You are not the men to fight the Lord’s battles yet; you do not have the seriousness, the zeal, which the children of God once had. Your forefathers were strong men; but you are weak men. Our people, what are they, many of them? Strong in doctrine when they are with strong doctrine men; but they waver when they get with others, and they alter as often as they change their company; they are sometimes one thing, and sometimes another. They are not men who are willing to go to the stake, and die for the truth; they are not the men who know how to die daily, and so are ready for death whenever it comes.
Look at our prayer-meetings, with only an exception here and there, there are, possibly, six old women present; scarcely ever do enough male members come to pray even four times a year. Prayer-meetings they are called; they ought to be called “bare-meetings”, for they are barely attended. In addition, very few ever go to our fellowship-meetings, or to any other meetings that we have to help one another in the fear of the Lord. Are they attended at all as they should be? I would like to see a newspaper printed somewhere, containing a list of all the persons who went to those meetings during the week in any of our churches in London. Ah! my friends, if you would add together all those who attended those meetings in one week, well, you might find that any one of our churches could hold all of them at one time! We don’t have earnestness, seriousness, and intensity, we don’t have life, as we once had; if we had, we would be called worse names than we are now; we would have more contemptible labels thrown at us, if we were more true to our Master; we would not be quite so comfortable, if we served God better. We are making the Church of our land to be an honorable institution; some think it a grand thing when the Church becomes an honorable institution, but it shows that the Church has swerved from the right course when she begins to be very honorable in the eyes of the world. She must still be rejected, she must still be called evil, and still be despised, until that day when her Lord will honor her because she has honored him-then he will honor her, even in this world, in the day of his appearing.
Beloved, do you think it is true that the Church needs reviving? Yes, or no? “No,” you say; “at least, not to the extent that Charles Spurgeon believes.”
You think the Church is in good shape. You are not among those who cry out, “The former days were better than these.” You may be far wiser than we are, and therefore you are able to see those various signs of goodness which are to us so small that we are not able to discover them. You may suppose that the Church is in good shape; if so; of course you cannot sympathize with me in preaching from such a text and urging you to use such a prayer as this: “O Lord, revive your work.”
But there are others of you who frequently cry out, “The Church needs reviving.”
Let me ask you, instead of grumbling at your minister, instead of finding fault with the different parts of the Church, let me ask you to cry out, “O Lord, revive your work.” “Oh!” one says, “Oh, that we had another minister! Oh, that we had another kind of worship! Oh, that we had a different sort of preaching!” Just as if that were the simple solution; but my prayer is, “Oh, that the Lord would come into the hearts of the men you have! Oh, that he would make the forms you use to be full of power!” You don’t need fresh ways or new structures; you need life in those that you have. There is an locomotive on the railroad tracks; but the train will not move. “Bring another locomotive,” one says, “and another, and another.” The locomotives are brought, but the train still does not move. Light the fire and get up more steam, that is what you need; not new engines. We do not need new ministers, or new plans, or new ways, though many might be invented, to make the Church better; we only need life and fire in those that we have. With the very man who has emptied your church, the very same person that weakened your prayer-meetings, God can yet make the church to be crowded to the doors, and give thousands of souls to that very man. It is not a new man that is needed; it is the life of God in him. Don’t be crying out for something new; it will no more solve your problem than what you now have. Cry out, “O Lord, revive your work.”
I have noticed, in different churches, that the minister has thought first of this plan, then of that one. He tried one plan, and thought that it would succeed; then he tried another, but that was no good. Keep to the old plan, my friend, but seek to get life into it! We don’t need anything new; “the old is better,” let us keep it; but we need life in the old plan. “Oh!” men cry, “we have nothing but the shell;” and they are going to give us a new shell. No, we will keep the old one, but we will put new life in the old shell; we will keep the old plans, but we must, or else we will throw the old away, we must have the life in the old. Oh, that God would give us life! The Church needs new revivals. Oh, for the days of Scotland’s 18th-century revival, when in March 1742, a spark of grace set the kingdom on fire when the Word of God was preached with power! Oh, for the days when, in this place, hundreds were converted under Whitefield’s sermons! It has been known that two thousand credible cases of conversion happened under the preaching of one single sermon. Oh! for the age when eyes would be opened wide, and ears would be ready to receive the truth of God, and when men and women would drink in the Word of life, as it is indeed the very water of life which God gives to dying souls! Oh, for the age of deep feeling-the age of deep earnestness and sincerity! Let us ask God for it; let us plead with him for it. Perhaps he has the man or the men somewhere who will yet shake the world; perhaps even now he is about to pour forth a mighty influence on man, which will make the Church as wonderful in this age as it ever was in any age that has passed. God grant it, for Christ’s sake! Amen.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
