Love for the Erring
547
many unpleasant pictures hanging in memory’s halls? Often have you
needed the forgiveness of Jesus. You have been constantly dependent
upon His compassion and love. Yet have you not failed to manifest
toward others the spirit which Christ has exercised toward you? Have
you felt a burden for the one whom you saw venturing into forbidden
paths? Have you kindly admonished him? Have you wept for him and
prayed with him and for him? Have you shown by words of tenderness
and kindly acts that you love him and desire to save him? As you have
associated with those who were faltering and staggering under the load
[611]
of their own infirmities of disposition and faulty habits, have you left
them to fight the battles alone when you might have given them help?
Have you not passed these sorely tempted ones by on the other side
while the world has stood ready to give them sympathy and to allure
them into Satan’s nets? Have you not, like Cain, been ready to say:
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” How must the great Head of the church
regard the work of your life? How does He to whom every soul is
precious, as the purchase of His blood, look upon your indifference
to those who stray from the right path? Are you not afraid that He
will leave you just as you leave them? Be sure that He who is the true
Watchman of the Lord’s house has marked every neglect.
Have not Christ and His love been shut out from your life until a
mechanical form has taken the place of heart service? Where is the
kindling of soul you once felt at the mention of the name of Jesus? In
the freshness of your early dedication, how fervent was your love for
souls! how earnestly you sought to represent to them the Saviour’s
love! The absence of that love has made you cold, critical, exacting.
Seek to win it back, and then labor to bring souls to Christ. If you
refuse to do this, others who have had less light and experience and
fewer opportunities will come up and take your place and do that which
you have neglected; for the work must be done to save the tempted,
the tried, the perishing. Christ offers the service to His church; who
will accept it?
God has not been unmindful of the good deeds, the self-denying
acts, of the church in the past. All are registered on high. But these are
not enough. These will not save the church when she ceases to fulfill
her mission. Unless the cruel neglect and indifference manifested
in the past shall cease, the church, instead of going from strength
to strength, will continue to degenerate into weakness and formality.