Godliness : being reports of a series of addresses delivered at James's Hall, London, W. during 1881Booth, Catherine Mumford
Religion
Godliness : being reports of a series of addresses delivered at James's Hall, London, W. during 1881
Booth, Catherine Mumford
Salvation Army -- Sermons; Sermons, English
What would be thought of any woman who were to go, after being to
church the day before, and ask for a private interview with Mrs. ----,
and, when alone with her, with tears in her eyes, and deep
earnestness in her voice, were to say, "Dear Mrs. ----, I have come to
see you on a very painful errand, but will you suffer a word of
exhortation from one so unworthy and weak as I feel myself to be, and
yet, I trust, one who has the Spirit of God, which urges me to come
to you? Will you allow me to say that I was much pained with your
attitude at church, yesterday. It seemed to me that your mind was not
at all occupied with the solemnity of the service, but seemed to be
occupied in criticising the person's dress in the seat opposite to
you, and I could not help noticing that when you got outside the
doors you began to laugh and talk in a way quite incompatible with
the service you had been attending?" If she were to say, "Dear Mrs. ----,
I have not mentioned this to a soul, not even to my husband, but I
have come to tell it to you; let us go down before the Lord and ask
Him for the Holy Spirit, that He may show you how wrong you are, and
how you are sliding away from the love of God"--what would be the
thought, what would be said, of such conduct?
If everybody who sees sin upon his neighbor would do that--if he
would take the Lord's counsel and go and see his brother alone, and
tell him his fault--how many would be saved from backsliding, and how
many a disgraceful split and controversy in churches might be saved!
But where are the people who will do it? I don't mean there are not
any--God forbid--I know there are; but I am speaking comparatively.
Where is the man who will inflict pain upon himself?--for that is the
point. If it were a pleasant duty, he would do it easily enough; but
it is a painful duty, he does not like to screw himself up to it.
Where is the man that will do it, rather than suffer his brother to
go to sleep in his sin, and rather than the precious cause of Christ
shall be disgraced and injured? Where are the saints who will go in
meekness and in love to try to reclaim the one who has erred? I hope
you know a great many. I am sorry to say I know only a few. If you
know many, I am very glad, and the more you know the better I am
pleased. If you are one of these, that is one, at all events. If
every Christian would have this sort of Charity, what a change would
soon come about. That is what the church wants--people who can afford
to rebuke and reprove, because they don't care what men think of THEM
--who are set only on pleasing their Lord and Master, and doing His
will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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