I PRESS ON by D. L. Moody

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 16, 1881

I PRESS ON.

By D. L. Moody

WHEN I read about the martyrs, I feel ashamed. How very few men and women are in dead earnest like Paul! I love to look at Paul, and never do it without thinking that perhaps it would take about a thousand Christians nowadays to make one like Paul. Did Paul compromise when he received those forty stripes save one? 'Those Jews have beat you five times now, Paul. What are you going to do?' 'Do! do you think these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, move me? I'm pressing forward to the prize; these stripes don't hinder.' Then they stoned him with those cruel stones, until they thought he was dead. 'Don't you think, Paul, now, that you'd better go down into Arabia awhile, until this opposition has blown over?' 'No; I must press forward.' 'Yes; but it is costing you so much—that cruel scourging. Don't you think you'd better be careful? You know it makes the Jews mad to tell them about Jesus, the one they crucified. What are you going to do?' 'Do! I press forward.' Satan got his match when he got Paul. In Philippi he and Silas were cast into prison. He thought he had a call to go down there, in a strange land and in a prison; they sang praises, and the prison doors flew open. I am afraid Mr. Sankey would not sing praises, as he does now, In Paul's dungeon. He is among false brethren; we hear no complaining about stripes, and no looking back. He did not have ministers sitting on the platform behind him to back him up. There was no despondency, no gloom. He takes his pen and writes, 'Light affliction—it is but for a moment.' He takes his pen again and writes that last epistle. I love to read it. 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.' Talk about Cæsar or Napoleon! That little tentmaker was greater than they all, and had a crown that they never had. His blessed work is not finished yet. It lives in this Book, and will live, until with Paul, we gaze upon him who is the light thereof.'—D. L. Moody.