صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

THE world is still sleeping its "sleep of death." It has been a slumber of many generations ;—sometimes deeper, sometimes lighter,—yet still a slumber like that of the tomb, as if destined to continue till the last trumpet sound; and then there shall be no more sleep.

Yet God has not left it to sleep on unwarned. He has spoken in a voice that might reach the dullest ears and quicken the coldest heart. Ten thousand times has He thus spoken and still He speaks. But the world refuses to hear. Its myriads slumber on, as if this sleep of death were the very blessedness of its being.

Yet in one sense the world's sleep has never been universal. Never has there been an age when it could be said there is not one awake. The multitude has always slept, but there has always been a little flock awake. Even in the world's deepest midnight there have been always children of the light and of the day. In the midst of a slumbering world some have been in every age awake. God's voice had reached them, and His mighty power had raised them, and they walked the earth, awake among sleepers, the living among the dead.

The volume before us contains not the history of the sleeping many, but of the waking few. Its object is to trace out their story and record it for a memorial to all generations. The world has written at large the history of its sleeping multitudes, it becomes the Church of Christ to record the simpler, briefer annals of its awakened ones. Doubtless, their record is on high, written more imperishably than the world can ever accomplish for its sons, yet still it is well for earth to have a record of those of whom the world was not worthy.

Their story is as full of interest as it is of importance. The waking up of each soul would be matter enough for a history, its various shakings and startings up, ere it was fully aroused; the word or the stroke that effected the work; the time, the way in which it became awake for eternity and for God, as well as its new course of light after it awoke,—all these are fraught with an interest to which nothing of time or earth can ever once be compared. And then, when the voice of God awakes not one, but thousands, it may be in a day; when whole villages and districts seem as if

arising and putting on new life,-how intensely, how unutterably interesting! At such a crisis it seems as if the world itself were actually beginning to awake,—as if the shock that had broken the slumbers of so many were about to shake the whole world together. Yet alas! the tokens of life soon vanish. The half-awakened sleepers sink back into deeper slumber, and the startled world lies down in still more sad and desperate security.

The history of the Church is full of these awakenings, some on a larger and some on a smaller scale. Indeed, such narratives as those with which this work abounds form the true history of the Church, if we are to take our ideas of this from the inspired Church-history given us in the Acts of the Apostles. Many a wondrous scene has been witnessed from the day of Pentecost downwards to our own day, and what volume better deserves the attention and study of the believer than that which contains the record of these outpourings of the Spirit? Besides the interest that cleaves to them there is much to be learned from them by the Church. To see how God has been working, and to mark the means and intruments by which he has carried on his work, cannot fail to be profitable and quickening. It makes us sensible of our own shortcomings, and it points out the way by which the blessing may be secured. Let us look for a little at the instruments and their success as we find them recorded in this volume. Let us mark their character and contemplate their success. They were men of like passions as we are, yet how marvellously blest in their labours! Whence, then, comes their vast success? What manner of men were they? What weapons did they employ ?

1. They were in earnest about the great work of the ministry on which they had entered. They felt their infinite responsibility as stewards of the mysteries of God, and shepherds appointed by the Chief Shepherd to gather in and watch over souls. They lived and laboured and preached like men on whose lips the immortality of thousands hung. Every thing they did and spoke bore the stamp of earnestness, and proclaimed to all with whom they came into contact that the matters about which they had been sent to treat were of infinite moment, admitting of no indifference, no postponement even for a day. Yet their fervour was not that of excitement; it was the stedfast but tranquil purpose of men who felt the urgency and weight of the cause intrusted to them, and who knew that necessity was laid upon them, yea, woe was unto them if they preached not the Gospel. They felt that, as ministers of the Gospel they dared not act otherwise; they dared not throw less than their whole soul into the conflict; they dared not take their ease or fold their arms; they dared not be indifferent to the issue when professing to lead on the hosts of the living God against the armies of the prince of darkness.

2. They were bent upon success. It was with a good hope of success that they first undertook the awful office of the ministry, and to despair of this would have been shameful distrust of him who had sent them forth, while to be indifferent to it would have been to prove themselves nothing short of traitors to him and to his cause. As

« السابقةمتابعة »