Practical Religion: Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing ChristiansRyle, J. C. (John Charles)
Religion
Practical Religion: Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing Christians
Ryle, J. C. (John Charles)
Christian life -- Anglican authors
(4) Furthermore, if zeal be true, it will be a zeal _tempered with
charity and love_. It will not be a bitter zeal. It will not be a fierce
enmity against persons. It will not be a zeal ready to take the sword,
and to smite with carnal weapons. The weapons of true zeal are not
carnal, but spiritual. True zeal will hate sin, and yet love the sinner.
True zeal will hate heresy, and yet love the heretic. True zeal will
long to break the idol, but deeply pity the idolater. True zeal will
abhor every kind of wickedness, but labour to do good even to the vilest
of transgressors.
True zeal will warn as St. Paul warned the Galatians, and yet feel
tenderly, as a nurse or a mother over erring children. It will expose
false teachers, as Jesus did the Scribes and Pharisees, and yet weep
tenderly, as Jesus did over Jerusalem when He came near to it for the
last time. True zeal will be decided, as a surgeon dealing with a
diseased limb; but true zeal will be gentle, as one that is dressing the
wounds of a brother. True zeal will speak truth boldly, like Athanasius,
against the world, and not care who is offended; but true zeal will
endeavour, in all its speaking, to "speak the truth in love."
(5) Furthermore, if zeal be true, _it will be joined to a deep
humility_. A truly zealous man will be the last to discover the
greatness of his own attainments. All that he is and does will come so
immensely short of his own desires, that he will be filled with a sense
of his own unprofitableness, and amazed to think that God should work by
him at all. Like Moses, when he came down from the Mount, he will not
know that his face shines. Like the righteous, in the twenty-fifth
chapter of St. Matthew, he will not be aware of his own good works. Dr.
Buchanan is one whose praise is in all the churches. He was one of the
first to take up the cause of the perishing heathen. He literally spent
himself, body and mind, in labouring to arouse sleeping Christians to
see the importance of missions. Yet he says in one of his letters, "I do
not know that I ever had what Christians call zeal." Whitefield was one
of the most zealous preachers of the Gospel the world has ever seen.
Fervent in spirit, instant in season and out of season, he was a burning
and shining light, and turned thousands to God. Yet he says after
preaching for thirty years, "Lord help me to begin to begin." M'Cheyne
was one of the greatest blessings that God ever gave to the Church of
Scotland. He was a minister insatiably desirous of the salvation of
souls. Few men ever did so much good as he did, though he died at the
age of twenty-nine. Yet he says in one of his letters, "None but God
knows what an abyss of corruption is in my heart. It is perfectly
wonderful that ever God could bless such a ministry." We may be very
sure where there is self-conceit there is little true zeal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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