A Book of Gems, or, Choice selections from the writings of Benjamin FranklinFranklin, Benjamin
Religion
A Book of Gems, or, Choice selections from the writings of Benjamin Franklin
Franklin, Benjamin
Churches of Christ
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lost and superseded by something else, it must be restored, and where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 Bible a grand power in the earth.
We have started with our Bible, and let us go on with it and carry it
through the world. We have a book that nobody denies, except out and
out skeptics, and one of supreme authority. Let us assert and maintain
its authority, and carry it through the world. All the other books that
in any way rival it, or are in anywise in the way of it, must be set
aside and rendered a _dead letter_. There is not one particle of divine
authority in anything that did not come out of the Bible. We must push
all other books aside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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