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Page 36
How shall it be done?
First, by a vivid conception that cooperation is designed, provided
for, and expected. We are children of God; there can be but one great
end through the ages in the universe. There should be cooperation of
every force. There have been thousands of evident cooperations--waters
divided and burned by celestial fire, Pharaohs rebuked, Ninevehs warned,
exiles recalled, Jerusalems rebuilded, Luthers upheld, preachers
of today changed from waning, not desired, half-over-the-dead-line
ministers into vigorous, flaming heralds of the Gospel, who possessed
tenfold power to what they had before; we ourselves personally helped
in manifest and undeniable instances, and so have come to believe that
God can do anything, anywhere, if he can get the right kind of a man.
Promises of aid are abundant. Heaven and earth shall pass away sooner
than one jot or tittle of these words fail. We are invited to test them:
"Come now, and prove me herewith, and see if I will not open the windows
of heaven once more, as at the deluge, and pour you out a blessing that
there shall not be room enough to receive it."
Second, select some definite work too great for us to do alone, as the
preparation of a sermon that shall have unusual power of persuasion to
change action, the conduct of a prayer meeting of remarkable interest,
the casting out of some devil of evil speech or action, the conversion
of one individual, the raising of more money for some of God's
purposes, and then go about the work, not alone, but in such a way that
God can lead and we help. Let the fasting and prayer not be lacking.
When the right direction comes let Jonathan take his armor-bearer and
climb up on his hands and knees against the Philistines, let Paul go to
Macedonia, Peter to Cornelius, Wesley send help to America. Bishop
Foss said, in regard to several crises in a most serious sickness, that
Christ always arrived before it came. So in regard to work to be done.
The Lord was in Nineveh before Jonah, in Caesarea before Peter, and
will be in the heart of every sinner we seek to get converted before we
arrive. Any man who wants to do an immense business should seek a good
partner. We are workers together with God. What is being done worthy
of the copartnership?
WHEN THIS WORLD IS NOT*
*Reprinted from the _Methodist Review_.
"The day of the Lord will come . . .; in which the heavens shall pass
away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat,
the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."
What is there after that?
To this question there are three answers:
I. There are left all of what may be called natural forces that there
were before the world was created. They are not dependent on it. The
sea is not lost when one bubble or a thousand break on the rocky shore.
The world is not the main thing in the universe. It is only a
temporary contrivance, a mere scaffolding for a special purpose. When
that purpose is fulfilled it is natural that it should pass away. The
time then comes when the voice that shook the earth should signify the
removal of "those things that are shaken, as of things that are made,
that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." We already have
a kingdom that cannot be moved. "The things which are seen are
temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
It should not be supposed that the space away from the world is an
empty desert. God is everywhere, and creative energy is omnipresent.
Not merely is a millionth of space occupied where the worlds are, but
all space is full of God and his manifestations of wisdom and power.
David could think of no place of hiding from that presence. The first
word of revelation is, "In the beginning God created the heaven." And
the great angel, standing on sea and land when time is to be no longer,
swears by Him who "created heaven, and the things that therein are," in
distinction from the earth and its things that are to be removed. What
God created with things that are therein is not empty. Poets, the true
seers, recognize this. When Longfellow died one of them, remembering
the heartbreaking hunt of Gabriel for Evangeline, and their passing
each other on opposite sides of an island in the Mississippi, makes him
say of his wife long since gone before:
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