. Stop, my friend, before you begin! 
 
 4. All intoxicating drinks are more danger- 
 ous in this country than in almost any other, 
 from the nervous temperament of our people. 
 Our climate is stimulating, and American life, in 
 almost every direction, runs at a high rate of 
 speed. Youth is commonly stronger at the en- 
 gine than it is at the brakes. This is preemi- 
 nently true of our young men. One unanswer- 
 able proof of the difficulty of stopping the drink- 
 habit is found in the fact that so very few are 
 actually reformed. Not one-tenth of those who 
 enslave themselves to the bottle ever break loose, 
 even though they cry out in their sober moments, 
 "Would to God that I might never taste another 
 drop!'^ There was a touching pathos in the 
 speech of one of "our boys in blue" to the 
 
92 NEWI,Y ENLISTED." 
 
 police magistrate after he was arrested for drunk- 
 enness. He held up a whiskey flask and said, 
 "Your honor, the only enemy that ever con- 
 quered me is thatP'' Yet he admitted that en- 
 emy himself and could not dislodge it. 
 
 I might multiply arguments in favor of total 
 abstinence as the only certain safeguard. The 
 grace of God is powerless if you voluntarily 
 yield to temptation. It is a defiance to the Al- 
 mighty for you to leap into the rapids and ex- 
 pect him to save you from the cataract. The re- 
 mainder of my life shall be spent in endeavoring 
 to prevent young men from embarking on the 
 stream which is all music and mirth at the start- 
 ing-point, and all death and damnation at the 
 bottom. Tons of arguments and appeals have 
 been printed on this vital question, " How to 
 save young men from strong drink," but they 
 may all be condensed into one line — Stop before 
 you beg in ! 
 
THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE. 93 
 
 THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE. 
 
 Young people often ask me the questions, 
 *' Would it be rii^lit for nie to ^o to the theatre? 
 If not, then why not?" 
 
 Those who propound these questions are not 
 of the dissipated and dissolute class, but clean 
 young men and maidens — too clean to be 
 smirched by needless exposure to impure influen- 
 ces. That such questions are constantly raised is 
 not surprising-, for the playhouse is increasingly 
 persistent in its demands on popular attention 
 and patronage. It fills a constantly enlarging 
 place in the daily journals. Theatres multiply 
 more rapidly than churches in some of our 
 great cities. Theatre-going increases more than 
 church-going. The dead walls are covered with 
 pictorial representations of scenes and actors in 
 full dress (or in very little dress), and many of 
 these are of such disgusting indecency that they 
 
94 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 deserve suppression by the public authorities. 
 If the pictures be so shameless, what must the 
 originals be? Before our youthful inquirers be- 
 come patrons of the playhouse it is but fair that 
 they should know just what perils to their moral 
 nature and their welfare as immortal beings they 
 are likely to encounter. 
 
 First. The first peril is to purity of character. 
 Your eyes and ears are windows and doors to the 
 heart. What enters once never goes out. Photo- 
 graphs taken on the memory are not easily ef- 
 faced or burned up; they stick there, and often 
 become tempters and tormentors for a lifetime. 
 *'I'd give my right hand," said a Christian to 
 me once, " if I could rub out the abominable 
 things that I put into my mind when I was a 
 fast young man." He could not do it; neither 
 will you be able to efface the lascivious images 
 or the impure words which the stage may photo- 
 graph on your very soul. We do not affirm that 
 every popular play is immoral, or that every per- 
 former is impure, or that every play-goer is on 
 the scent for sensual excitements; but the stage 
 
THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE. 95 
 
 is to be estimated as a totality, and the whole 
 trend of the average American stage is hostile to 
 heart-purity. The exceptions do not alter the 
 rule. Nor have honest attempts to bring the 
 stage up to a high standard of moral purity been 
 successful. The experiment, once made in Bos- 
 ton, of so managing a theatre as to exclude every 
 indelicacy from the stage and every notoriously 
 improper person from the audience, ended in a 
 pecuniary failure. The puritanic playhouse soon 
 went into bankruptcy. The chief object of the 
 manager is to make money; and if he can spice 
 his evening entertainment with a plot that turns 
 on a seduction or w^ith a scene of sexual passion 
 or with a salacious exposure of physical beauty, 
 the temptation is very often too strong to be re- 
 sisted. 
 
 You must take the average stage as it is, and 
 not as you w^ould like to have it. It is an insti- 
 tution wdiich, if you patronize it, you become 
 morally responsible for — as much as if you were 
 to patronize a public library or a public drink- 
 ing-saloon. As an institution it habitually un- 
 
gS NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 sexes woman by parading her in man's attire 
 before a mixed audience. Too often it exposes 
 her in such a pitiable scantiness of any attire at 
 all that if you saw your own sister in such a 
 plight you would turn away your eyes in horror. 
 Yet you propose to pay your money, through the 
 box-office, to somebody else's sisters and daugh- 
 ters to violate womanly delicacy for your enter- 
 tainment. If "the dauo^hter of Herodias'* 
 dances to please you, then you are responsible for 
 the dance in its influence on both the dancer and 
 your own moral sense. There is no evading, be- 
 fore God, your accountability for the theatre if 
 you habitually support it. What its influence 
 upon the average performer is appears from most 
 abundant testimony. One of the most celebrated 
 actresses of this time informed a friend of mine 
 that she ''enters a theatre only to enact her part, 
 and has very little association with her own pro-^ 
 fession." A converted actor once said to me, 
 while passing a playhouse in which he had often 
 performed, " Behind those curtains lies Sodom." 
 Although sorely pressed to return to his old bus- 
 
THE PERILS OE THE PLAYHOUSE. 97 
 
 iness, he said he would starve sooner than go on 
 the stage again. Mrs. Frances Kemble Butler — 
 the last living representative of the most famous 
 histrionic family of modern times — has in her old 
 age emphatically condemned the stage. As an 
 institution the American theatre tolerates sen- 
 sual impurity in its performers and presents 
 scenes of impurity to its patrons. If you become 
 one of its patrons, you go into moral partnership 
 with the theatre. 
 
 Second. It would be a sufficient condemnation 
 of the average playhouse if it stimulates one evil 
 passion. But other temptations lurk about it. 
 There are danfjerous associations to be encoun- 
 tered there. It is a prevalent habit with young 
 people who attend the theatre to remain until a 
 late hour amid the excitement of the plays, and 
 then to finish off with a midnight supper or a 
 wine-drink at some neighboring restaurant. To 
 this perilous practice a young lady of my ac- 
 quaintance ow^ed her downfall. Long after sen- 
 sible people have laid their heads on their pil- 
 lows the habitues of the theatre are apt to be add- 
 
98 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 ing a second scene of dissipation to the first one. 
 It must be pretty hard work for a Christian to 
 finish up such an evening's experience with an 
 honest prayer for God's blessing. That is indeed 
 a poor business and a poor pleasure on which we 
 cannot with a clear conscience ask our Heavenly 
 Father's approval. Certainly there are enough 
 innocent, wholesome, and beneficial recreations 
 without venturing into the dangerous atmos- 
 phere of the playhouse. That is a dear-bought 
 pleasure which involves even a risk to the im- 
 mortal soul. 
 
 Third. Another peril of the theatre arises 
 from the fascination which it too often engen- 
 ders. Like wine-drinking, it becomes an appe- 
 tite, and a very greedy appetite. To gratify this 
 growing passion for the playhouse tens of thou- 
 sands of young people most profusely squander 
 their money and their time. Other and purer 
 recreations become tame and insipid. Even the 
 entertainments of the stage become dull unless 
 they are spiced with new excitements to the pas- 
 sions. Wholesome pleasures cease to please, just 
 
THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE. 99 
 
 as a brandv-drinker ceases to be satisfied with 
 cold water or a cup of coffee. It is not recrea- 
 tion but stimulation — and a very dangerous sort 
 of stimulation too — that you will be after when 
 you become enslaved by the fascinations of the 
 stage. 
 
 My young friends, be assured that no saga- 
 cious employer ever chooses a clerk or an ac- 
 countant, or any other employe, the sooner be- 
 cause he is a theatre-goer. No sensible man is 
 apt to select the companion of his heart and 
 home because she is a frequenter of a playhouse. 
 No wise Christian mother wants her sons and 
 daughters there. No pastor expects his youthful 
 church members to go into that impure atmos- 
 phere without a terrible damage to their piety. 
 I do not believe that the theatre has helped 
 many souls towards heaven; I know that it has 
 sent thousands to perdition. 
 
 Now that .1 have in kind and candid plain- 
 ness of speech pointed out some of the inevitable 
 perils of the playhouse, ought you to take the 
 risk? 
 
lOO NEWLY ENUSTED. 
 
 FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. 
 
 "For my sake." These three little words 
 are the touchstone of love. The application of 
 this touchstone begins with infancy and ends 
 only with the end of life. If that baby in the 
 mother's arms could speak intelligently it would 
 say, "It is for my sake that a mother's eye 
 watches unsleeping through the midnight hours 
 and her arms hold me until they are ready to 
 drop off for weariness." " For my sake" many 
 a successful man acknowledges gratefully that 
 his parents toiled and economized in order to buy 
 books and pay college bills. "For my sake'* 
 provides the sheltering roof and the arm-chair 
 for dear old grandma at the fireside. Take these 
 three words out of our language and you would 
 rob home of its sweetness and human life of some 
 of its noblest inspirations. 
 
 Our divine Master made these words the text 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. lOI 
 
 of several of his most impressive injunctions. 
 "Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the 
 same shall save it." To newly-converted Saul 
 of Tarsus the first message is, "I will show him 
 how great things he must suffer for my name's 
 sake." Again and again the early disciples were 
 exhorted to bear crosses bravely for Jesus^ sake. 
 Christ came into this world to save us from our 
 sins, and chiefly to save us from the abomina- 
 ble and damnins: sin of selfishness. The one 
 motive that has the power to lift us out of self 
 and to exalt life to its highest and holiest phase 
 is heart -love for a crucified Saviour. "Love 
 Me more than houses or lands or wife or chil- 
 dren," is the first condition of discipleship. No 
 soul is truly converted until it cuts loose from 
 self-righteousness and accepts Jesus Christ as the 
 only ground of salvation. Conversion signifies 
 that self has grounded its arms in its very citadel 
 and has surrendered the keys of the heart to the 
 conquering Saviour. Henceforth it inscribes 
 "for Christ's sake" on its banner. The short- 
 est and most comprehensive confession of faith 
 
102 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 that any Christian can phrase is about in these 
 words: "It is Christ's business to save me; it is 
 my business to serve Christ." 
 
 " Saviour, teach me day by day 
 Love's sweet lesson to obey ; 
 Sweeter lesson cannot be, 
 Loving him who first loved me." 
 
 The Master never allowed the supreme test 
 of loyalty to him to be a mere emotion, however 
 fervid. It was a practical test. " If ye love me, 
 keep my commandments.'''' Write these decisive 
 words upon the walls of every prayer-room, to 
 rebuke the rant and the rhapsodies in which too 
 many windy professors indulge, while their hon- 
 est debts remain unpaid and their own children 
 sneer at the pious sham. It is not how many 
 promises we make, but how many command- 
 ments we obey; it is not how many tears we 
 shed, but how many sins we renounce; it is not 
 how many sacraments we observe, but how many 
 deeds we do for the Master's sake, that decides 
 the genuineness of our Christianity. Evermore is 
 the eye of our loving Saviour upon us, and ever- 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. I03 
 
 more is that voice saying unto us, " Live for me; 
 take up this cross for my sake." When we are 
 sore tempted to an act of retaliation or to some 
 sharp scheme that selfishness has varnished over 
 with falsehood, that rebuking voice accosts us: 
 "Wound me not in the house of my friends." 
 Sometimes a suffering servant of Jesus conies to 
 us for a proof of sympathy that costs more than 
 smooth words. Selfishness begins to mutter 
 about "impostors" and "no end to these calls 
 of charity." But He who died for both of us 
 whispers gently, "Do it unto me. He is one of 
 my suffering children. Help him for my sake." 
 There is not a negro freedman who solicits aid 
 for his struggling church, or a hungry stranger 
 who knocks at our door for bread; there is not a 
 poor widow that asks for a dollar to pay her rent, 
 or a neglected child running in rags and reck- 
 lessness to ruin for want of a friend, but ever the 
 same voice is saying to us, "Give to them for 
 my sake. Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the 
 least of these, ye do it unto me." 
 
 One of the little orphan boys in John Falk's 
 
104 NEWLY ENLISTED. ( 
 
 German charity school repeated at the supper- 
 table their usual grace, "Come, Lord Jesus, be 
 our guest and bless the food thou hast provided." 
 A lad looked up and said, "Tell us, teacher, 
 why the Lord Jesus never comes." "Dear 
 child, only believe, and you may be sure that 
 he will come to us some of these times, for he 
 always hears us." "Then," replied the bright 
 lad, "I'll set a chair for him;" and he put one 
 by the table. By-and-by a knock was heard at 
 the door. A poor travelling apprentice was ad- 
 mitted and asked for food and lodging. The lit- 
 tle fellow looked at the strano:er a few moments 
 and then piped out, "Ah, I see! Jesus could not 
 come to-night and so he sent this poor young 
 man in his place. Is that the way, teacher?" 
 " Yes, my boy, that is just it. Every cup of 
 water or bit of bread we give to the poor and 
 hungry for Jesus' sake we give to Him. Inas- 
 much as we do it to the least of our brethren, we 
 do it unto our Saviour." 
 
 There are a thousand applications of this prin- 
 ciple of self-denial for Christ's sake. Grand old 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. 105 
 
 Paul had it in his mind when he wrote, "It is 
 good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine nor 
 anything whereby thy brother stunibleth or is 
 made weak." It is not easy for a true Christian 
 to keep this text in his Bible and to keep a bot- 
 tle on his table. They do not harmonize. The 
 bottle means temptation. The text means that 
 things which are not always sinful per se should 
 be cheerfully given up for the sake of others; and 
 the legal liberty of the man or woman whose 
 heart is in the right place will never be exercised 
 when a moral evil may flow from such exercise. 
 We have no right to put a stumbling-block in 
 the path of others. As a Christian I am bound 
 to surrender every self-indulgence which works 
 directly against the best interests of my fellow- 
 men, especially if it endangers precious souls for 
 whom Jesus died. This principle gives to the 
 doctrine of total abstinence from intoxicants a 
 broad Bible basis as solid as the Hudson Pali- 
 sades. 
 
 The two unanswerable arQ^uments ajrainst the 
 drinking usages are these: An alcoholic beverage 
 
 14 
 
Io6 NEWLY ENLISTED, 
 
 endangers me if I tamper with it; it endangers 
 my fellow-man if I offer it to him. My Bible 
 teaches me to let it alone for the sake of the 
 *'weak" and those who stumble. Ah, those 
 stumblers! How many wrecks the word reveals! 
 How many tombs it opens whose charitable turf 
 hides out of sight what surviving kindred would 
 love to hide from memory! For Jesus' sake and 
 for the sake of the easily tempted who will hide 
 behind our example, let us who call ourselves 
 Christians put away this bottled devil which con- 
 ceals damnation under its ruby glow. This sub- 
 ject of self-surrender for Jesus' sake is as wide as 
 the domain of Christian duty. To live for Christ 
 is the sweetest and holiest life we can live; to 
 live for self is the most wretched. Every cross 
 is turned into a crown, every burden becomes a 
 blessing, every sacrifice becomes sacred and sub- 
 lime, the moment that our lyord and Redeemer 
 writes on it, ^^For my sake.'''' 
 
CONSECRATION. lO' 
 
 CONSECRATION. 
 
 Among the many passages in the Old Testa- 
 ment whose translation is vitally improved in 
 the new Revision is the following verse in the 
 first book of the Chronicles: "Who then offereth 
 willingly to consecrate himself this day unto the 
 Lord?" King David propounded this question 
 to the people of Israel when he was about under- 
 taking the noble project of rearing a magnificent 
 temple to Jehovah. He called for contributions 
 of money and of labor. There was to be no en- 
 forced draft of either men or money; every gift 
 was to be spontaneous and offered willingly. It 
 is the same thought which Paul presents when 
 he exhorts us, "Whatsoever ye do, do it Jicariily^ 
 as to the Lord." The overmastering love of 
 Christ in the soul will make hard labors light 
 and unwelcome tasks agreeable and sacrifices 
 prompt and cheerful. "Plunged into the at- 
 
I08 NEWLY ENLISTED. ( 
 
 mosphere of love, the dim flame of obedience 
 will burn more brightly, like a lamp plunged 
 into ajar of pure oxygen." 
 
 The very word ' ' consecration ' ' savors of 
 pious cant in the estimation of some people, be- 
 cause they have heard it glibly used by certain 
 sentimental Christians in a cheap and flippant 
 fashion. Rightly felt and practised, it is the 
 very essence of healthy, holy, and happy piety. 
 God has a sovereign right to us; in every sweet 
 breath of his pure air, in every object of beauty 
 our eyes behold, in every line of his precious 
 Word, in every step of his providential care, in 
 every heart-joy at the mercy-seat, in every prom- 
 ise fulfilled and grace imparted, we discover a 
 new obligation to be the Lord's. ^'Ye are not 
 your own; ye are bought with a price;" these 
 solemn, tender words seal. the claim of our cruci- 
 fied Master. Christ for me, and I for Christ, is 
 the very core of honest self-consecration. 
 
 To be worth anything this must begin with 
 and centre in the Iicai^t. The whole undivided 
 soul must be surrendered to Him who died to re- 
 
CONSECRATION. IO9 
 
 deem the soul. Christ will not take up with a 
 closet or a corner. He demands the complete sur- 
 render of the will, the faculties, and the affections. 
 A hundred half-Christians cannot make a single 
 whole one. The more heart there is in our reli- 
 gion, the more joy, the more power, the more 
 victory. Nobody succeeds in what is imdertaken 
 grudgingly; the successful men have always 
 been, like Paul, men of one idea. ''This one 
 thinof I do;" "For me to live is Christ." The 
 paramount purpose with Isaac Newton was star- 
 eyed science; he waited at the posts of her doors 
 until she taught him how to weigh the globe. 
 Love of his art held Joshua Reynolds to his easel 
 for twenty unbroken hours till he had caught the 
 coveted conception on his canvas. The great, 
 rugged Scotch soul of Livingstone was already 
 anion or the heathen of the Dark Continent before 
 he carried his body thither for martyrdom. The 
 more of your heart you give to Jesus the more 
 will Jesus give you of himself. 
 
 In reading the biographies of many of the 
 most vigorous and effective Christians we have 
 
no NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 been struck with the fact that at the outset they 
 entered into a solemn, sincere covenant of self- 
 consecration. Something like this has been the 
 spirit if not always the actual language of their 
 dedication of themselves to God: "Oh, heart- 
 searching God and Father, thou hast a right to 
 me, as my Creator and Preserver, and as having 
 given thy Son to be my Saviour. I thank thee 
 that eternal life has been offered to me through 
 his atoning death, that the Holy Spirit has 
 drawn my heart unto thee, and that thou hast 
 called me to thy blessed service. May the Lord 
 Jesus Christ dwell in my heart by his Spirit, and 
 purify me and fill me unto all the fulness of 
 God! Unto thee I do consecrate my heart, my 
 body, my time, my possessions, my influence — 
 all I am and all I hope to have in this world or 
 another. Teach me how to serve thee, and may 
 I never grow weary in doing thy holy will. Let 
 thy Word abide in me in all wisdom and thy 
 grace ever be sufficient for me. Make me stead- 
 fast in faith, perfect in love, and abundant in 
 labor; and when this poor heart shall cease to 
 
CONSECRATION. Ill 
 
 pulsate on earth, grant me a gracious admission 
 as a sinner saved into the higher, holier service 
 of thy heavenly kingdom — for Jesus' sake." 
 
 Whoever can in humble sincerity make this 
 consecration of himself to God has taken the 
 great initial step towards a healthy and happy 
 Christian life. When the heart is given to 
 Christ and given without reserve or compromise, 
 all other things will be quite sure to follow. 
 "Holiness to the Lord" will be stamped on 
 them as a merchant stamps his trade-mark on 
 his wares. Such practical questions as. What 
 work shall I engage in, how much time shall I 
 devote, and how much money shall I give ? will 
 be settled by a conscience of which Christ is 
 Kinof. Christ will ^et the best. The first-fruits 
 will not be locked up in the granary or the fat- 
 test sheep killed for the table of selfishness. The 
 whole week will not be monopolized for business 
 or household duties and a hurried ten minutes be 
 snatched for private prayer or a sleepy hour be 
 grudgingly given to a devotional meeting. If 
 there is a bright, intellectual son in the family, 
 
112 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 the first thouglit will not be to enter him in the 
 race for wealth or fame or splendid station, but 
 this other thought — May not Jesus Christ have a 
 use for this brain and tongue in preaching his 
 glorious gospel ? There are some of us ministers 
 who in heaven will thank a godly mother for 
 having made this very choice for us and* for hav- 
 ing consecrated us from infancy to this "high 
 calling." There are very many other ways in 
 which a man may serve God outside of a pulpit; 
 but Jesus Christ ought to have the "pick" in 
 our schools and colleges, and back of that in our 
 homes and households. No vounsf man or wo- 
 man ever consecrated himself or herself to the 
 work of saving souls and helping their fellow- 
 creatures God ward and was sorry for it. 
 
 The question "Where shall I find a field of 
 labor for Christ?" must be settled by the other 
 considerations — "What am I best fitted for? and 
 Where am I most needed?" Mary Lyon's in- 
 junction to her pupils at Mt. Holyoke was worthy 
 of Paul himself: "Young ladies, in choosing 
 your place of labor go zvhcrc nobody else is luill- 
 
CONSECRATION. II3 
 
 ing to goy That sentence is as near like Holy 
 Scripture as Abraham Lincoln's "With malice 
 towards none, with charity for all." 
 
 The amount of our property to be consecrated 
 to purposes of benevolence should be left to a 
 prayer-enlightened conscience. If Christ keeps 
 the check-book and the key of the purse, then 
 he will get his due share. But not a dollar 
 should be given to charity which is demanded 
 by honest indebtedness. "Owe no man any- 
 thing but to love one another" is a divine rule 
 whose claim is as binding as the claim of God's 
 treasury. The Bible rule is that every one 
 should give "as God hath prospered him;" in 
 other words, according to his means. This puts 
 the poor widow's mites on a par with the mil- 
 lions of a rich donor. The most effective way of 
 consecrating money is to bestow it systematic- 
 ally — just as the river Nile gives so much water 
 and just so much soil and rice-crop every year. 
 But, good friends, after you and I have consecra- 
 ted our whole selves and all our possessions, we 
 shall still meet our Lord in heaven d,s poor debtors. 
 
 Newly EiilintcJ. I C 
 
114 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 MORE ABUNDANT UFE. 
 
 He is a poor specimen of a Christian who is 
 satisfied to be to-day no better than he was yes- 
 terday. To be barely alive is not enough. Je- 
 sus promises to all his blood-bought disciples 
 that they shall have "life more abundantly y We 
 give away to impenitent sinners or to seeking 
 souls some precious promises which belong to 
 true believers. "A new heart will I give you; 
 a new spirit will I put within you." Such 
 promises reach beyond inquiry-rooms; they are 
 for every-day consumption by us who claim to be 
 Christians. We need to have a new heart again 
 and again, just as our faces require frequent 
 washing and our bodies require frequent feeding. 
 Christ is an inexhaustible fountain-head of life, 
 and it depends upon ourselves as to how much of 
 this divine life shall stream into our souls. 
 
 I. One of the indications of an increased 
 
MORK ABUNDANT LIKP:. II5 
 
 Christ-life in the soul will be more vigor. I have 
 a tree in my yard that used to issue its promis- 
 sory notes in May, and failed to redeem them 
 with more than a handful of fruit in August. It 
 shook down its beautiful white blossoms in the 
 spring, and that about exhausted it. I dug about 
 it and applied a strong fertilizer, and now it fills 
 a big basket with delicious pears. So does our 
 Master often deal with us. He puts in the 
 plough of sharp providences that make tearing 
 work about the roots and dislodge the vermin 
 of besettins: sins. With the trials come the 
 strengthening graces. When a man's system is 
 in a low, impoverished condition he is apt to 
 catch any fever that is a-going. So it is a low 
 spiritual life that breeds worldliness and stingi- 
 ness and censoriousness and other acute attacks 
 of sinful lusts. With a sick soul, as with a sick 
 body, the problem often is whether there is vital- 
 ity enoufjh inside to slouo-h off the disease. "I 
 have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not," said 
 Jesus when Simon Peter was in a bad way; but 
 for imparted grace that ugly attack in Pilate's 
 
Il6 NEWI.Y ENLISTED. 
 
 Hall might have been the end of poor Peter. 
 When he got the more abundant vigor of Christ's 
 Spirit he went through tenfold greater dangers 
 imharmed. Why should any Christian be merely 
 gasping when he ought to be "strengthened 
 with all power in his inner man, according to 
 the might" of Christ Jesus? The more vigor 
 we desire the more w^e shall receive, and the 
 more we receive the more we will be able to 
 receive. 
 
 2. A second evidence of increased life is an 
 increase oi faith. A small faith can move mole- 
 hills; a stalwart faith can remove mountains. 
 It is the feebleness of the grip on God that makes 
 it so hard for us to stand the heavy strains or to 
 lift the heavy loads. This is the reason why 
 some parents and teachers produce no impression 
 on the young hearts committed to them; for this 
 same reason many pastors reap no harvests. 
 "According to your fatt/i be it unto you." That 
 is Christ's mode of measurement. Mr. Spurgeon 
 tells us of a fervent, fearless preacher who went 
 into a region where wickedness abounded. In 
 
MORE ABUNDANT LIFE. II7 
 
 one of his first sermons lie said, " Now you may 
 squirm and scoff as much as you will, but I tell 
 you that before a twelvemonth hundreds of you 
 will be converted. I have asked the Lord for 
 this, and he will give it to me." And the Lord 
 did give him wdiat he looked for and labored for; 
 within less than a year there were six hundred 
 conversions. Faith signifies the grappling union 
 of the soul with the Almighty Saviour. The 
 closer the connection the more power flows in. 
 A current of electricity sent through a huge 
 horseshoe magnet will enable it to support a 
 weight of a thousand pounds; stop the current, 
 and the weight drops instantly. The more 
 abundant our faith the fuller will be the inflow 
 of Christ. Paul's secret was just this: '' Not I, 
 but Christ that liveth in me; and the life I live 
 I live hy faith on the Son of God.' 
 
 3. If Christ be in us more abundantly there 
 will be a great influx of joy. None of us is as 
 happy as he or she might be. Some Christians 
 carry such a doleful countenance and cheerless 
 atmosphere that if they should venture to urge a 
 
Il8 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 friend to coine to Christ the answer might very 
 properly be, ' ' No, I thank you. I have troubles 
 enough of my own without adding to them such 
 a forlorn religion as yours.'' Such Christians 
 cheat themselves out of their birthright. Jesus 
 assures us that his joy may remain in us and that 
 our joy may be full. Raptures are not always 
 vouchsafed even to the healthiest disciple. But 
 a healthy man will enjoy eating a ripe peach; a 
 loving wife enjoys a husband's kiss; and there 
 must be something wrong with a man or woman 
 who professes to feed on Christ and to do Christ's 
 will, and yet finds no delight in it. How can 
 we have Jesus in our souls and yet feel no joy ? 
 Just as soon expect to find an aviary full of cana- 
 ries and goldfinches and larks that should be as 
 silent as a tomb. Joy is love looking at its treas- 
 ures. The richer we become in Christ's presence 
 now and the expectation of dwelling with him 
 for ever, the more investments we make in do- 
 ing good to others and in saving souls, the more 
 abundant will be the casket of our jewels. When 
 a person says to me, "I don't enjoy my reli- 
 
MORE ABUNDANT LIFE. II9 
 
 gion," the proper reply is, "Then you cannot 
 have enough religion to enjoy. Get fuller of 
 Christ, and he will put the sunshine into your 
 soul and the song into your mouth." 
 
 4. Another token of increased life will be an 
 increased resistance to sin and a quickening of 
 conscience in every-day transactions. One of the 
 most lamentable lacks in too many church mem- 
 bers is the lack of a sensitive, healthy conscience. 
 "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst 
 after rigJitconsncss^'^'' said our Lord. We talk of 
 this brother or that one as "weak;" but in eth- 
 ics to be weak is to be wicked. It is just these 
 weak professors who are bringing shame on the 
 name of Christianity. Religious motives may 
 burn brightly in prayer-meeting, but be blown 
 out like a candle as soon as a strong wind of temp- 
 tation strikes them in the open air. Dr. Hodge 
 said of a certain eminent Christian, " He was not 
 only pious, he was goody A true distinction 
 that. Now if the Lord Jesus dwell in our hearts 
 more abundantly, the moral sense will be quick- 
 ened, the heart will be cleaner, and in that holy 
 
120 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 atmosphere fraud and falsehood and greed and 
 sophistry and injustice cannot breathe. When 
 questions of right and wrong arise we will give 
 Christ the casting vote. Our whole daily con- 
 duct will be straightforward and by the air-line, 
 because we give the helm into the hand of Him 
 with whom is no variableness or shadow of turn- 
 in 2:. 
 
 Are all these graces of faith, power, joy, love, 
 and practical godliness attainable? Of course 
 they are. Yonder tree has been made luxuriant 
 in foliage and germs of fruit by simply drawing 
 the vital sap up into trunk and boughs. Even 
 so, if you will let Christ have unhindered flow 
 into your will and your affections, you w^U be 
 not barren or unfruitful, but will abound in the 
 work of the I^ord. Take a large life with yoM 
 into heaven. 
 
PREPAID PRAYKKS. 121 
 
 PREPAID PRAYERS. 
 
 I MET with this expression lately; and while 
 it is open to criticism, it snggests a vitally im- 
 portant truth, a truth also which many good 
 people ignore, and therefore their prayers are un- 
 productive of any blessings. If we expect a let- 
 ter to reach its destination we prepay it; if we do 
 not value it enough to put a two-cent stamp on 
 it, then the document is left in the limbo of the 
 dead-letter office. It is a lamentable fact that 
 there is a dcad-praycr office also, and the number 
 of well- worded and orthodox petitions which are 
 more likely to go thither than to reach the ear of 
 the infinite Love is past calculation. 
 
 All valuable things are costly. What we call 
 *'//r^ salvation " cost the Son of God all the hu- 
 miliations of his earthly mission and all the 
 aeonies of Gethsemane and Golg:otha. Nor can 
 any sinner obtain the benefit of Christ's atone- 
 
 i6 
 
122 NEWI.Y ENLISTED. 
 
 ment except at the price of personal obedience to 
 the Saviour. Our Lord wrapped up a very pro- 
 found and practical truth in that parable of the 
 man who, desiring to possess the "treasure hid 
 in a field,'' gladly sold all he had and went and 
 bought that field. No one can secure the salva- 
 tion of his soul unless he or she is willing to pay 
 the price which God demands; that price is the 
 renunciation of the most darling sins and the 
 surrender of the heart and the life to Jesus 
 Christ. If you want Christ himself, you must 
 give Christ yourself. Here is the pinch that 
 keeps millions out of heaven. It kept out Felix 
 and Agrippa and all others who have been un- 
 willino: to submit to God's terms. ''You must 
 give up your bottle or give up your soul," said a 
 plain-spoken pastor to a gentleman in his inqui- 
 ry-room. The poor slave of the drink hesitated, 
 and then went away clinging to his decanter ! 
 The decisive battle for salvation is commonly 
 fought over the favorite sins ; for the Master has 
 declared that unless a man deny sc/f and take up 
 his cross, he cannot be His disciple. 
 
PREPAID PRAYERS. 1 23 
 
 The same principle applies to a vast portion 
 of all our prayers. All valuable things cost 
 something, and petitions to God are no exception 
 to the rule. Prayer is a process in which two 
 parties are concerned — the human petitioner and 
 the divine bestower of blessings. All God's 
 promises have their conditions; we must comply 
 with those conditions, or we cannot expect the 
 blessings coupled with the promises. No farmer 
 is such an idiot as to found his expectation of a 
 crop of wheat on God's general promise of seed- 
 time and harvest, and yet put in no plough and 
 sow no grain. He first does his part, and then 
 can reasonably ask the God of nature to give 
 him a harvest. In prayer we must do our part 
 if w^e expect that the infinite Giver will do his 
 part; there is a legitimate sense in which all of 
 us are to do our utmost in the answering of our 
 own petitions. 
 
 At a missionary convention a venerated min- 
 ister was called upon to oflfer a prayer. He 
 halted and began to fumble in his pocket. " Fa- 
 ther A , they want you to pray," whispered 
 
124 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 somebody in his ear. *'Yes, yes,'' replied the 
 wise old man, "but I cannot pray until I have 
 given something." After he had contributed his 
 quota towards sending abroad the gospel he 
 could with a clear conscience implore the King 
 of heaven to give that gospel wide sweep and 
 sway. The old man prepaid his prayer. For 
 the Christian churches of this age to offer the pe- 
 tition, "Thy kingdom come!" and then expend 
 only ten millions (the world over) in the enter- 
 prise of Foreign Missions, looks almost like a 
 solemn farce. As far as God's people are willing 
 to prepay their prayers by bestowing money and 
 talents and toils for the conversion of the world, 
 just so far are their prayers answered. God has 
 no blessings for stingy pockets. A great deal of 
 the "talk of the lips" in prayer-meetings is 
 mere talk, and it " tendeth to penury." 
 
 What is true of pecuniary sacrifices as an evi- 
 dence of sincerity is equally true of personal ef- 
 forts. Often when I listen to requests for prayer 
 for the conversion of a husband or a son or a 
 Sabbath scholar, I say to myself, " How much is 
 
PREPAID PRAYERS. 1 25 
 
 that person doing- for the conversion of that hus- 
 band or child or scholar?" The Christian wife 
 who does her utmost to make her daily religion 
 attractive to her unconverted husband prepays 
 her own prayer. She works with the Holy 
 Spirit — not against Him. A noble woman in 
 my church was instrumental in the conversion of 
 her whole Bible-class ; she prepaid her prayer 
 for them by the most winsome personal efforts 
 for their salvation. God never defaults; but he 
 demands that we prove our faith by our works, 
 and that we never ask for a blessing that we are 
 not ready to labor for. Much of the pious prat- 
 tle in prayer-meetings for a " revival" comes to 
 nothing because the one who utters the empty 
 formula is not reviving himself. He pretends to 
 ask the Almighty to do what he will not lift one 
 lazy finger for; such prayer is a sevei-e self-con- 
 demnation. Let us aU beware lest our own 
 prayers rise up in judgment against us. 
 
 Genuine, fervent, self-denying, and effective 
 prayer is always prepaid. The offerer of it is 
 willing to make any sacrifice in order to secure 
 
126 ' NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 the blessing sought. If time or money or labor 
 or penitential putting away of sin or any other 
 condition be required, the condition is cheerfully 
 performed. In brief-^ — every prayer may be said 
 to be prepaid for whose fulfilment we are ready, 
 at whatever cost, to cooperate with the divine 
 Spirit. 
 
A christian's staying power. 127 
 
 A CHRISTIAN'S STAYING POWER. 
 
 A ROBUST Christian was the apostle James. 
 There is a tradition that he prayed until his 
 knees were as hard as the knees of a camel, and 
 that the good people in Jerusalem vied with each 
 other in touching the hem of his robe. From 
 Jerusalem he sent out an epistle to his dispersed 
 brethren which reads like the bulletin of a field- 
 marshal, and the opening sentences have the 
 ring of a bugle. "Hail, brethren!" he ex- 
 claims, "count it all joy when ye fall into 
 manifold trials, knowing that the proof of your 
 faith worketh patience. And let patience have 
 its perfect work." The Greek word here trans- 
 lated "patience" literally signifies staying: then 
 it came to mean persistent endurance, whether 
 in active exertion or under acute suffering. It 
 is the staying power of the rower in a boat-race, 
 of the warrior in a fierce battle charge, and of the 
 porter weighed down by a heavy burden. 
 
128 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 Patience, wliicli is one of the grandest of the 
 Christian graces, is often dwarfed into a mere 
 stoical submission akin to that of a savage tor- 
 tured at the stake. What passes for patience 
 with some people is rather a callousness of heart. 
 Under severe trials the sensibilities have become 
 as callous as the horny hands of a furnace-man 
 in handling hot iron. A widow, who after the 
 death of her husband had lost two children, said 
 to her pastor, "That first grief made such a huge 
 hole in my heart that it has never held any sor- 
 row since that time." From such sullen apathy 
 which is past feeling the superb staying power 
 of a true Christian is as far removed as faith is 
 from blind credulity. Our blessed Lord was 
 keenly sensitive to suffering, but how unflinch- 
 ingly he endured the severe strain of dealing 
 with the sick and the suflfering, the bigoted and 
 the ungrateful! Homeless, he never complained ;h 
 under the vexations of his crude disciples and 
 irritating opponents he never lost temper ; the 
 most fiendish assaults of his persecutors never 
 wrung a m.urmur from his lips. Kis silence was 
 
A christian's staying power. 129 
 
 sublimer than any other man's utterances. At 
 the end of his life of humiliation he leaves only 
 a handful of acknowledged followers, calmly 
 assured that out of that little band of disciples 
 would germinate the Christianity which shall 
 yet dominate the globe! Patience had its perfect 
 work with him. It is one of the most Christly 
 qualities in a well-developed religious life. 
 
 I have been watching the careers of young 
 men by the thousand in this busy city for over 
 thirty years, and I find that one chief difference 
 between the successful and the failures lies in 
 the single element of staying power. Perma- 
 nent success is oftener won by holding on than 
 by sudden dash, however brilliant. The easily 
 discouraged who are pushed back by a straw are 
 all the time dropping to the rear, to perish or be 
 carried along on the stretcher of charity. They 
 who understand and practise Abraham Lin- 
 coln's homely maxim of "pegging away" have 
 achieved the solidest success. It was the honest 
 boast of an eminent New Yorker that the first 
 dollar he ever earned was for hammering down 
 
 Newly Enllstel. 17 
 
130 NEWI.Y ENLISTED. 
 
 paving stones in the street, and that went to the 
 captain of the sloop who brought him a penni- 
 less youth to the city. Oliver Wendell Holmes' 
 couplet describes in a rather coarse and carnal 
 fashion what is vital Christian grace: 
 
 " Stick to your aim ; the mongrel's hold may slip, 
 But crowbars can't unloose the mastijflf's grip." 
 
 If staying power is indispensable in all secu- 
 lar pursuits, it is even more so in the spiritual 
 life. Young converts come into our churches 
 by platoons, especially in seasons of revival. 
 Many fall into the fatal delusion that the main 
 thing is done; wdiereas it is only begun. They 
 have enlisted for Christ; they have, if genuine 
 converts, won the first battle. But the life-cam- 
 paign is yet before them. The hardest fighting, 
 my young brother, will not be with the hostile 
 forces in a wicked world, but with your own self. 
 To stand the sneers of scoffers requires some 
 courage; to resist the undercurrents of tempta-. 
 tion requires the strong anchorage of godly prin^ 
 ciple. But the mastery of yourself is the great 
 achievement. To hold temper in perfect control. 
 
A christian's stayixg power. i^i 
 
 to keejD base passions subdued, to keep your pow- 
 ers and purposes true and straight to the one 
 purpose of serving, obeying, and honoring Jesus 
 Christ — this is the secret of a strong Christian 
 life. The Revised Version of the New Testa- 
 ment brings out tliis idea beautifully in the pas- 
 sage " In your patience ye shall win your souls." 
 Before you can win anybody else's soul to Christ 
 you must " win " your own. This can only be 
 accomplished by steady conflict with sin, by com- 
 pletely joining your weakness to the almighty 
 strength of your Saviour. Christ's mastery of 
 you will give you self-mastery. 
 
 Paul did not claim to be a perfect man; but 
 he had a prodigious staying power. "I keep 
 my body under," he exclaims. As a boxer who 
 is in a sharp encounter, he constantly beats 
 down with steady and sturdy blows the unruly 
 appetites and lusts. The moment that a Chris- 
 tian lets the carnal nature get the upper hand 
 he is overthrown. Nor can he hold down the 
 "old man" of sin except as he holds to Christ 
 and is held bv him. I^et everv voung convert 
 
132 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 carefully and squarely count the cost of a vigor- 
 ous, successful Christian life; it need not dis- 
 courage or appall him; yet he will be pretty sure 
 to become an early deserter unless he equips 
 himself for a life-campaign under the Captain of 
 his salvation. 
 
 Impatience is the prevailing sin of the times; 
 impatience to be suddenly rich, impatience un- 
 der restraint, impatience with slow and thorough 
 processes. A Christian character is no more to 
 be finished in a day than was one of Thorwald- 
 sen's statues. You have got to learn patience 
 by some sharp disappointments. You have not 
 learned the prime secret of acceptable prayer if 
 you have not learned to ^"^ wait quietly on the 
 Lord." We cannot either scold or tease our 
 Heavenly Father into granting our desires. 
 Faith has nothing to do with fretting, either 
 under a hard lot or under the delays of prayed- 
 for blessings. Patient prayer is powerful prayer. 
 If thou hast come into Christ's school, submit 
 to his lessons and his tasks; one of them is — 
 *' Not as I will, but as Thou wult." 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S STAYING POWKR. 1 33 
 
 This virtue of holding on is absolutely indis- 
 pensable to all successful Christian work. How 
 many volunteers are constantly dropping out of 
 our Sabbath-school teacherships and out of mis- 
 sion work as soon as the novelty is off! How 
 many ministers are begging for release from 
 ^^ hard fields," some of them ready to run when 
 God may be just ready to send the shower to start 
 the seed they have sown ! Too much of the 
 Christian labor in our land ends in a spasmodic 
 spirt of enthusiasm. "Well-doing" comes to 
 nothing unless there be "patient continuance" 
 in it. Brethren, let us remember that Christian 
 patience is not only a waiting on God, it is a 
 steady working for God. Christ in us is the only 
 staying power. The soldier who stands fire to 
 the last shot wins the victory. And up yonder 
 they who are arrayed in the white robes are they 
 who "came out of great tribulations." "Here 
 is the patience of the saints; here are they that 
 kept the commandments of God and the faith of 
 Jesus!" 
 
134 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 BRIGHT CHRISTIANS. 
 
 The houses of the people of Palestine in an- 
 cient times were not lighted by candles; there- 
 fore the translation of the fifteenth verse of the 
 fifth chapter of Matthew in our common version 
 is not correct. In the house of the poorest peas- 
 ant was a lamp. A small cup or other vessel 
 was filled with oil, a bit of linen rag or a wick 
 was set afloat in it, and the simple contrivance 
 was set on a lamp-stand. To put it under a 
 couch or to hide it under a grain measure would 
 be absurd. Our Lord, in his Sermon on the 
 Mount, alludes to the familiar lamp in every 
 dwelling, and then says to his followers, ^^So let 
 your light shine before men." This is the man- 
 ner in which every Christian should be luminous. 
 The word " so " refers back to the previous verse. 
 The motive for doing this then follows, namely, 
 *' that men may see your good works and glorify 
 
BRIGHT CHRISTIANS. I35 
 
 your Father which is in heaven." Not for mere 
 ostentation and self-glorification were they to 
 make a display of their religion, neither were they 
 to conceal it by either indolence or cowardice. 
 
 The crying want of the times is more bright 
 CJiristiaiis. There are quite too many church 
 members who were kindled for a little while — 
 perhaps during the heat of a revival season — and 
 then the light has either been smuggled into a 
 dark lantern, or else allowed to die down into a 
 feeble glimmer, barely visible through the smoke. 
 For no merely selfish purpose does Jesus Christ 
 bestow his converting grace upon any man. 
 He touched your heart with his illuminating 
 grace chiefly that you might impart the benefit 
 of your light to others and glorify him. He 
 commanded the light to shine into the darkness 
 of your sinful soul that you vs\\^\. give the light 
 of the knowledo^e of God as seen in the face of 
 Jesus to all with whom you come in contact. 
 You may not be a magnificent Fresnel-burner 
 like a Chalmers or a Wesley in their day, or 
 like a Spurgeon or a Shaftesbury or a Dodge in 
 
J 
 
 6 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 our times. But the properties of light are the 
 same in a household lamp that they are in the 
 huge luminary that flashes from the tower at 
 Sandy Hook; and in your little circle there is 
 just as much need of a bright Christian as there 
 is in the most conspicuous pulpit of Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 If you neglect to let your light shine, how- 
 ever humble it may be, not only will your own 
 character suffer, but somebody else w^ll be the 
 worse for it. The simple failure of a signal-man 
 to swing his lantern at the right time has sent a 
 railway train into deadly ruin. Your failure to 
 utter the right word, to do the right thing, or to 
 exert the right influence, may be sending some 
 others off the track in the same fatal fashion. I 
 know of certain households — perhaps yours may 
 be one — in which the lamp smokes more than it 
 shines. That son would not be so troubled with 
 skepticism if he saw a more attractive living 
 evidence of Christianity in the daily conduct of 
 his professedly Christian parents. Another son 
 would not be seen so often on his way to the 
 
BRIGHT CHRISTIANS. 1 37 
 
 saloon or some other dangerous haunt if the 
 torch of both warning and example were held up 
 faithfully and lovingly. It is almost hopeless to 
 expect conversions in some families. One rea- 
 son is that there is a lamp of profession there 
 Avhich smokes foully instead of beaming brightly. 
 The lio-ht that is in that house is fast becomiuQ: 
 darkness. The oil has given out. Love of the 
 world, or the greed of selfishness or some other 
 sin, has extinguished the love of Christ. The 
 real cause of all spiritual declension is the lack 
 of a Christly love and loyalty in the heart. 
 When people are full of any subject they will 
 speak out; they cannot help it. When your soul 
 is on fire with the love of Jesus and of your fel- 
 low-men, you will burn and shine unconsciously. 
 Probably the most effective good which most 
 genuine Christians do is in the way of steady, 
 silent, and unconscious reflection of Jesus Christ 
 in their daily conduct. To preach a sermon or 
 teach a mission-school class, or distribute Bibles 
 or bread among the needy, is a direct, premedi- 
 tated act of lamp-bearing. But to live along day 
 
 iS 
 
13S NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 after day luminously reflecting Christ in word 
 and deed at home, in the store, in the shop, and 
 everywhere else, is just ^^ letting ^\\^ light shine" 
 of its own sweet accord. That is the sort of reli- 
 gion that tells. And however glibly Brother 
 A may speak in the prayer-meeting or how- 
 ever brightly Sister B may shine in her 
 
 Dorcas Society or ''holiness meeting," yet if 
 they end in smoke at home, theirs is but a dark 
 and dreary dwelling. Trim the household lamp, 
 good friends. A revival of thorough Jiome piety 
 is the most needed revival in these times for 
 the well-beinor of both church and common- 
 
 o 
 
 wealth. 
 
 Light is a combination of many rays, and 
 each white ray a combination of many colors. 
 If you apply the spectrum to a bright Christian 
 you will find that he sheds out various graces. 
 Chiefest of all is the ray of love. This is the 
 supreme grace which most completely reflects 
 Christ Jesus and which imparts the golden efful- 
 gence to a true, fervent Christian life. It is not 
 a flash of sentiment or fitful gush of emotion, but 
 
BRIGHT CHRISTIANS. 1 39 
 
 a steady anthracite flame, which glows all day 
 and all nii^ht because the divine fire is burninir 
 in the soul. "So have I loved you," saith the 
 IMaster; "continue ye in my love." Where this 
 lamp beams the humblest home will be bright- 
 ened, the hardest pillow will be softened, the 
 coarsest fare will be sweetened. Love is the 
 best grace Christ can give us, for in it he gives 
 himself. It is the best we can return to him, for 
 in it we give ourselves. 
 
 A bright Christian will fling out the steady 
 rays of cheerfulness. This is not an unsaintly 
 quality; a dark, foggy day is not half as heav- 
 enly as a sunny day. The natural note of a bird 
 is not a scream or a groan, but a spontaneous 
 song. When a young man or woman becomes 
 converted to Christ none of their companions 
 ought to say, "They used to be pleasant, but 
 how dull and mopy they are now!" Nor ought 
 a Christian ever to enter any circle with the 
 chill of an icicle or the depressing effect of a wet 
 blanket. And there is another radiation which 
 a bright Christian will emit, and that is good 
 
140 NKWLY ENI.ISTED. 
 
 temper. We too often think of ill temper as a 
 constitutional weakness or a mere unhappy in- 
 firmity. Prof Drummond has pungently said in 
 one of his late addresses, ^'111 temper is a sin, 
 one of the blackest of sins; it is the symptom of 
 an unlovinor nature at bottom. The man who 
 has it needs to have his whole nature sweetened. 
 Such a man would make heaven miserable; he 
 must be born aofain before he can enter it." 
 
 Here are a few of the rays which a bright 
 Christian will reflect while he is reflecting Christ. 
 Trim your lamp, brother. Feed it afresh with 
 .prayer for more oil and with fresh inlettings of 
 Jesus into your soul. Carry your lamp always 
 with you as the miners carry theirs on their hats. 
 The world may discover Jesus Christ in you 
 when they would find him in no other way. 
 Light other people's lamps. A bright Christian 
 is a ray shot from the throne of heaven into this 
 dark world. " Keep your loins girded and your 
 lamps burning." 
 
LABOR FOR SOULS» 141 
 
 LABOR FOR SOUIvS. 
 
 (( 
 
 You know a great deal, Dr. Beeclier," said 
 a man to the Boanerges on Litclifield Hill, "but 
 what is the greatest of all things?" The quick 
 reply was, "It is not theology, it is not contro- 
 versy; it is saving- sonhy This has been the 
 keynote with all the choicest spirits in Christ's 
 army corps from the days of Paul, whose motto 
 was, " If by all means I may save some of them.'* 
 No one has come up to this high calling until he 
 has learned to love an immortal soul irrespect- 
 ive of its trappings and surroundings — the soul 
 of a beq-orar as much as that of a millionaire. 
 David Brainerd — who may perhaps be regarded 
 as the holiest man the American church has 
 seen — had for his parish the red barbarians on 
 the banks of the Delaware. "I care not," he 
 says, "where I live or how I live or what hard- 
 ships I go through, so that I can but gain souls 
 
142 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 to Christ. While I am asleep I dream of these 
 things; as soon as I awake, the first thing I 
 think of is this great work. All my desire is 
 the conversion of sinners, and all my hope is 
 in God." 
 
 These are apples of gold for us pastors and 
 for all living Christians. Not vague effort which 
 ends in smoke, but direct effort brought to bear 
 upon a sotiL Men are saved or lost individually. 
 The sagacious apostle did not evaporate the idea 
 into any vague generalities about "reaching the 
 masses," etc.; he distinctly says that "he who 
 converteth a sinner from the error of his way 
 shall save a soul from death and sh'all cover 
 a multitude of sins." A single soul was a 
 sufficient audience for the Son of God at Sy- 
 char's well and in the inquiry room with Nico- 
 demus. 
 
 To convert sisfuifies to turn around and start 
 in the opposite direction. Conversion is the 
 penitent sinner's own act in turning from that 
 path which leads hellward and setting his foot- 
 steps into the path of obedience to God. Regen- 
 
LABOR FOR SOULS. 1 43 
 
 eration is the work of the Holy Spirit, who influ- 
 ences and enables the sinner to turn. The di- 
 vine Spirit and the human will work in blessed 
 partnership; neither can do the work without 
 the other. But the apostle James recognizes a 
 third party when he speaks of one's converting 
 a sinner from the error of his way. Then it ap- 
 pears that it is possible for me to convert my 
 neighbor. Not, of course, that I can change his 
 heart or regenerate him into the new life; a 
 saved sinner is not, nor ever can be, a sinner's 
 saviour. Jesus alone can be that. But I can 
 bring an influence to bear upon my neighbor; I 
 can ply him with arguments and entreaties; I can 
 put God's claims before him; I can set gospel 
 religion before him attractively by kind acts and 
 consistent example; and so I may move him to 
 move himself towards Christ. This is what \^•e 
 understand by a Christian's converting a soul. 
 Self-conceited itinerants do, indeed, often boast 
 of the number of tJieir converts, which prove to 
 be as worthless specimens as Whitefield's tipsy 
 friend who claimed to be his convert. But still 
 
144 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 the mighty fact remains, for God's Word declares 
 it, that a servant of Jesus can convert a sinner 
 from his evil way and thus save a soul from 
 death. 
 
 This is a tremendous trust. No power vested 
 in any human being can compare with this one 
 of moving an immortal creature from the slavery 
 of Satan and the doom of hell into a pathway of 
 life everlasting. What a trust, brother! Think 
 of it. Father, mother, teacher. Christian friend, 
 just think what a stupendous prize God sets be- 
 fore you and what a prodigious responsibility 
 He lays upon you! God seems to say to you, 
 *'Here is this immortal soul, worth more than 
 all worlds, for Jesus died for it; here is this soul; 
 now convert him unto Me. I put him in your 
 way; I give you the opportunity; I will supply 
 you with the help; save this precious soul!'V 
 This is not profanity, nor is it poetry. God does 
 this very thing when he commissions his children 
 to pray, toil, and live for the conversion of the 
 lost. Nay, he declares that if we do not warn 
 the sinner to turn from, his wicked way, that soul 
 
LABOR FOR SOULS. 1 45 
 
 shall die in his iniquity, but "his blood will I re- 
 quire at thy hand!" 
 
 The threatening for unfaithfulness is as tre- 
 mendous as the trust; the reward of fidelity is 
 glorious enough to whet the appetite of an arch- 
 angel. It will be a crown indeed to be laid at 
 Jesus' feet if we discover even a single soul in 
 heaven whom you or I have been instrumental 
 in converting from the error of his way. We 
 pity those who have no such star-crowns. 
 
 I am confident that we who call ourselves 
 Christians do not begin to face these mighty 
 facts as we ought; we do not set squarely before 
 our eyes the trust of souls and our vast accounta- 
 bilities for them. The more we do this the more 
 intensely will we give ourselves to this most 
 Christlike endeavor. Our own heart must first 
 be moved for the one we may convert. Mere 
 hap-hazard counts for nothing. Fix your eyes 
 on the friend whom you mean to reach and to 
 labor for. Take hold of that case as Harlan 
 Page took hold of young Edwin F. Hatfield, 
 with a grip of personal interest — loving him 
 
 Newly EnliBtcd. IQ 
 
146 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 enoiigli to tell him plain truth. Watcli oppor- 
 tunities; in doing do not overdo. He that win- 
 neth souls is wise because he first asks God to 
 make him so. Worrying an unconverted friend 
 by incessant "nagging" at him, preaching at 
 him in a certain Pharisaic tone, or addressing 
 him in a public way so as to mortify or disgust 
 him — all such blunders show more zeal than 
 common sense. 
 
 But remember that the most terrible blunder 
 of all is to let a soul go to perdition without one 
 effort to save it! It seems to me, sometimes, 
 that it will be enough to make us half crazy in 
 heaven not to find there some souls that we 
 ought to have striven, yes, "agonized," to bring 
 there. And there is no preparation for heaven 
 that can compare with the unselfish, patient, 
 prayer-steeped, and Christlike labor and life for 
 perishing souls. The nearer a soul is to us, the 
 greater the responsibility for it. May God help 
 us all to follow "Weeks of Prayer" with many 
 weeks of putting prayer into practice! 
 
THE WISK AND WINSOME WAI.K. 147 
 
 THE WISE AND WINSOME WALK. 
 
 The early Christian church was born in a 
 prayer-meeting, and baptised by the Holy Spirit 
 on the day of Pentecost ; it then set about its 
 heaven-appointed mission of converting men to 
 Christ. Peter's pungent sermon to the Jerusa- 
 lem sinners pierced their hearts with conviction, 
 and three thousand were converted in a sinfjle 
 day. The book of the Acts of the Apostles is 
 largely a record of personal labors for winning 
 souls; the Epistles are not addressed to the hea- 
 then or to impenitent sinners, but to the newly- 
 born churches, teaching them Jiow to live. In- 
 struction in the Christian life is the main topic 
 of Paul and Peter, John and James. And one 
 idea runs through them all, and that is that 
 Christ's people are to live in such a way as not 
 only to honor their Master, but in such a way as 
 to attract the outside world to him. 
 
148 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 "Walk ill wisdom towards them tliat are 
 withotct^^^ was one of Paul's pithy and pungent 
 injunctions. Christ came into this world to seek 
 and to save those who were lost. His commis- 
 sion to his disciples was to go after the "out- 
 siders" and to bring them in. That commission 
 is as bindino^ on Christians to-dav as it was 
 eighteen hundred years ago. Every one now 
 who enters the church of Jesus Christ enters not 
 only into peculiar relations with Christ, but into 
 peculiar duties towards the unconverted. "Ye 
 are my witnesses;" "Ye are the light of the 
 world, so let your lights shine that ye may be 
 seen of men." The outside world watches us 
 sharply, and our Master intended that we should 
 be watched. It. is a stereotyped truth that the 
 professed Christian is the world's Bible. He is 
 the only Bible that the majority of outsiders ever 
 look at. They form their impressions of Chris- 
 tianity, not as it is revealed in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, but as it is revealed in us. They do not 
 study God's Bible, but they do study church 
 members. Now, if we are the world's Bible, we 
 
TIIIC WISE AND WINSOMIC WAI^K. 149 
 
 ought to live in such a way as not to require any 
 commentary to explain us. If we are doorkeep- 
 ers to the way of life and the fold of Christ, we 
 are put there to attract the outsiders and draw 
 them in — not to block the door and drive them 
 off. Every inconsistent church member is guilty 
 of a triple sin — first towards Christ, secondly to- 
 wards his own soul, and then towards the impen- 
 itent whom he repels when he ought to be win- 
 ning them. 
 
 I. What is a "wise walk towards them that 
 are without"? In the first place it is such a 
 walk as does not give the lie to our professions. 
 We tell the unconverted that the religion of Je- 
 sus Christ will make them cheerful under trials, 
 and then, perhaps, fall to fretting at Providence 
 and put on a distressing gloom as soon as trials 
 smite us in the face. We talk about patience, 
 and lose temper under the first provocation. In 
 the prayer-meeting we pray as if religion was 
 the "one thing needful," but elsewhere live as 
 if money-grabbing or social ambition were the 
 chief end of our lives. What is all this but be- 
 
150 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 lying our Christianity and disgusting other peo- 
 ple with it? If in walking through an orchard 
 we pick up a fair-looking apple, but on putting 
 our teeth in it find it setting our teeth on edge, 
 we fling it down and try no more from that tree. 
 So the world tastes of Christians, and if they find 
 them sour or bitter in temper or worm-eaten, 
 they turn away in disgust and disappointment. 
 *'By your fruits shall men know you," says 
 our Master. We must make our religion taste 
 sweet if we want to recommend it to outsiders. 
 When a man of the world says scoffingly, "One 
 of your church members cheated me in trade," I 
 feel that the wickedest part of the fraud was that 
 he robbed the man of his respect for the religion 
 of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, a noble, 
 honest, godly life is the most convincing sermon 
 that can be delivered. Christ's people have got 
 to live the world to him, or the world is lost, 
 
 2. We never can win outsiders by compromi- 
 sing with them. "Woe unto you when all men 
 shall speak well of you" — i. e. , when the lovers 
 of sin shall applaud you. A minister of Christ 
 
THE WISE AND WINSOME WALK. I51 
 
 may purchase his popularity at the dear price of 
 losinof all his influence over men's consciences. 
 Human favor gained by connivance with 
 wrong — in business, in politics, in social fash- 
 ions — is treason to our jNIaster. The people of 
 the world do not expect Christians to do as they 
 do. When we surrender our principles they are 
 secretly shocked and disgusted. If we would 
 draw men out of a pit we must have a firm, 
 strong foothold or they will draw us in. He 
 who walks closest to Christ will have the most 
 power to convert sinners to Him. When Jesus 
 lives in us, it is not we who move others; it is 
 the Christ incarnated in our conduct. " I tried 
 to be a skeptic when I was a young man," said 
 Cecil; "but my mother's life was too much for 
 me." It was Jesus Christ in his good mother 
 that converted him. 
 
 3. This subject has a vital bearing on all 
 direct efforts for the conversion of the impeni- 
 tent. " He that is wise winneth souls;" that is 
 the correct reading of the often perverted text. 
 It is astonishincr to observe how little common 
 
152 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 sense some good people exhibit in their well- 
 meant efforts to bring their children or their 
 scholars or their friends to the Savionr. A fa- 
 ther will ask for prayers for an unconverted son, 
 and then treat the boy so harshly or talk to him 
 so tauntingly as only to harden him. Noth- 
 ing requires more tact and gentleness and loving 
 kindness than to converse with persons on the 
 most vital of all questions. If we want to water 
 a flower we don't dash a whole pailful on it and 
 wash it out of the ground; w^e sprinkle it. God 
 does not send his Spirit as a water-spout, but as 
 a rain. Let us pray for wisdom when we are 
 trying to win souls. Paul was consumed with 
 zeal, and yet showed wonderful sagacity in adap- 
 tation to every case he took hold of 
 
 We must watch for opportunities. "Walk in 
 wisdom towards them that are without," says 
 the apostle, "redeeming the time." The literal 
 meaning of the phrase is ^^ buying the opporUi- 
 nity.^^ Chances must be sought for to put in the 
 right word; and when God gives us the chance 
 w^e must make the most of it. Here was the se- 
 
THE WISE AND WINSOME WALK. 153 
 
 cret of Harlan Page's wonderful success in win- 
 ning souls. He watched for opportunities and 
 then spoke a very plain, close-fitting truth in a 
 very loving way. There was no cant about him. 
 The Spirit of God helped him, as he will always 
 help us if we aim to please our Master. 
 
 We must go on the principle 7ioiv or never. 
 This will make us eager to embrace opportuni- 
 ties; and in turn we must urge the impenitent to 
 accept Christ at once. Every act of kindness we 
 can do to the unconverted may help to give us a 
 key to their hearts. Then let us use it to intro- 
 duce our Master there. They that are wise in 
 their walk and wise in their work may turn 
 many to righteousness. 
 
 ;o 
 
154 NEWLY KNUSTED. 
 
 KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS. 
 
 One of the peculiar glories of Christianity is 
 that it presents to us a perfect Model for our 
 daily conduct. No other religion can produce a 
 Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ is Christianity. 
 It is not the gospel system that saves us; it is the 
 gospel's Redeemer. That preaching is the most 
 effective which most clearly and persuasively 
 presents Jesus as the divine Saviour, Substitute, 
 and Surety; that life is the most symmetrical 
 and holy which is the most closely copied after 
 him as the divine Model. 
 
 There is not a more beautiful episode in the 
 life of our Lord than that one which occurred at 
 the beginning of his last supper with his disci- 
 ples, when he did what none but a slave was wont 
 to do: he washed his disciples' feet? Having per- 
 formed this wonderful act of humility and un- 
 
KEEPING THE EYE ON JEvSUS. 155 
 
 selfishness, he says to them, '' I have given you 
 an example^ that ye should do as I have done to 
 you." Not that we are literally to wash each 
 other's feet; but we are to fill each other's hands, 
 bear each other's loads, dry each other's tears, 
 and comfort each other's hearts. 
 
 Again, the enthusiastic Peter in his first 
 Epistle tells us that "Christ also suffered for us, 
 leaving us an example^ that ye should follow his 
 steps." The Greek word signifies a writing-copy 
 to be closely imitated in every stroke of the pen. 
 Paul has the same idea in his mind Avhen he bids 
 us to " look at Jesus, the author and the perfecter 
 of our faith." And if I were asked to give a 
 simple golden counsel to a young convert which 
 could be easily remembered and which would be 
 available for every emergency in life, it would 
 be this: Keep your eye on Jesus ! 
 
 The godly Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, 
 kept a picture of the heroic missionary, Henry 
 IMartyn, hanging on the wall of his room. Look- 
 ing up towards it he would often say, "There! 
 See that blessed man ! What an expression of 
 
15^ NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 countenance ! No one looks at me as he does. 
 He seems always to be saying to me, ' Be serious; 
 be in earnest; don't trifle.' " Then bowino: to- 
 wards the benign, thoughtful face of ]\Iartyn, 
 Simeon would add, "No, I wont, I wont trifle." 
 If there was an inspiration to earnestness 
 always to be caught from looking at a noble and 
 Christlike man, how much more from looking 
 at Christ himself. The divine Spirit has pre- 
 sented in the New Testament a matchless pic- 
 ture, and has hung it up, as it were, before our 
 eyes. It is the infinitely beautiful countenance 
 of my lyord and Master. It is "marred more 
 than any other of the sons of men " by the traces 
 of the struggle in Gethsemane and the agony on 
 the cross. The most serene patience sits on that 
 countenance, as when he "answered not a word" 
 to Pilate, and as when he prayed, "Father, for- 
 give them. They know not what they do." 
 Every lineament of that face is love. Holiness 
 spreads an ineffable grandeur over it which no 
 Raphael or Da Vinci can reproduce. Ten thou- 
 sand-fold more real, more inspiring, more soul- 
 
KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS. 157 
 
 rousing than any painting is the image to my 
 eye of Him who ever says, " Look at me; learn 
 of ME." 
 
 Yes, and how earnestly he says to us, '*Live 
 for me !" Sometimes we recoil from a disagree- 
 able duty or a painful load. How promptly 
 those lips of our Lord speak to us: "Whosoever 
 will not take up his cross and come after me is 
 not worthy of me." At another time we are 
 cast down with disappointment; perhaps a chill 
 of despair is settling over our hearts. Just then 
 the dear divine face draws very close to us, and 
 we hear the warm words, " Let not your heart 
 be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Lo! I am 
 with you alway. My grace is sufficient for 
 thee." When we are tempted to a resentful 
 word or a dishonest deed, the countenance re- 
 bukes us with the admonition, "Wound me not 
 in the house of my friends." As Peter's tears 
 were started by a single look of his grieved Mas- 
 ter, so ours may well be stirred by every act of 
 disloyalty to him. And when we have come 
 back ashamed and disgraced from a cowardly de- 
 
158 NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 sertion of the right in an hour of sharp trial, oh, 
 how that face upbraids us as Jesus seems to say, 
 " Could ye not watch with me one hour !" Ev- 
 ermore is that divine Monitor and Model before 
 our eyes, teaching, rebuking, inspiring, encour- 
 aging, comforting, and guiding us. Let me 
 fasten my gaze on him! Let me open my ears 
 to him! Let me be ever treading in his foot- 
 steps, that wherever he is I may be also! 
 
 Certain choice spirits of the human race have 
 shone in some peculiar virtue, as Joseph in chas- 
 tity, Daniel in integrity, Luther in courage, 
 Wilberforce and Elizabeth Fry in philanthropy. 
 But these were only imperfect copies of the 
 divine ideal of life set before them. Let us keep 
 our eyes steadfastly upon One who embraced in 
 himself all virtues and excellences in full perfec- 
 tion, and who in every possible point is an ex- 
 ample for us. Our daily and hourly conflict is 
 with sin. Jesus did no sin, yet temptations came 
 to him as really as they come to us, for he was a 
 man beset just as we are. He conquered tempta- 
 tions by never presumptuously running into dan- 
 
KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS. 159 
 
 ger, by resisting first suggestions to evil, and by 
 using that sword of the Spirit which is the Word 
 of God. 
 
 Christ is our model too in consecration to the 
 Father's will. His meat was to perform that 
 "will. His imtiring motto was, "My Father 
 worketh hitherto, and I work." Between the 
 activities of the Father in heaven and of the in- 
 carnate Son there was no discord and no jar. 
 When I can lay down my daily plans of life 
 upon God's revealed Word and find them fit, 
 then what satisfaction does the humblest act 
 bring to me ! Ever too let us observe how ut- 
 terly unselfish Jesus was: what journeyings to 
 reach single cases of suffering; what braving of 
 popular scorn to befriend the publican and the 
 outcast; what endless expenditure of sympathy; 
 what tireless going about doing good! When 
 that gentle spirit of his was aroused by the sight 
 of hypocrisy and falsehood, how he could scathe 
 and scorch the Pharisee with his righteous indig- 
 nation! Those overflowings of indignation were 
 the surcharge of his holiness. When I behold 
 
I Go NEWLY ENLISTED. 
 
 my Master anathematizing the " whited sepul- 
 chres" of sin, and yet pronouncing pardon on a 
 penitent harlot, I learn just how I should keep 
 in proper poise my hatred for iniquity and my 
 pitying love for those who ' ' are overtaken in a 
 fault." 
 
 And so let every day of my life be spent be- 
 fore my great Teacher's face and my eyes never 
 wander from that wonderful form! As soon let 
 the drowning man forget the plank which sus- 
 tains him in the sea as for me to forget the Sa- 
 viour who upholds me with his omnipotent arm. 
 As soon let the home-bound mariner lose sight of 
 the lighthouse which guides him to his haven as 
 for you and me to lose sight of Him who is the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life. Reynolds used 
 to say, " I only look at the best pictures. A bad 
 one spoils my eye." In like manner shall we 
 find that the study of our King in his beauty 
 shall purify our vision; and the more we look at 
 Jesus the more shall we look like Jesus. 
 
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