I have known men run the race of religion with all their might, and
yet they have lost it because they did not start right. You say, “Well,
how is that?” Why, there are some people who on a sudden leap into
religion. They get it quickly, and they keep it for a time, and at last
they lose it because they did not get their religion the right way. They
have heard that before a man can be saved, it is necessary that, by the
teaching of the Holy Spirit, he should feel the weight of sin, that he
should make a confession of it, that he should renounce all hope in his
own works, and should look to Jesus Christ alone. They look upon all
these things as unpleasant preliminaries, and, therefore, before they
have attended to repentance, before the Holy Spirit has wrought a good
work in them, before they have been brought to give up everything and
trust to Christ, they make a profession of religion. This is just
setting up in business without a stock in trade, and there must be a
failure. If a man has no capital to begin with, he may make a fine show
for a little time, but it shall be as the crackling of thorns under a
pot,–a great deal of noise and much light for a little while, but it
shall die out in darkness. How many there are who never think it
necessary that there should be heart work within! Let us remember,
however, that there never was a man who had a changed heart without his
first having a miserable heart. We must pass through that black tunnel
of conviction before we can come out upon the high embankment of holy
joy; we must first go through the Slough of Despond before we can run
along the Walls of Salvation. There must be ploughing before there is
sowing; there must be many a frost, and many a sharp shower, before
there is any reaping. But we often act like little children who pluck
flowers from the shrubs, and plant them in their gardens without roots;
then they say how fair and how pretty their little garden is; but wait a
while, and all their flowers are withered, because they have no roots.
This is all the effect of not having a right start, not having the “root
of the matter.” What is the good of outward religion, the flower and the
leaf of it, unless we have the “root of the matter” in us–unless we
have been ploughed with the plough of the Spirit, and then have been
sown with the sacred seed of the Gospel, in the hope of bringing forth
an abundant harvest? There must be a good start in running the Christian
race, for there is no hope of winning unless the start be right.