Religious Langour

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 17, 1876

Religious Langour.

In a private letter from London occurs a mention of a sermon preached by Mr. Spurgeon, in which he expressed the belief that the reason preaching was not more effective, was because the truths were not sharply enough believed by the preachers. The effectiveness of Mr. Spurgeon’s preaching certainly suggests that a deep wrought conviction is a great element of power. The same remark applies to nearly all great preachers, to the old English divines, the reformers, and the great evangelists. “According to your faith, be it done unto you,” is a truth every minister should have engraven on his heart. And that faith is not enthusiasm or hopefulness or courage. It is the prostration of the soul upon the truth. It is a conviction pressed into the life by experience, passing through the whole being like the iron through the blood. It is the assimilation of God’s truth into mortal manhood. Then preaching will not be making a sermon. It will be the irresistible impulsion of faith. It will be the outgoing of the man in the doctrines that are his life. “I believe, therefore have I spoken.” Faith is the only good reason for religious speech.

But the relation between conviction and power applies not only to speech. Is the church often a powerless witness in the world? Is it often hard to draw the line between those who love God and those who love him not? We will find the reason in the lack of faith not only in God but in the truth we profess to believe. The difference between belief and faith is only this: by the former we hold the truth; by the latter it holds us. The former has no determining influence on the character; but faith in proportion as it is real, commands the entire life. The truths we hold are grand and awful enough to sweep every thought, affection and purpose before them. Holding them in a feeble faith, we are standing on the bank of a historic stream and seeing how finely and strongly its waters move at our feet. But when these truths pass into our being, we are like one who is caught in the central current of a great river, and borne smoothly on its way.

Why do we ask languidly in prayer for things over which our souls should be in agony? Because our conviction is only a sentiment. Why do we drift into world-conformity when we should shun the very appearance of evil? Because the Master’s call for separation comes feebly, muffled in hearts that feebly hold the truth. Why, instead of earnestly contending for the faith in daily conduct, is our Christian life more a parade than a battle? Because our faith in God is held more as an ornament than as a shield or a sword. Why is the world full of sneers at the church? Because they see no deep conviction, no intensity of life that burns in the words, shines in the conduct, and even marks and bends the countenance to its mighty behest.

Getting comfortably to Heaven is more to us than living valiantly on earth. Dr. Lyman Beecher used to say, “Eloquence is logic on fire.” A Christian life should be the Son of God on fire in a human heart. We believe glorious and dreadful things, so glorious, so dreadful, the world could not resist a life that would faithfully represent them. Let us hide the word of God in our hearts, till it melts into our experience, till it reappears in new forms in our prayers, our actions, the tenor of our lives, and then we will understand that the depth of our faith measures the breadth of our influence.—Interior.