It seems well-nigh impossible for some Christian workers to rid themselves of the notion that spiritual results may be obtained by methods merely material and intellectual. Given money and brains, it is assumed that with these there is force enough to win souls, operate a Sabbath school, even shepherd and conduct a church.
The rebuking voice of Jehovah sounds forth, "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit." That Spirit works on the ungodly and unsaved mainly through the medium of the glowing hearts which have already felt its transforming power. Success in soul winning requires a warm heart. Eminent success requires a hot heart. Icebergs will never be melted by moonbeams. One can get along without many other desirable qualifications, but genuine, spontaneous, abiding warmth of soul toward the Saviour and toward the sinner there must be, if a man, is to be a successful Christian worker. Without a heart transformed and all aflame, the most eminent endowments only make failure the more disgraceful.
The most magnificent floating palace ever built is but a cumbrous hulk, completely useless for the single purpose of its construction, until its fires are lighted, its heart throbs, and its timbers quiver from stem to stern with the pulsations of mighty energy and life.
There is no substitute for the flaming heart. Brilliancy may dazzle, but it takes heat to kindle. The great Chalmers preached for thirteen years before his conversion. He had a keenness of logic, a splendor of rhetoric, and a majesty of eloquence unsurpassed and-rarely equaled. But he afterward publicly confessed that during all that time his ministry not only , failed to lead souls to a saving knowledge of Christ, but that, so far as he could learn, it had "not the weight of a feather upon the moral habits" of his parishioners.
John Wesley's early ministrations in England and America were of little account. But when, through the influence of the Moravians, his "heart was strangely warmed," God gave him a tongue of fire, and then the scenes reminding of Pentecost were repeated. So a passionate devotion to the work of saving men is the indispensable condition of abundant harvesting.
John Knox often made his soul agony audible by crying, "Give me Scotland, or I die." White-field would often pray, "O Lord, give me souls, or take my soul." When the flaming soul of Paul had been pursuing sinners over all the roads and through the provinces of the Roman Empire for thirty years, driven by an unseen power and leaving a trail of glory everywhere, he wrote the secret of it in six words; "The love of Christ constraineth us."
The world knows what became of these furnace heats in great souls. The conquests of the church of Christ have been won and the history of nations molded by them. They witness to the truth so well stated by Lyman Beecher, "The power of the heart set on fire by love is the greatest created power in the universe."
A heart on fire with the love of Christ and love of sinners is sure to win trophies for the Master. Many a minister, a prayer meeting leader, a Sabbath school officer or teacher, a colporteur, or a lay Christian of no more than ordinary capacity, might enter a career of extraordinary usefulness by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. He would find it, indeed, to be "power from on high."
Many a professed disciple has never had his Pentecost. And that makes the exact difference between a cowardly, cursing denial, and a lionhearted apostleship, as it did with Peter.
