(Sermon Sunday afternoon, October 28, 1894,
Campground, Ashfield, N.S.W.)
[My text is] Matthew, sixth chapter, commencing
at the nineteenth verse: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures
in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure
is, there will your heart be also."
Now, this is a very important matter to
us. Who is the speaker? It is Jesus Christ. Who is He? The only
begotten Son of God. Who is He? Our Saviour; One who left the
royal courts of heaven, laid aside His high command in heaven,
and clothed His divinity with humanity. He came to our world
that humanity might touch humanity, that His long, human arm
might encircle the race while His divine arm grasps the throne
of the Infinite.
For our sakes He became poor, that we through
His poverty might become rich. What kind of riches? It was not
the riches of this earth, but it was the eternal riches, the
knowledge of God communicated through Jesus Christ. He consents
to become man's substitute and surety; He engages to bear the
penalty of the debt which man had incurred by transgression.
It is He that loved us, and so loved us that He offered His life
as a living sacrifice to bear the sins of a guilty world, that
man should have a second probation, that man should be tested
and proved and tried to see whether he will stand under the blood-stained
banner of Prince Emmanuel or whether he will choose to stand
under the banner of the prince of darkness.
Has He not an interest in His purchased
possession? Is He not intensely interested that the people for
whom He has suffered so much should be successfully carried through
the warfares and conflicts of this life, that they may have that
immortal inheritance that He has given His life to purchase for
the human family? Then has He not a right to speak in warnings,
in instruction? What weight do these words of the Son of the
infinite God have with the human family? He tells you that which
is for your present and eternal good.
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves"--you
are working for yourselves, cooperating with God who has laid
out the plan whereby you can work successfully through His grace
for yourselves, to secure your own eternal happiness in the kingdom
of glory. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not
break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also."
Christ has bought our hearts. Christ has
bought the human intelligence. Christ has bought the reasoning
powers; and Christ has entrusted us with capabilities and with
powers. He does not want that we should let these powers and
capabilities be employed merely in the common things of earthly
substance, and lose sight of the eternal. [See I Cor. 6:19, 20.] He came to
our world when Satan appeared to have the human race under his
control.
The Lord Jesus made our world. Everything
was made by Christ. Here Christ through God created our world,
and He engaged before the foundation of the world that if man
that was created and in Eden should transgress the law of God,
He would take the penalty of their transgression upon Himself.
And He did this. Then has He no right to instruct His subjects
what to do, that they shall not miss the eternal reward?
Who, I ask you of this congregation, will
absorb brain, bone, and muscle for the acquisition of merely
temporal advantages? Christ gave His life that we might not perish.
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life."
Our precious Saviour has made the world,
and when He came into the world He found the great usurper there,
and He came into the world that He might contest with him the
possession of this earth. Therefore the battle, the conflict,
was carried on right here in this world, and here He tells us
that it is for our eternal interest to lay up for ourselves a
treasure in the heavens. You ask, How can I do it? In Christ.
When the Householder went away from His house, He gave to every
man talents, to some five, to some two, and to another one. And
these talents He gave them direction to employ in His service,
He gave to some the property of means, to others ability, intellect--all
God's gifts. We could not have any of it unless it came through
Jesus Christ.
Then He tells you to use these talents
to His glory. Improve them. How shall we improve them? As God
gives me light, as God gives you light, as
He has given you His precious Word. It is full of hidden treasures.
He wants you to explore, work the field, and you will find the
treasures, and you will sell everything that you might buy the
field that contains the treasure. There are the jewels of truth
that are to be searched for as hidden treasures.
As you find them, what then? Why, you find
that there is truth, beautiful truth, jewels of truth, riches
of truth, and you accept them. What do they do? They bind you
by the golden links to the eternal God, for Jesus Christ came
that He might link finite man with the infinite God, and connect
earth that has been divorced by sin and transgression from heaven.
What riches, what treasures, what love, are here revealed! It
is impossible, yes, it is impossible, to conceive of the love
of God that is bestowed upon fallen humanity. Well, He tells
you, "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. "Will
you do it? "Ye are," says Jesus, "the light of
the world"--if you become rich in heavenly treasure, in
the knowledge of the true God. You are to search for it, search
that Book, the Word of God, and then you are to diffuse to others
the knowledge that you have obtained. Impart the heavenly gift.
"Oh," says one "I must attend
to my farm; I must attend to the interests of my family. I cannot
afford to be here, giving my interest and time and money in order
that I may win souls to Jesus Christ." Well, this shows
that you do not appreciate the heavenly Gift. It shows that you
do not appreciate and value the human families that Christ has
estimated of such cost that He came into the world to suffer
and become a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief. [He was] wounded for our transgressions,
bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was
upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.
Only think of it! No one could bear the
stroke of God's justice but His only beloved Son. He came in
the express image of His Father's person, one with God. He thought
it not robbery to be equal with God. The plan is laid out. You
are not to occupy brain, bone, and muscle to the acquisition
of the things of this life, and invest not in the treasures of
heaven. He wants all that there is of man. He wants the whole
heart.
The question is asked by the lawyer that
came to Christ, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?"--this
very inheritance that He had been presenting to him . Well now,
there stood the frowning Pharisees; there stood the rabbis; there
stood the priests and the rulers of the synagogue, and they hoped
to catch something from the answer that they could use, that
they might condemn Christ, the world's Redeemer, the mighty Healer,
the greatest Teacher that the world ever knew. Christ read their
heart and their purposes, and what did He do? He turned back
upon the lawyer himself the labor of answering that question.
He said, "What is written in the law? How readest thou?
And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with"-nine
tenths of your heart? two-thirds? one-half? one quarter?--"thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind"
[Luke 10:25-27]. This takes intellect; this takes reason; this
takes education, ability; and it takes all there is of man.
But just as soon as some enter college
and get a little bit of knowledge they think they know more than
God. And you hear of the higher critics. Who is the Higher Critic?
It is the Lord God of the universe, who has spread the canopy
of the heavens above us, and has made the stars and called them
forth in their order; that has created the lesser light, the
glory of the moon, to come in its order and to shine in our world.
And the higher critics come in. Who are they? Poor, finite man
on probation to see if he will be loyal and true to God that
he can stand under the blood-stained banner of Prince Emmanuel,
and that he can become a child of God and an Heir of heaven.
Talk of the critics, the higher critics. We have God; we have
his Word in its simplicity.
Jesus might have opened to the world door
after door of the mysteries of science, and gratified the inquisitive
mind; but did He do it? He had one object before Him, as we should
have in following His example. It is to bring to the human family
the divine knowledge of the Christ of God, to teach them how
they may save their souls, and that they may have that life that
measures with the life of God.
The salvation of man was to Him everything
. He takes the world by the hand, and He places it in its proper
position, subordinate, while He brings eternity that has been
lost from their reckoning, in view. He leads you to behold the
threshold of heaven flooded with divine glory, flushed with the
glory from the throne of God, and He tells you it is for you.
He tells you to strive for that inheritance that poverty cannot
strip from you. He tells you to seek for that kingdom that hath
foundations, that city whose builder and maker is God. That is
the eternal treasure; that is the immortal inheritance. I want
it.
I long for it; yes, and I am willing to
spend to the last that which I shall accumulate, that I may recover
souls that are ready to perish. All the value there is in money
to me is to invest it in the treasures of God, that He may have
meat in His house, that when missionaries are called to lift
the standard in the places that know not God He shall not find
an empty treasury because men spend God's money for liquor and
tobacco--ten, twenty, a thousand times more in eating and in
drinking these things that are taking the underpinning out from
their house, which are obliterating the image of God in man,
which are creating disease and infirmity and imbecility, and
shortening the existence of men years, that they might [not]
use their God-given life to the glory of God. Why, it is God's
money. He has seen fit in His providence to open the way before
me that I could have a little of His money to use for His treasury,
and to carry the truth to the people that are ready to perish.
He wants us to do what? "We are laborers
together with God; ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building"
[I Cor. 3:9]. And that is what we are in the world for--not to
eat and to drink and to attend horse races, and to use the holidays
in idling and in gratifying self; and if we have a shilling,
get on the cars and go somewhere to have a good time. There are
souls to be saved. There are youth to be educated by our precept
and example. The Lord is coming. The end of all things is at
hand, and it is time now, as the end of all things is at hand,
that we commence the work for youth; that we begin to see what
we can do to gather souls to Jesus Christ.
There is poverty around us; there is distress;
there are the naked to clothe, the hungry to feed; and those
that are thirsting for the water of life and hungering for the
bread of salvation, we want to give it to them.
I will read a little farther. "The
light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single
[your discernment is of that character that it is single], thy
whole body shall be full of light" [Matt. 6:22]. Do you think you
will find men that are smoking tobacco, introducing a poison
into their system, when nature makes the most tremendous effort
to expel the intruder that it almost dies in the conflict, and
if that was the terms of eternal life you would think it was
a very hard condition. But it is not, thank God.
But who has instituted this? It is the
devil that wants the brains of man. He wants to cobweb your faculties
and your thinking forces, and he wants to send disease between
the fluids and the solids of your body, that you shall not have
health, and that you shall be in the slavery of a perverted appetite,
an appetite which has no foundation in nature and the most difficult
to break from because the enemy has woven his threads all about
you to bind you to the habits which will ruin both soul and body.
Not an unclean thing is to enter the kingdom
of God. I want you to think of this; and those that benumb their
senses, paralyzing their reasoning by intoxicating drinks, I
want you to consider they have sold their reason to the devil,
and he takes possession of them soul and body; and you know what
he does with them; you know that it is the attributes of Satan
that walk right out in these men. Shall we make an attempt to
save men? Shall we educate our
children from their very babyhood to self-control? Shall we teach
them the blessed, precious name of Jesus? Shall we sing to them
the heavenly songs? Shall we teach them to imitate the graces
of Jesus Christ?
I was riding with an Englishman, and we
were in Texas. My husband was then living. We were laboring there
in Texas; and ...[this Englishman] was smoking his pipe. My husband
said, "What do you think, friend, did Christ give you an
example of using your pipe? Did He lay down this example for
you?"
"Oh," he groaned, "I never
regarded it in that light. No, no," said he, "I throw
this pipe away; I will never touch it again. To think of the
Redeemer of the world going through the streets smoking a pipe,
making a chimney of His nose! No, I never could do that again."
It seemed his sensibilities were shocked. But here, see, the
devil had invented it. What for? To consume money so that the
poor should not be clothed; so that the needy and the distressed
might suffer for the want of food and care and house; so that
the gospel should not be carried to all parts of our world.
Well, here is God's money. How much better
to say, Here I see that man eating his house in liquor, eating
the very substance which should go to his family, in smoking.
Now you are taking this portion which my brother uses, or my
brethren, and you are putting it into God's treasury. And then
there is a meetinghouse to be built; here is a church to be organized;
here is a company sending the Macedonian cry, "Come over
and help us." In our cities you could send scores of laborers
and support them in the field if man would only sacrifice the
idol of tobacco.
Professed Christians stand off in their
slavery and say, I can't overcome it. No, I cannot, but through
Jesus Christ you can overcome; through the merits of the blood
of Christ you can sweep away this deadly evil which is corrupting
our earth and corrupting our youth. And parents are giving their
appetites and passions as an inheritance to their children; and
they are weaker in moral power than they themselves are to resist
the contaminating influence that is upon our earth.
What account will fathers have to give
in the judgment? What account for the habits of liquor drinking?
What accounts for the habit of tobacco using, the money consumed
in lessening physical, mental, and moral power that belongs to
God? All of it has been purchased by an infinite price, the price
of the Son of God. You do not realize the necessity of sending
light to those that are in darkness because your eye is not single
to the glory of God. Your whole body is full of darkness, and
you treat yourself as a slave, a slave to grant to taste and
appetite that which is unwholesome and unhealthy, and which is
destroying vitality.
"But if thine eye be evil, thy whole
body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is
in thee be darkness"--if you are not observing the truth
of God's Word above everything in the earth, and if you are not
investing the talents that He has given you, put them out to
the exchangers. Let light shine forth from you. The Master is
going to require an account of you, and your whole body is full
of darkness. You consume means on your body that ought to be
given to the treasury of God, and you stand forth in your God-purchased
nobility of character that is standing in
the sight of God, written in the books of heaven as a man--a
man that will overcome every pernicious habit and every pernicious
practice. Now He says, "How great is that darkness."
No man can serve two masters. If tobacco
is your master, if it has brought all your forces under the control
of the pernicious appetite, it is your master and you are its
slave. How then can you serve your tobacco and your God, sending
up the fumes of tobacco before you go into the prayer meeting
so that your mind is so confused that you do not know what you
are about? Why? Because the stimulant of tobacco and the stimulant
of the Holy Spirit of God never combine to give meaning to inspiration
in the meeting that you may give the testimony clear from the
courts of heaven that God wants you to give.
"Ye are my witnesses," says God,
and God wants us by precept and example to represent Christ in
our world. He represented the Father, and He left the work in
our hands to attend to the needy and the distressed, and to have
something to help them that they may have the blessing of relief,
the necessities of suffering humanity. But if we use it up unwisely,
imprudently, He will say, "Thou wicked and slothful servant,
why did not you take My talent, why did you not put it out to
the exchangers? Why did not you use My gift that you could double
it for My service?" God wants us to win souls for Him; and
then what? You are to begin to work with the talent which God
has lent you, and then [use] every gift there is to the praise
of heaven.
Oh, I am so thankful for a Saviour! I am
so thankful for One that is mighty in power, that will help in
every emergency. "Lo," He says, "I am with you
always, even unto the end of the world." Well now, if we
have Christ at our right hand to help us--how much can He help
that man that is so devoted to the smoking of his pipe that he
can think of nothing else? God help us to cleanse the soul temple
of its impurity. God help us that we may give to God an offering
that is untainted physically, mentally, and morally. Well, "no
man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and
love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise
the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." You see, the
problem is weighed with God, and He tells the result. He requires
all there is of you.
When the lawyer asked a decided question,
Christ let him answer that; and what does Christ say after He
had declared, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,
and with all thy mind"? He added, "And thy neighbor
as thyself." Here is [summarized] the first four commandments,
which reveal the duty of man to his God. Here he must give supreme
worship to God; and the next is to love his neighbor as himself.
Who keeps the commandments? Who keeps them? Oh, that God would
help us to see how many of us are commandment breakers, and are
robbing God of the gifts, the precious gifts He has given us!
Jesus came to bring moral power to man
that he might overcome every sin, that he might become conqueror
through Christ. Man cannot do it of himself, but Jesus brings
moral power to combine with man's human effort,
that man may stand victor, on vantage ground
with God. May the Lord help us that we may possess that grace
and divine power, [and] be partakers of the divine nature, that
we may overcome the corruption that is in the world through lust.
"Therefore I say unto you, Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink;
nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life
more than meat, and the body than raiment?" [Matt. 6:25].
Should we not educate and train our children that to preserve
health, to preserve themselves with a sound mind in a sound body,
is of more consequence than the gratification of adornment, or
the gratification of such a variety of food and such endless
preparations for the table, the spices, the pickles, the condiments,
the wine, the beer drinking, and the desserts? I want to know
what is the necessity of all these things?
The cook has no time to read her Bible.
You say, I hire the cook. And has not the cook any soul as well
as you? The cook has a soul to save, and you want to educate
and train that cook to seek God in the morning, to seek Him at
night, and to live so she can have a chance to read her Bible.
With all the wonderful preparations for man's appetite and taste
and passions for the varieties of his life, people rob God of
His service. They have no time to go to their neighbors and to
teach them right in the shadow of their own doors how they may
love Jesus and how Jesus loves them.
This is what we are in the world for--on
trial to see if we will be fit for the courts above, to see if
God can honor us to become one of the heavenly family in the
kingdom of glory. If we are so selfish here that we
have no interest for one another to make them
obedient, and to bless them with the good things that He has
provided for us in this life, how will we manifest anything like
unselfishness in the kingdom of glory? How will we do it? We
would be wanting to snatch the crown from another's head because
it is more brilliant than ours. Another would become jealous,
and we should have as bad a time as when Satan set up that work
in heaven of rebellion against God.
Therefore the Lord has given man a probation,
and we will work out our characters as the artist takes [an image]
upon the polished plate. As he takes the features of the one
that wants his picture produced, the God of heaven is taking
the character of every human soul of us. That character is going
up to heaven, and it is produced there; it is recorded there
in the book what traits of character we manifest. If we manifest
the attributes of Satan, it is that character that can find no
place in the heavenly courts above.
Well then, how shall we occupy our time
here? As pilgrims and strangers. You have a home. Thank God for
that. There are many who have none. Make that home just as pleasant,
just as nice as you can, but not extravagant. You can make things
very nice and very tasteful with few things. By exercising taste
you can make a beautiful home. Then will you sit down and enjoy
it? Here are youth who have no home. Here are orphans with no
father or mother, without a home. Here is the example of horse
racing and holidays, and the tobacco devotees, and the world
is full of excitement and corrupting influences that are making
the people as the
inhabitants of the earth before the flood,
whom God swept away by the waters of the flood, and as Sodom
that fire came from heaven and consumed.
Now, there is work for every one to do.
God calls for the talents that He has lent you, and He wants
you, in the place of devoting money and time for expensive dress
and for expensive adornments and for expensive houses merely
for visitors, to do something different from that. They come
in and you show them all about the little things that you have
to take their attention. [You are] professed Christians, but
never speak of Jesus; and God says to you, What saw they in thine
house?
Did they see you imparting the light and
knowledge of Him? Did they see you bring up your children in
the nurture and admonition of God? Did they see you preparing
those little ones for the crown of immortal glory? Will you place
their hands in the hands of Jesus Christ? Will you educate them
to meet the standard of the world, to do as the world does, to
practice the maxims [of], and to follow the fashions of, this
degenerate age, which are ever changing, and its mouth is always
swallowing money, money, money? The poor are suffering for food,
and there are youth that you could educate and train.
Our houses should be made pleasant to our
children. Remove the drapery that would shut out the sunlight
and the pure air of heaven lest they tarnish the beautiful pictures
and the carpets. Let them tarnish them. Had they not better tarnish
these than have the children obtain a street education, and imbibe
the appetites and the passions of this degenerate age, which
tarnish the soul and may produce a scar which can never be effaced?
Here are the human beings. The probabilities
and the possibilities are before them of working out a character
for the future, immortal life, so that the Lord can say, "Well
done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful
over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things"
[Matt. 25:21]. Oh, will not that fall on the ear like the sweetest
music? "I was hungry, and ye fed me; I was sick and in prison,
and ye visited me; I was naked, and ye clothed me."
Jesus was abiding in the heart and in the
mind. They were serving Him so perfectly that they have no idea
that they have done anything wonderful. They don't know what
they have done. "Inasmuch," said Jesus Christ,"
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren,
ye have done it unto Me." I want the tobacco devotees to
reckon up every week how much they devote to their idol-god tobacco.
I want the liquor drinkers to reckon up what they spend for wine,
brandy, and strong drinks, and then see the sum you might expend
on God's purchased possession.
Jesus gave His life that these precious
souls might have eternal life. "We are laborers together
with God." What sacrifice will you make? What self-denial
will you practice? It may be self-denial for a time, but in the
end it is the greatest blessing to soul, body, and spirit that
you can experience. We have a duty to humanity. We are bound
before God, if we possess eternal life, to show that we appreciate
the value of the sacrifice which Christ has made, and that is
to purchase heaven, that we may glorify His name upon the earth,
and that we may win souls to the cross of Calvary, that we may
win souls to teach them how to give their hearts to Jesus
Christ, that we may represent Jesus Christ
as Jesus Christ represented the love of the Father. This is our
business in the world.
We are not here to please ourselves. And
then our families, our children--don't say to them as I have
heard many mothers say, "There is no room for you in the
parlor. Don't sit on that sofa that is covered with satin damask.
We don't want you to sit down on that sofa." And when they
go into another room, "We don't want your noise here."
And they go into the kitchen, and the cook says, "I cannot
be bothered with you here. Go out from here with your noise;
you pester me so, and bother me." Where do they go to receive
their education? Into the street.
Fathers and mothers, you have an awful
responsibility lying at your door. What has made the drunkards?
They are made at home. It is the neglect of teaching the children
the commandments of God when they rise up and when they sit down,
when they go out and when they come in.
What are the commandments of God? They
are the ten holy precepts, the royal law, the holy law of God,
which is the standard of character, which every soul present
must meet in the judgment, notwithstanding it may be proclaimed
from the pulpits of the day that God has no law. Now who believes
it?
Every nation has a law; but the God of
heaven has given us His law to represent His character, and there
it stands. There is not one of the precepts done away. They stand
immutable and eternal. "The law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul." Why should anyone want to change a
perfect thing? You cannot get anything more than perfect, and
the law of the Lord is for us to respect and reverence and obey.
And if the inhabitants of the world had
obeyed the law of God instead of hearing reiterated from the
pulpits that God has no law, that God has no commandments; and
if the parents should educate their children as Christ enshrouded
in the billowy cloud gave the direction to Moses to give to Israel,
we should not hear of the thefts, the robberies, the murders,
and our jails be filled, the prisons filled with criminals because
of the crime and wickedness that prevails in our world to such
a fearful extent. Now we would say, Let us love God and keep
His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
Well, I will read a little farther. I want
to take up some other points, but we shall have to leave them
for another discourse. A few thoughts more, and I will close.
"Which of you by taking thought can
add one cubit unto his stature?" Now just as though God
that places you in this world could not carry you through this
world. If you are diligent, if you are patient, if you try, if
you do what is fitted for you to do, and are colaborers with
God, He says, "Which of you by taking thought can add one
cubit unto his stature?" God works for you all the time.
God Himself is taking care of you. "And why take ye thought
for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you,
That even Solomon in all his glory [could not be compared with
one of these] was not arrayed like one of these."
He has been telling about raiment. Now,
that God that puts the tints and the color upon all these things,
can He not provide for us suitable clothing and comfortable clothing,
neat and warm clothing? We need not practice extravagance. There
are other ways for our clothing than that. Now He says, "Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore,
if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and
tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe
you, O ye of little faith?" Well now, why not trust Him
who made the beautiful lilies of the valley?
In America we have the fresh water lilies.
These beautiful lilies come up pure, spotless, perfect, without
a single mar. They come up through a mass of debris. I said to
my son, "I want you to make an effort to get me the stem
of that lily as near the root as possible. I want you to understand
something about it."
He drew up a handful of lilies, and I looked
at them. They were all full of open channels, and the stems were
gathering the properties from the pure sands beneath, and these
were being developed into the pure and spotless lily. It refused
all the debris. It refused every unsightly thing, but there it
was developed in its purity.
Now, this is exactly the way that we are
to educate our youth in this world. Let their minds and hearts
be instructed who God is, who Jesus Christ is, and the sacrifice
that He has made in our behalf. Let them draw the purity, the
virtue, the grace, the courtesy, the love, the forbearance; let
them draw it from the Source of all power.
When God gave Jesus, He gave us all the
riches and treasures of heaven in one gift, and He says, Impart
these riches to everyone that needs them. Then let us come and
ask Him. Ask, and ye shall receive. Teach your children to pray
from their very babyhood; teach them to lift their little voices
to God in prayer. He is their Maker; He is the One that can make
their hearts happy; He is One that can give them contentment;
He is One that can give them virtue; He can reshape even the
tendencies that have been transmitted to them by unwise parents.
God help us to feel the weight of our responsibility.
Take the youth, if you have none of your own, adopt them. I had
children of my own, but I did not stop there. I was traveling
nearly all over the world, and yet I gathered into my house--"I
have a house," I said, "and children shall come in
and enjoy it." And I adopted child after child, and I brought
some of them up to womanhood and manhood, and God has helped
me in the work. When I could gain a victory (when children laid
down the stubbornness of their natural tempers) not by beating
them, I tried a better plan--to gain their confidence--and then
I could do anything with them; and God has helped me in the work.
No soul that I have taken in to train and educate has made me
regret it. They have given their hearts to Jesus, and we have
tried to point them to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin
of the world.
I love Jesus. I love those that are found
in His image, and I want to do everything in my power to help
them. Next month I shall enter upon my sixty-seventh birthday,
and yet I expect to issue many books yet; I expect to bear my
testimony in other countries besides this, and, God helping me,
I shall seek to let the light shine
for others that they may see the way that they can enter the
strait gate, and have eternal life. May God help us to help our
children. God help us to help our neighbors. God help us in the
church to let more light shine nigh and afar off to go into the
byways and the highways and point souls to Jesus Christ, and
show them how they can believe in God, and have His righteousness
imputed to them by taking Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour.
And now I would say to every one of you,
if I have introduced into this little address any ideas that
you will work upon, I shall feel that I am abundantly paid; and
if I have helped to point the eye to Jesus Christ, I will praise
Him for that. You want to educate your children to praise God.
You want to educate them to bring their little offerings to God.
You want to educate them not to make themselves a center and
a core, and all the gifts of the parents be lavished upon the
children. God's cause calls for money. God's cause calls for
means that you may carry the light into the regions that are
beyond. And then I beg of you, for Christ's sake, to let the
treasury be supplied that God may have meat in His house.--Manuscript
43a, 1894. (MR 900.42)