Onward
T. DeWitt Talmage
Exodus 14:15
"Masterly retreat" is a term often used in military circles, but in religion there is no such thing. It is either glorious advance or disgraceful and ignominious falling back. I address the more than three hundred members added today, and indeed all Christians, in the order given to the Israelites by the Lord through Moses: "Go forward."
It would be a strange thing if all our anxiety about men ceased the moment they were converted. You would almost doubt the sanity of the farmer who, having planted the corn and seen it just sprout above ground, should say: "My work is all done. I have no more anxiety for the field." No. There is work for the plough and the hoe, and there must be a careful keeping up of the fences, and there must be a frightening away of the birds that would pillage the field. And I say the entrance upon Christian life is only the implantation of grace in the heart. There is earnest, hard work yet to be done, and perhaps many years of anxiety before there shall be heard the glorious shout of "Harvest home." The beginning to be a Christian is only putting down the foundation; but after that there are years of hammering, polishing, carving, lifting, before the structure is completed. It takes five years to make a Christian character; it takes twenty years; it takes forty years; it takes seventy years, if a man shall live so long. In other words, a man dying after half a century of Christian experience feels that he has only learned the "A B C" of a glorious alphabet.
It is May now in the natural world. The May blossoms will soon scatter, but the pumps are busy in the trees, the apple tree and the pear tree and the plum tree, sending forth fountains of life that will after awhile hang out in luscious fruit. And so it is in the hearts of many of you. The May blossoms of your first experience will scatter and we are anxiously watching whether those spring blossoms will ...
T. DeWitt Talmage
Exodus 14:15
"Masterly retreat" is a term often used in military circles, but in religion there is no such thing. It is either glorious advance or disgraceful and ignominious falling back. I address the more than three hundred members added today, and indeed all Christians, in the order given to the Israelites by the Lord through Moses: "Go forward."
It would be a strange thing if all our anxiety about men ceased the moment they were converted. You would almost doubt the sanity of the farmer who, having planted the corn and seen it just sprout above ground, should say: "My work is all done. I have no more anxiety for the field." No. There is work for the plough and the hoe, and there must be a careful keeping up of the fences, and there must be a frightening away of the birds that would pillage the field. And I say the entrance upon Christian life is only the implantation of grace in the heart. There is earnest, hard work yet to be done, and perhaps many years of anxiety before there shall be heard the glorious shout of "Harvest home." The beginning to be a Christian is only putting down the foundation; but after that there are years of hammering, polishing, carving, lifting, before the structure is completed. It takes five years to make a Christian character; it takes twenty years; it takes forty years; it takes seventy years, if a man shall live so long. In other words, a man dying after half a century of Christian experience feels that he has only learned the "A B C" of a glorious alphabet.
It is May now in the natural world. The May blossoms will soon scatter, but the pumps are busy in the trees, the apple tree and the pear tree and the plum tree, sending forth fountains of life that will after awhile hang out in luscious fruit. And so it is in the hearts of many of you. The May blossoms of your first experience will scatter and we are anxiously watching whether those spring blossoms will ...
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