A Book of Gems, or, Choice selections from the writings of Benjamin Franklin. Бенджамин Франклин

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      THE people God has raised up in the nineteenth century and founded upon the apostles and prophets, Jesus the Christ, the chief corner-stone, have not been raised up in vain. Only a small part of their work is in history yet. What has been done is only a drop to the bucket of the stupendous work to be accomplished. It is only a foretaste, an earnest of what is yet to come. It is only the incipient movement, the inauguration of the work, the entering wedge. The great body of the work lies in the future. Let no man become disheartened if a few faint-hearted do turn back and hanker after the flesh-pots of Egypt. In all great movements some of these have been found. They were in the camps of Moses and among the first followers of Jesus. They have been the timid, faithless time-servers, afraid of the people and lovers of the world. But these are only spots in the feast, mere blemishes, and no more to the great body than the spots in the sun compared with that wonderful body. These poor little souls that desire to be like the clergy, or to be actual clergymen themselves; that want titles, and the people to call them Dr., Rev.; that get on the white cravat, the priestly coat buttoned up to the chin; that drop on their knees and make a public private prayer, as they enter the “sacred desk,” and that teach the disciples to drop the head and offer a secret private public prayer before an assembly, are not the men whom God sends. They are the men who think the largest offer in money is the loudest call from God, and the call which they obey most implicitly. They can be bought and sold like sheep and oxen. God never calls such men as these. They are a burlesque on the religion of Jesus Christ; the plainness, simplicity and humility of our Lord. The idea has never entered into their heads to be servants of Jesus Christ. Their idea is to be masters. They are not thinking of obeying, unless to obey the men with the largest purses; but their idea is to be obeyed. They are not thinking of adoring, but of being adored. The third epistle of Peter is the one in which they find their likeness, and they are following the directions in that epistle. Some of these may be reformed, and others will go to their own place. They are not the men that run the world; the world runs them.

      But there is another class, that do not worship at the same altar with these, nor are they of the same stripe. They do not draw their divinity from clerical titles or clerical attire, nor from public private prayers, from imitating Jewish rabbis, or sectarian rabbis, from imitating ancient or modern Pharisees or Sadducees, but from the living oracles of the living God. They are not under the thumbs of rich men, nor under the influence of high salaries; nor ancient nor modern priests. They cannot be bought and sold. They are the Lord’s free men. They have cut loose from the bondage of the world of sin, of sectarianism and the clergy. They belong to Christ. They get their gospel from him. They are his servants. They adore and worship him. They are men of faith and of prayer, too, but when they pray in secret, it is in secret, where none but Him who sees in secret sees them. They know their Bible and they are devoted to it. There is a grand army of these, we believe, as time as the needle to the pole. We cannot say that there are seven thousand in the field, public preachers, but we are astonished wherever we go to find such numbers of them, and to find their firmness and determination in the faith; and to learn, too, of the sacrifices they are making and the additional sacrifices they are determined and willing to make. They are many of them living almost as economically as we did thirty years ago, in our incipient work of opening the way.

      When the British general found General Marion living on roots, and his men fighting without pay, he admitted that the prospect of overcoming such men was gloomy. So, when our opposers see the glorious army of which we speak, of faithful young men struggling with only a half support, and, in some instances, not that, and behold the love for the gospel, the Lord Jesus and their fellow-men that impels them on; and when they witness their determination, zeal and energy; that they cannot be discouraged, disheartened and turned back, they give up all idea of ever conquering them or withstanding them. Let not one word we are saying be construed into an excuse for any Christian who has the ability not sustaining these precious men whom God has raised and put into the field. Nor need any one wait for a “plan,” nor an “organization,” or “system.” Plans, organizations and systems give no money. Men and women must give the money, if it is given at all. No man who has the means, and refuses to do his part, according to the ability God has given, to aid in this glorious work, need flatter himself that he will be a partaker in the final reward. According as a man sows shall he also reap. We know that there are hard-hearted and sordid men in the church, that do nothing of consequence, and men of this sort that will never be any better. They have but one idea ingrained and imprinted on their entire being, and that is to hang on with a grasp like death itself to the goods of this world. But the good and the true, the men of faith, and love, and zeal; the men who have their eye on a kingdom not of this world, and who are devoted to saving men and women from ruin, will not stop for these, nor brood over them, but turn away from them as they do from other abandoned characters who are past feeling, and go on with their glorious work. God will be with them, and, though poor in this world, they will be rich in faith, and the Lord will hold them up.

      But what has this great army of young preachers to do? Where is their work? There is work enough for them to do. The only fear we have is, that when they look and see the vastness of the work, they will think, like one of old, “There be more against us than for us.” We have a vast amount of worldliness and carnality to drive out of the Church; conformity to the world; love of pleasure more than love of God; the love of Christ to restore; the gospel and the true worship. Where the cause has gone back, it must be recovered; where the gospel has been lost and superseded by something else, it must be restored, and where the worship has been corrupted, it must be purified, and the right way of the Lord established. Men who do not love the gospel, the worship and the things of God, will slough off when everything is driven out that did not come from God; when the only things they loved are taken away. In a few instances entire congregations may be carried away with worldly policies and appliances; but the whole number thus lost will amount to but little, compared with the grand throng that will stand together for the faith once delivered to the saints, and that will go on. What remains for good men to do is, to go on; stand fast; be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might; put on the whole armor of God and fight the good fight of faith, and stand to the Bible and nothing else, and thus make the СКАЧАТЬ