Earnestness

THE late Rowland Hill, in once addressing the people at Wotton, raising himself exclaimed― “Because I am in earnest, men call me an enthusiast. When I first came into this part of the country, I was walking on yonder hill, and saw a gravel-pit fall in and bury three human beings alive. I lifted up my voice for help so loud that I was heard in the town below at a distance of nearly a mile. Help came, and rescued two of the sufferers. No one called me an enthusiast then; and when I see eternal destruction ready to fall on poor sinners, and about to entomb them irrecoverably in an eternal main of woe, and call aloud to them to escape, shall I be called an enthusiast now? No, sinner, I am not enthusiast in so doing; and I call on thee aloud to fly for refuge to the hope set before the in the Gospel of Christ Jesus.”

Fragments.
“WE do not wait for the kingdom to see glories.” Is it no glory for you to have a purged conscience? Is it no glory to be fully entitled to be in the presence of God without a blush? No glory to call God Father? to have Christ as your Forerunner in heavenly places? to enter into the holiest without a quiver of conscience? No glory to be introduced into the secrets of God? If we can lift up our heart, and cry, “Abba, Father;” if we can lift up our heart, and say, “Who shall condemn?” or “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” if we can believe that we are bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh; that we are part of Christ’s fullness, will anyone say there is no glory in all that?
If it were told me that God had ordained for me, above all other men, that I should live upon the earth several thousand years in peace and happiness, and have all that the heart could desire, should not I say: “That cannot be God’s word; it is too much and too great. Who am I that God should give me this?” How much less dues it enter into man’s heart, that God should give such a treasure as His Son, and with Him eternal life and blessedness! Who can tell how great is its amount? ―Luther.

“Difficulties may come in; God may allow many things to arise to prove our weakness; but the simple path of obedience is to go on, not looking beforehand at what we have to do, but reckoning upon the help that we shall need and End when the time arrives.”
“It is not ‘much strength’ that is the question, but the thing we most want is greater conformity to the position of Christ.”