S. Some Laws of Spiritual Work

Some Laws of Spiritual Work* But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not. The disciples therefore said one to another, Hath any man brought him aught to eat? Jesus saith unto them. My meal is to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish his work. Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are while already unto harvest. He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. For herein is the saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not labored: others have labored, and ye are entered into their labor. John 4:32-38. THE disciples must have been very much astonished at the change which they observed in the Master’s appearance. They left him, when they went away to a neighboring city to buy food, reclining beside Jacob’s well, quite worn out with the fatigue of their journey, following upon the fatigues of long spiritual labors. And here now he is sitting up, his face is animated, his eyes kindled. He has been at work again. Presently they ask him to partake of the food which they had brought, and his answer surprised them: “ I have food to eat that ye know not.” They looked around, and saw nobody; the woman to whom he had been speaking was gone, and they said: “ Has any one brought him something to eat?” Jesus answered, “My food is to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish his work.” And then, with this thought of work, he changes the image to sowing and reaping, and bids them go forth to the harvest.

Now, from this passage with its images, I have wished to discourse upon some laws of spiritual work, as here set forth. For we are beginning to see, in our time, that there are laws in the spiritual sphere as truly as in the mental and in the physical spheres. What are the laws of spiritual work which the Saviour here indicates? I name four, I. Spiritual work is refreshing to soul and body.

“My food is,” said the tired, hungry one, who had aroused himself, “ to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish his work.” We all know the power of the body over the mind, and we all know, I trust, the power of the mind over the body; how any animating theme can kindle the mind until the wearied body will be stirred to new activities; until the man will forget that he was tired, because of that in which he is interested. But it must be something that does deeply interest the mind. And so there is suggested to us the thought that we ought to learn to love spiritual work.

If we love spiritual work it will kindle our souls; it will even give health and vigor to our bodies. There are some well-meaning, but good-for-nothing, professed Christians in our time, who would have better health of mind and even better health of body, if they would do more religious work and be good for something in their day and generation.

How shall we learn to love religious work so that it may kindle and refresh us? Old Daniel Sharp, who was a famous Baptist minister in Boston years ago, used to be very fond of repeating, “ The only way to learn to preach is to -preach.” Certainly, the only way to learn to do anything is to do the thing. The only way to learn to do spiritual work is to do spiritual work, the only way to learn to love spiritual work is to keep doing it until we gain pleasure from the doing; until we discern rewards in connection with the doing; and to cherish all the sentiments which will awaken in us that “ enthusiasm of humanity “ which it was Jesus that introduced among men; and to love the souls of our fellow-men, to love the wandering, misguided lives, to love the suffering and sinning all around us with such an impassioned love that it shall be a delight to us to do them good and to try to save them from death. Then that will refresh both mind and body.

II. There are seasons in the spiritual sphere sowing seasons and reaping seasons, just as there are in farming.

“ Say not ye,’’ said Jesus, “there are yet four months and then cometh the harvest? “ that is to say, it was four months from that time till the harvest. They sowed their wheat in December; they began to reap it in April. “ Say not ye, there are four months, and then cometh the harvest? behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” In the spiritual sphere it was a harvest time then, and they were bidden to go forth and reap the harvest that waved white and perishing. We can see, as we look back, that the ends of all the ages had now come to that time; that the long course of providential preparation, dimly outlined in the Old Testament, had led to the state of things that then prevailed; that the fulness of the times had come, when God sent forth his Son to teach men and to atone for men, and to rise again and come forth as their Saviour, and that his servants should go forth in his name. And the like has been true in many other seasons of Christianity; there have been great reaping times, when men have harvested the fruits which come from the seed scattered by others long before.

I persuade myself that such a time will be seen ere long in the world again. I think that the young who are here present to-day though they may forget the preacher and his prediction will live to see the time when there will be a great season of harvest that will astonish mankind. In the great heathen world I think it will be true that the labors of our missionaries are preparing the way, and that in the course of divine providence the same providence that overruled the history of Egypt and Assyria and Greece and Rome the greatest nations of Asia are now becoming rapidly prepared to receive a new faith. They say, who live there and ought to know, that there is a wonderful breaking up of religious opinion in all Hindostan, with its two hundred and fifty millions of people five times as many, almost, as in our great country that they are learning to let go their old faiths, and that the time must soon come when, in sheer bewilderment and blindness, as it were, men will search round for something else to look upon, something else to lay hold upon. It is a sad thing to see great nations of mankind surrendered to utter unbelief, but it has often proven the preparation for their accepting a true and mighty and blessed faith. I think one can see, in the marvellous changes which are going on in Japan, a preparation for like effects there; and as Japan is, for the civilized world, the gateway into China, and our missionaries are already at work there and great changes are taking place there, so it is quite possible that even in one or two generations there will be a wide spread of Christianity in that wonderful nation of mankind. God grant that it may be so!

I think the same thing is going to happen in our own country. We have been living in a time of eclipse, so to speak, of late years, but I think another reaction will come. Some of us can remember that thirty or forty years ago there was almost no avowed infidelity in this country. There was not a publisher in New York, who had any respect for himself and any large hope of success, that would have had a book with one page of avowed unbelief in it on his shelves. How different it is now!

We have been passing, as I said, through a reaction. In the early part of this century our whole country was honeycombed with infidelity. It was ten times worse than it is to-day. But in 1825, 1830, 1840, 1850, there were wide spread changes, revivals; and a great many men were brought into our churches who had not the root of the matter in them, and a lax discipline and a low state of religious living became, alas! too common, and we have been reaping the bitter fruits. Alas! how often it has happened that some man has become notorious in the newspapers as a defaulter, or a criminal in some other way, and we have been compelled to read the added statement, that he was a member of such and such a church, was a Sunday-school superintendent, teacher, or what not. How often it has happened! This has been one of many causes I cannot stop now to analyze and point out, but they can be analyzed and pointed out of such widespread unbelief of late years. But it cannot last. There never was such activity in the Christian world; and if our earnest Christian people stand firm, if they practice in all directions that earnestness of Christian purpose, if they try to maintain the truth of the gospel and live up to it in their own lives, and lift up their prayer to God for his blessing, there will come another great sweeping reaction. It is as sure to come as there is logic in history or in human nature.

It is as sure to come as there is truth in the promises of God’s word. O, may many of you live to see that day and rejoice at its coming! The same thing is true in individual churches, that there are seasons of sowing and reaping. It has to be so. We sometimes say we do not believe in the revival idea; we think there ought to be revival in the church all the time. If you mean that we ought always to be seeking for spiritual fruits, always aiming at spiritual advancement, it is true. But if you mean that you expect that piety will go on with even current in the church, that there will be just as much sowing and reaping at any one time as at any other, then you will certainly be disappointed. That is not the law of human nature. That is not possible in the world. Periodicity pervades the universe. Periodicity controls the life of all individuals, shows itself in the operations of our minds. Periodicity necessarily appears in the spiritual sphere also. People have their ups and downs. They ought to strive against falling low. They ought not to be content with growing cold. They ought to seek to maintain good health of body all the while, but it will not be always equally good; and good health of mind and soul all the time, but it will not be always equally good. They ought to be seeking to reap a harvest of spiritual good among those around them all the while; but they will have seasons which are rather of sowing, and other seasons which will be rather of reaping. O! do you want to see a great season of harvest among your own congregation? And do you not know, brethren, as well as the preacher can tell you, what is necessary in order that you may see it? What are the conditions but deepened spiritual life in your own individual souls, stronger spiritual examples set forth in your lives, more earnest spirituality in your homes, a truer standard in your business and social relations to mankind, more of heartfelt prayer for God’s blessing, and more untiring and patient and persevering effort, in season and out of season, to bring others to seek their salvation?

III. Spiritual work links the workers in unity.

“Herein is the saying true,” said Jesus; “one soweth, and another reapeth. Other men have labored, and ye are entered into their labors.” The prophets, centuries before, had been preparing for that day, and the forerunner had been preparing for that day, and the labors of Jesus himself in his early ministry ’had been preparing the way, and now the disciples could look around them upon fields where, from the sowing of others, there were opportunities for them to reap.

“ Other men have labored, and ye are entered into their labors. One soweth, and another reapeth.” That is the law everywhere; it is true of all the higher work of humanity, “One soweth, and another reapeth;” and our labors link us into unity. It is true of human knowledge. How little has any one individual of mankind been able to find out beyond what the world has known before! Even the great minds that stand like mountain peaks as we look back over the history of human thought, when we come to look into it, do really but uplift the thought that is all around them; else they themselves could not have risen. It is true in practical inventions. We pride ourselves on the fact that ours is an age of such wonderful practical inventions; we sometimes persuade ourselves that we must be the most intelligent generation of mankind that ever lived, past all comparison; that no other race, no other century, has such wonderful things to boast of. How much of it do we owe to the men of the past! Every practical invention of to-day has been rendered possible by what seemed to us the feeble attainments of other centuries, by the patient investigation of the men who, in many cases, have passed away and been forgotten.

We stand upon the shoulders of the past, and rejoice in our possessions, and boast; and when we grow conceited and proud of it, we are like a little boy lifted by his father’s supporting arms, and standing on his father’s shoulders, and clapping his hands above his father’s head, and saying, in childish glee, “ I am taller than pana!” A childish conclusion, to be sure. We stand upon the shoulders of the past, and thereby we are lifted up in all the higher work of mankind; and we ought to be grateful to the past, and mindful of our duty to the future; for the time will come when men will look back upon our inventions, our slow travel, our wonderful ignorance of the power of physical forces and the adaptations of them to physical advancement, and smile at the childishness with which, in the fag end of the nineteenth century, we boasted of ourselves and our time. And now it is not strange that this same thing should be true of spiritual work. When you undertake to do some good in a great city like this, you might sit down and say, “ What can I do with all this mass of vice and sin?” But you do not have to work alone. You can associate yourselves with other workers, in a church, with various organizations of workers, and thereby re-enforce your own exertions; you can feel that you are a working force, and you can feel that you are a part of a mighty force of workers, of your own name and other Christian names. Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and are trying to do good in his name! And it will cheer our hearts to remember that wide over the land and over the world are unnumbered millions of workers of the army to which we belong.

They tell us that the International Sunday-school lessons which most of us study every Sunday, are actually studied now every Lord’s day by at least ten millions of people, all studying on the same day the same portion of the Bible. That is but one fact to remind us that we are members of a great spiritual host, doing a great work in the world. And not merely are there many cotemporaries with whom we are linked in unity, but we are in unity with the past; other men have labored and we have entered into their labors. All the good that all the devout women and all the zealous men of past ages have been doing has come down to us, opening the way for us to do good. And not merely with the past, but we are linked with the laborers of the future. They may hear our names or they may hear them not. We may perish from all memory of mankind, but our work will not perish, for he that doeth the will of God abideth forever, and if we are engaged in his work, we link ourselves to his permanency and his almightiness, and our work will go down to help the men who are to come after. The same thing is true here, also, in the individual church; one soweth and another reapeth. A pastor seldom gathers half as much fruit from the seed of his own sowing as he gathers from the seed that others have sown. And there will come some man here God grant, it may be soon, and wisely, and well who will gather seed from the sowing of the venerable pastor so well and worthily beloved in years ago, seed from the sowing of the energetic pastor of recent years, and O my soul, he may gather some harvest, even from the seed scattered in the brief fleeting interim of this summer. We put all our work together. We sink our work in the one great common work. We scatter seed for God and for souls, and we leave it to God’s own care and blessing. One soweth, and another reapeth. My brethren, there is nothing like Christianity to individualize mankind. It was Christianity that taught us to appreciate the individuality of men, “Every man must give account of himself unto God.” Men were no longer to lose themselves in the state, as classical antiquity taught them to do, but to stand out in their separate personality and individual responsibility and individual rights and duties. But at the same time much of what we can do that is best in the world we must do by close connection and interaction one with another. Let us rejoice to act through others. Priscilla and Aquila! what a power they were for early Christianity when they took that eloquent young Alexandrian Apollos and taught him in private the way of God more perfectly! Priscilla, that devout woman, stood, in fact, before delighted assemblies in Corinth and spoke to them the perfect way of God through the eloquent man whom she had taught. And how often does the Sunday-school teacher, who labored long and, as the world might have thought, fruitlessly, with her little naughty boys and girls, become in future times a great power for good in the world through one or other of them! The teacher has to sink himself in his pupils: never mind if he sinks all out of the world’s sight, provided he can make his mark upon them and prepare them for greater usefulness, can put into them some good spirit, and send them forth to do the work which to him personally is denied. Here lies the great power of Christian women. There is much they can do personally, with their own voice and their own action, but there is more they can do by that wondrous influence which men vainly strive to depict, that influence over son and brother and husband and friend whereby all the strength and power of the man is softened and guided and sobered and made wiser through the. blessed influence of the woman. God be thanked that we can not only do good in our individual efforts, but we can do good through others! Let us cultivate this, let us delight in this, that we can labor through others. Whenever your pastor may stand before the gathered assembly he can speak with more power because of you, if you do your duty to him and through him. May I mention some of the ways in which we may help our pastor? I speak as one who at home sits for the most part, a private member of the church in the pew, toiling all the week, and often unable to preach on Sunday, and yet as one whose heart is all in sympathy with the pastor’s heart, and perhaps a little better able than common to sympathize with both sides. We can help him to draw a congregation. You know we always say now-a-days, that it is very important to get a man who can draw a congregation. So it is, though it is very important to consider what he draws them there for, and what he does with them after he gets them there; and sometimes it does seem to me that it would be better for some people to remain not drawn than to be drawn merely to hear and to witness that which does them harm rather than good. But we do want a man who can draw a congregation; and we can help our pastto draw a congregation. How? “Well, by taking care that we are always drawn ourselves, by occupying our own place, sometimes when we do not feel like it, on Sunday evening; because it is our duty to our pastor, our duty to the congregation, and our duty to the world. And we can do something to bring others. I recall a story, that a few years after the war (which is the great chronological epoch in a large part of our country), at the White Sulphur Springs, in Virginia, was a venerable man at whom all the people looked with profound admiration, whose name was Robert E. Lee. He was a devout Episcopalian. One day a Presbyterian minister came to preach in the ball-room, according to custom, and he told me this story. He noticed that General Lee, who was a very particular man about all the proprieties of life, came in late, and he thought it was rather strange. He learned afterwards that the General had waited until all the people who were likely to attend the service had entered the room, and then he walked very quietly around in the corridors and parlors, and out under the trees, and wherever he saw a man or two standing he would go up and say gently: “ We are going to have divine service this morning in the ball-room; won’t you come? “And they all went. To me it was very touching that that grand old man, whose name was known all over the world and before whom all the people wanted to bow, should so quietly go around, and for a minister of another denomination also, and persuade them to go. Should not we take means to help our pastor to draw a congregation? And when he begins to preach, cannot we help him to preach? Demosthenes is reported to have said (and he ought to have known something about it), that eloquence lies as much in the ear as in the tongue. Everybody who can speak effectively knows that the power of speaking depends very largely upon the way it is heard, upon the sympathy which one succeeds in gaining from those he addresses. If I were asked what is the first thing in effective preaching, I should say, sympathy; and what is the second thing, I should say, sympathy; and what is the third thing, sympathy. We should give our pastor sympathy when he preaches. Sometimes one good listener can make a good sermon; but ah! sometimes one listener who does not care much about the gospel can put the sermon all out of harmony. The soul of a man who can speak effectively is a very sensitive soul, easily repelled and chilled by what is unfavorable, and easily helped by the manifestation of simple and unpretentious sympathy.

How can we help our pastor? We can help him by talking about what he says; not talking about the performance and about the performer, and all that, which, if it is appropriate anywhere, is surely all inappropriate when we turn away from the solemn worship of God, and from listening to sermons intended to do us good but talking about the thoughts that he has given us, recalling them sometimes to one who has heard them like ourselves, repeating them sometimes to some one who has not had the opportunity of hearing them. Thus may we multiply whatever good thoughts the preacher is able to present, and keep them alive in our own minds and the minds of fellow-Christians. Will you pardon an illustration here, even if it be a personal one?

Last year in a city in Texas, I was told of the desire on the part of a lady for conversation, and when we met by arrangement she came in widow’s weeds, with a little boy of ten or twelve years old, and began to tell this story: Her husband was once a student at the University of Virginia, when the person she was talking to was the chaplain there, more than twenty-five years ago.

He was of a Presbyterian family from Alabama, and said he never got acquainted with the chaplain, for the students were numerous, but that he heard the preaching a great deal, and in consequence of it, by God’s blessing upon it, he was led to take hold as a Christian, and went home and joined the church of his parents.

After the war he married this lady, and a few years ago he passed away. She said he was in the habit, before she knew him, she learned, of talking often in the family about things he used to hear the preacher say; the preacher’s words had gotten to be household words in the family. And then when they were married he taught some of them to her, and was often repeating things he used to hear the preacher say. Since he died she had been teaching them to the little boy the preacher’s words. The heart of the preacher might well melt in his bosom at the story. To think -that your poor words, which you yourself had wholly forgotten, which you could never have imagined had vitality enough for that, had been repeated among strangers, had been repeated by the young man to his mother, repeated by the young widow to the child your poor words, thus mighty because they were God’s truth you were trying to speak and because you had humbly sought God’s blessing! And through all the years it went on, and the man knew not, for more than a quarter of a century, of all that story. Ah, we never know when we are doing good. Sometimes we may think we are going to do great things, and so far as can ever be ascertained, we do nothing; and sometimes when we think we have done nothing, yet, by the blessing of God, some truth has been lodged in a mind here and there, to bear fruit after many days.

How can we help our pastor? We can furnish him illustrations. Mr. Spurgeon tells us that he requests his teachers, and his wife, and various other friends to hunt up illustrations for him. He asks them, whenever they have come across anything in reading or in conversation that strikes them as good, to write it down and let him have it, and whenever he sees a fit opportunity he makes a point of it. We can all furnish our pastors with illustrations. In that very way, perhaps, we might give a preacher many things that would be useful to him. In other ways we can all do so. Ah, when the preacher tells how it ought to be, if you can sometimes humbly testify, in the next meeting on Tuesday or Friday evening, how it has been in your experience, you are illustrating for the preacher. When the preacher tells what Christianity can do for people, if your life illustrates it for all around, there is a power that no speech can ever have. There remains a fourth law of spiritual work.

IV. Spiritual work has rich rewards: “And he that reapeth receiveth wages,” saith Jesus, “ and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.” Spiritual work has rich rewards. It has the reward of success. It is not in vain to try to do good to the souls of men through the truth of God and seeking his grace. Sometimes you may feel as if you were standing at the foot of a precipice a thousand feet high and trying to spring to its summit, and were all powerless. Sometimes you may feel as if you had flung your words against a stone wall and made no impression at all. Sometimes you may go away all ashamed of what you have said in public or in private. But there was never a word spoken that uttered God’s truth and sought God’s blessing, that was spoken in vain. Somehow it does good to somebody, it does good at some time or other; it shall be known in earth or in heaven that it did do good. Comfort your hearts with these words: It is not in vain to try to do good. You may say, “ I have not the lips of the eloquent, the tongue of the learned, how can I talk?” There is many a minister who is eloquent and has preached to gathered congregations, who could tell you that he knows of many more instances in which his private words have been blest to individuals than he knows of in his public discourses. I knew of a girl who had been so afflicted that she could not leave her couch for years, who had to be lifted constantly poor, helpless creature! but who would talk to those who came into her room about her joy in God, and would persuade them to seek the consolations of the gospel, and many were benefited and would bring their friends to her, till after a while they brought them from adjoining counties, that she, the poor, helpless girl, might influence them; at length she even began to write letters to people far away, and that girl’s sick-bed became a centre of blessing to people throughout a whole region. We talk about doing nothing in the world. Ah, if our hearts were in it! we do not know what we can do. That tiger in the cage has been there since he was a baby tiger, and does not know that he could burst those bars if he were but to exert his strength. O the untried strength in all our churches, and the good that the people could do if we would only try, and keep trying, and pray for God’s blessing. t My friends, you cannot save your soul as a solitary, and you ought not to be content to go alone into the paradise of God. We shall best promote our own piety when we are trying to save others. We shall be most helpful to ourselves when we are most helpful to those around us. Many of you have found it so; and all of you may find it so, again and again, with repetitions that shall pass all human telling. “ For he that watereth shall be watered also again.”

Spiritual work shall also be rewarded in the Lord of the harvest’s commendation and welcome. Ah, he. will know which was the sowing and which was the reaping. The world may not know; we may never hear; but 4& will know which was the sowing and which was the reaping, and who jaded to do good and thought he had not done it, and who was sad and bowed down with the thought of being utterly unable to be useful, and yet was useful.

He will know, he will reward even the desire of the heart, which there was no opportunity to carry out. lie will reward the emotion that trembled on the lip and could find no utterance. He will reward David for wanting to build the temple as we” as Solomon for building it. He will reward all that we do, and all that we try to do, and all that we wish to do. O blessed God! he will be your reward and mine, forever and forever.