^ One great qualification for successful labour is power to get the truth home to the heart not to " deliver " it. I wish the word had never been coined in connexion with Christian work. " De- liver " it, indeed — that is not in the Bible. No, no ; not deliver it ; but drive it home — send it in — make it felt. That is your work ; not merely to say it — not quietly and genteelly to put it before the people. Here is just the difference between a self- consuming, soul-burdened, Holy Ghost, successful ministry, and a careless, happy-go-lucky, easy sort of thing, that just rolls it out like a lesson, and goes home, holding itself in no way re- sponsible for the consequences. Here is all the difference, either in public or individual labour. God has made you responsible, not for delivering the truth, but for getting it in — getting it home, fixing it in the conscience as a red hot iron, as a bolt, straight from His throne ; and He has placed at your disposal the power to do it, and if you do not do it blood will be on your skirts.^
^ " Do you wish to know," continued St. Francis, " how I test the excellence and value of a preacher ? It is by assuring myself that those who have been listening to him come away striking their breasts and saying : ' I will do better ' ; not by their saying : ' Oh how well he spoke, what beautiful things he said ! ' For to say beautiful things in fluent and well-chosen words shows indeed the learning and eloquence of a man ; but the conversion of sinners and their departing from their evil ways is the sure sign that God has spoken by the mouth of the preacher, that he
* Br. M'^Lareii of Manchester, 71. 2 The Life of Catherine Booth, i. 163.
2 THESSALONIANS iii. i y^
possesses the true power of speech, which is inspired by the science of the Saints, and that he proclaims worthily in the name of Almighty God that perfect law which is the salvation of souls." ^
III.
The Person in the Inteecession.
" Pray for us."
St. Paul gathers up all that he has to request for himself in one crowning petition, and the petition of the Apostle in the first age is the petition of all to whom Apostolic work is committed in every age. The want which St. Paul felt, the help which St. Paul craved, the power which St. Paul knew to be accessible, remain unaltered. The ambassador of Christ now as then, baffled and perplexed by ignorance and wickedness, alone and yet not alone, looks to his brethren in other lands for the sustaining ministry of love ; the distant churches, now as then, are called to share by spiritual sympathy in a work which belongs to the fulness of their life ; the treasury of heaven now as then is open for all who claim their inheritance of unexhausted blessings. Not one promise made to the Church has been revoked, Not one gift has been annulled. Not one command has been withdrawn. " Make disciples of all the nations " ; " Eeceive the Holy Ghost " ; "I am with you all the days " — these are still living words of a living Saviour, spoken once and spoken always. The slackness of our own energy is alone able to hinder the progress of His triumph : the dimness of our own vision is alone able to dull the effulgence of His glory.
1. Prayer is essentially active and expansive. If we pray for the attainment of an object, we shall work for it also; and we shall even without any set purpose make our interest in it felt. At present we seem to limit in some strange way our practical interpretation of one of our commonest petitions. The coming of our Father's Kingdom, so far as this phrase has any definite meaning for us, stands for something far less vast than those promises suggest which help us to rise to the magnificence of its
^ The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, 477.
74 PRAYER AND PROGRESS
Iiope. If we learn to say, not with the hps only but with the heart and with the understanding, " Thy kingdom come " ; if we intensify our prayers by due reflection on the vastness and variety of the work for which we pray ; then we shall soon speak one to another of that which burns within us. Zeal will kindle zeal where before silence chilled it, and devotion will pass into deed.
^ Immediately after dressing, he settled down to work at whatever his special task for the time might be, though very frequently, if one came into his room at all suddenly, the result was to make him rise hurriedly from his knees, his face reddened, and his eyes depressed by the intense pressure of his hands, the base of each of which had been driven and almost gouged into either eye-socket, the fingers and thumbs pressed down over forehead and head. The Greek Testament, open at some special point which had occupied him at the moment he kneeled down, lay on the chair before him ; but as he rose the spirit seemed to have come back again into his face from the far-off region to which it had been travelling, and there was just the hint in the face of an involuntary sadness and almost of reproach that the spirit should be recalled from the intercourse it had been enjoying. Mrs. Maurice's note-book adds to this : " Whenever he woke in the night he was always praying. And in the very early morning I have often pretended to be asleep lest I should disturb him whilst he was pouring out his heart to God. He never began any work or any book without preparing for it by prayer." ^