NO SERVICE WITHOUT SACRIFICE

NO SERVICE WITHOUT SACRIFICE

I enjoyed my visit among you. I think there is more settled purpose to stand for the Lord. There is more compactness — that which every joint supplieth. I feel as if you all were more launched, and standing out to sea, aware that you must do seaman’s duty, and to my mind all depends on this. The loss of dear ———— I conclude has had this effect — of binding you all together, and like a solid square, to stand against the common foe. It is a blessed result, but there must be service; I mean as the Lord leads; and there can be no service without sacrifice. In one form or another, when one chooses to suffer affliction with the people of God, the advantages of Egypt must be surrendered. The first act of Elisha on entering or beginning service was to lay hold of his own clothes and rend them in two pieces. The old order of things was at an end. The need of the saints must provoke you to service, as it did Moses in another day. I do not mean to press you into very laborious service. I feel the weight must come on some one, and the taller any one is in carrying a weight in company with others the more falls on him; and in the Lord’s service it is an honour to be that one. If you are called to ministry in the word you must wait on it. I feel (it is time for me to say so) that Christ’s interests must be our paramount concern, and for a minister in the word it must be especially so.

^[p. 73] I do not for a moment intimate that secular business would militate against a good, sound, useful ministry in the word; but then the latter must always keep the lead in the mind of the servant as well as in his heart; just as a man’s affections for his family are paramount with him, although he be a good business man.