New Tabernacle SermonsTalmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Religion
New Tabernacle Sermons
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Presbyterian Church -- Sermons; Sermons, American
How often it is that you do not find physical energy indicative of
spiritual power! If a clear head is worth more than one dizzy with
perpetual vertigo--if muscles with the play of health in them are
worth more than those drawn up in chronic "rheumatics"--if an eye
quick to catch passing objects is better than one with vision dim and
uncertain--then God will require of us efficiency just in proportion
to what he has given us. Physical energy ought to be a type of moral
power. We ought to have as good digestion of truth as we have capacity
to assimilate food. Our spiritual hearing ought to be as good as our
physical hearing. Our spiritual taste ought to be as clear as our
tongue. Samsons in body, we ought to be giants in moral power.
But while you find a great many men who realize that they ought to use
their money aright, and use their intelligence aright, how few men you
find aware of the fact that they ought to use their physical organism
aright! With every thump of the heart there is something saying,
"Work! work!" and, lest we should complain that we have no tools to
work with, God gives us our hands and feet, with every knuckle, and
with every joint, and with every muscle saying to us, "Lay hold and do
something."
But how often it is that men with physical strength do not serve
Christ! They are like a ship full manned and full rigged, capable of
vast tonnage, able to endure all stress of weather, yet swinging idly
at the docks, when these men ought to be crossing and recrossing the
great ocean of human suffering and sin with God's supplies of mercy.
How often it is that physical strength is used in doing positive
damage, or in luxurious ease, when, with sleeves rolled up and bronzed
bosom, fearless of the shafts of opposition, it ought to be laying
hold with all its might, and tugging away to lift up this sunken wreck
of a world.
It is a most shameful fact that much of the business of the Church and
of the world must be done by those comparatively invalid. Richard
Baxter, by reason of his diseases, all his days sitting in the door of
the tomb, yet writing more than a hundred volumes, and sending out an
influence for God that will endure as long as the "Saints' Everlasting
Rest." Edward Payson, never knowing a well day, yet how he preached,
and how he wrote, helping thousands of dying souls like himself to
swim in a sea of glory! And Robert M'Cheyne, a walking skeleton, yet
you know what he did in Dundee, and how he shook Scotland with zeal
for God. Philip Doddridge, advised by his friends, because of his
illness, not to enter the ministry, yet you know what he did for the
"rise and progress of religion" in the Church and in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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