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that they send out. I have watched them fob hoiits
as they manipulate the clay, making it into the
finest imaginable Vessels. They take it in the rough
and grind it and Crush it and beat it ovet and over
again in all sorts of ways, until after awhile that
which at the beginning was a shapeless mass of dirt
comes out a beautiful article that is to beautify its
surroundings wherever it goes. And not one time
does the clay make a suggestion to the potter. And
not one time does the potter consult the clay. It
is a work of absolute sovereignty. The potter is
the absolute sovereign and master of every particle
of that clay, of its impurities as well as its puri
ties. He knows what he wants to fashion it into,
and without regard to anything he works upon it,
turning, twisting, beating it until he gets what he
wants. The only thing necessary is that that clay
shall remain in the hands of the potter.
So we are God’s workmanship. Upon us God
is to work. We are not to make suggestions to Him,
neither is He to consult with us. No man has a
right to ask God to make him what he wants to be.
No man has a right to ask God to call him into the
ministry, or into the work of business or profession
al life, or any other life. All we have to do is to
yield ourselves absolutely without a question to Him
as the Great Sovereign Potter and allow Him to
take us and work out of us that which His great
master mind desires that we shall be in this great
world of human beings.
REFRACTORY CLAY.
My brethren, one of the saddest sights in this
world is to see an incomplete job. I saw once in
Germany a castle which must have cost up into
the millions. It was carried up to perfection to a
certain point, and there the work stopped, and upon
it there has never been another lick struck. Os
course, now, it has been overgrown with vines,
weeds, grass, moss and the like, but it might have
been a beautiful place, and was beautiful up to the
point where the work stopped. However sad this
old ruin looked, it could not look half so sad as an
incomplete work of God upon a human heart. I
have seen men progress beautifully up to a certain
point. They have progressed splendidly. Every
part of their lives has received its due proportion
of attention. Their growth up to a certain point
has been symmetrical and beautiful. But all at
once there has been a cessation of development; a
letting up of the workmanship. The work of the
Potter is stopped, and the work is stopped short
of its final development, and there it is, the saddest
structure that my eyes ever looked upon —an in
complete human life; incomplete because it took
itself out of £he hand of the Potter.
I was once visiting Bella Cook, that marvelous
woman who, for a quarter of a century, has lain
flat of her back and preached the gospel to hundreds
and thousands of people; that woman who always
on Thanksgiving feeds up into the thousands of
hungry starving women and children, although she
has not a dollar of this world’s goods. That wo
man who does her work by faith in God, and God
answers her by working through friends to the sat
isfaction of her desires. That marvelous woman! I
sat by her bedside and talked with her of her ex
perience. She said to me, “I never shall forget
that day when it really dawned into my life that
God was not above coming into this humble home
in which you sit this morning, and taking up His
abode with me. But,” she said, “I had another
experience which was far more blessed than that.
It was that day when I really realized the fact
that God was not only not too big to come into this
humble cottage and live with me, but that He was
not too big to come into this poor weak and use
less frame and live in me, and that last thing ac
counts for whatever little I may have done in this
world. ’ ’
God is not too big to come in and live in His own,
my friends. Let that thought grip you. I have seen
the sun rise on the Atlantic ocean. I have seen his
bright rays as they rapidly spread over the great
sea, and then I have seen the same sun rise in the
morning and kiss the smallest, the tiniest dew-drop
upon a blade of grass in my own yard, and I have
said, and felt it as I have said it, “Our God is not
too small to fill a great ocean with His glory, and
blessed be His name, He is not too big to fill the
The Golden Age for i)eceinber 12, 1907.
tiniest, the ihost humble, life,” and the same God
would have us ilow take comfort as saints from
the fact that He, though great arid eternal, is not
too great to have His habitation in the heart and life
of the humblest man that walks the streets of our
city.
THE YIELDED LIFE.
My brethren, what does all this mean to us ? These
blessed and exalted privileges in Christi These
privileges into which we have been called as saints?
It means, in the words of the text, “Ye shall walk
worthy of the Vocation wherewith ye are called.”
But somebody says, “How can I? The call is
so great. It is so exalted, so big. How cab tj a
humble sinner, saved by grace, ever walk worthy
of the calling wherewith I have been called?”
I Want, if 1 can, to answer that inquiry, and I
will do it by suggesting just two things. First,
you can walk worthy of your calling by yielding to
Him; by yielding everything to the Divine Work
man; by yielding to Him as His property. I got a
letter the other day from a minister asking me to
give him some points in favor of the tithing sys
tem. I wrote him like this: “I believe in giving
a tenth, but I do not believe that any Christian is
to stop with giving his tenth. That was for the
Jews.” I believe in giving a tenth, and I believe that
the scriptural revelation to the Christian is that ho
shall give his all. What right have Ito give God a
tenth and say, “The rest is mine,” when all that I
have is His property? My brethren, give all to
God in unreserved, unrestricted dedication, and God
may give you nine-tenths and keep one-tenth, or He
may give you ten-tenths back. It may be a peculiar
condition and circumstance in which God will not
keep any of it, but will give it all back; perhaps He
will give it back multiplied by ten; or perhaps He
will give half of it back. I tell you, the only way
for God’s children to be really happy is by yielding
everything, all of His property, to Him.
Then again, yield to His workmanship. Let Him
have His way with us. Let Him take His property
and work on it and work through it, working with
us, in co-operation with us, in the development and
bringing forth out of this property which He has
that which will honor and glorify the Workman.
I was in the Jellico coal regions the other day,
and was told the history of that great territory.
I was told that at one time the whole of it could
be bought for less than fifty thousand dollars.
Today it can not be bought for millions on top of
millions. Why is it that there has come about such
a change? It has come about by the fact that he
who once possessed it did not know how or was not
able to work it. There came a firm, a corporation,
that could develop it. They knew how. They had
the means to back up the investment. They knew
what lay hidden down in the bowels of the earth.
My brethren, that is the difference between the
man who is hand in hand with the devil, the man
who is withholding from God His property, and
the man who has unreservedly, absolutely yielded
to God. God is a great Corporation with infinite
knowledge. He knows the secret depths of our
natures. He knows our lives, our capabilities, our
limitations, and He is absolutely the only one who
does know. He knows whether we can be develop
ed along this line or that, and He is the only One
that does know, and, thank God, He knows not only
that, but He knows how 'to develop us. He knows
just what kind of work is needed to bring out these
hidden things that will bless us and the world and
Him.
UNSUCCESSFUL CHRISTIANITY.
He wants that He shall .be yielded to as His
habitation so that He can come in. Many of us
have certain places in our lives into which God
has never been invited, and if so, I pray that He
may be invited there today. We have certain other
portions of our lives in which God has a standing
invitation. He has a standing invitation to come in
and dwell in the worshiping side of our lives, per
haps, but what about the other side —the property
side? Why do you not say to God, “Come in and
be the Master of my property corner. Be the mas
ter of my possessions, of the business in which I
am engaged”? We dare not do that, some of us.
God would take out that which we want to hold.
How about our secret sin corner? There are Secret
sins, in there that We dare not ask God to come in
and sit down with. We know that it would insult
Him. It would be equivalent, almost, to blasphemy
to ask God to come in and sit down in a corner of
our hearts that is full of filth and vileness and slh
and degradation, and we are not willing to put
that out, and hence God is not invited in, and hence
a great part of our lives is not worked on by God,
and hence there is great disappointment, lack of
joy and power and usefulness in our lives, and the
Lord is not pleased. Yield to God, everything, ab
solutely, without reserve, is the Way to walk as
beeoineth saints.
SUCCESSFUL CHRISTIA.NITY.
But some people say, What does this amount to?
Suppose I don’t, and suppose I do. Why, brother,
it amounts to everything for you and for me. It
is the only way we can ever reach the apex of our
possibilities. It is the only way that we will ever
know the will of God for our lives, and He who
never knows the will of God for His life never
reaches the apex of possibility. Oh, the thousands
of indifferent Christians—unsuccessful in business,
unsuccessful in religion, unhappy in home, unhappy
in life, all because we have not absolutely turned
over everything to God that He might reveal to us
His will for our lives.
It means everything, young man. Would you
be the most successful man ? Let God be your Mas
ter. Let God’s will be your will and that is al
ways victory.
It means everything for those about us. The
only way the church will ever tremendously and
powerfully impress men is for us to live lives
wholly yielded unto God. Do not be afraid to trust
Him.
I have been associated in Knoxville in our meet
ing recently with Tom Sexton, the blacksmith evan
gelist who hardly knows one word of correct Eng
lish. He is more apt to use the improper word
than the proper one. But, in spite of his ignorance,
he is a big-hearted, big-souled man, who loves God
with.all his heart, and loves his fellow man as he
loves himself. As completely is this true of him
as any other man that I ever saw. He was tell
ing me the other day how he got into the work of
an evangelist. He said that God kept calling him
while he was at work on his anvil, saying, “I want
you for my business,” but he never dreamed that
God wanted him to preach, so he kept saying, “Well,
what is your business if it is not working faith
fully and honestly at the anvil?” He said that God
would say, “I want to advance you, give you a
higher degree, lift you up a bit higher in • your
opportunities for doing good.” He said that he
could never find out what God wanted, but that He
kept calling. Every stroke of his hammer he felt
it and he was afraid that if he gave up his anvil
God would give him something to do that he
could not do so well. Finally he got down on his
knees in his shop and said, “Oh, God, you seem
to keep a-callin’ and a-wantin’ me. Now, you can
have me and do with me anything you want to.”
In a few minutes a man stopped in his shop and
said, “Tom, I want you to come out here and
preach. We have got a great crowd of people, but
no preacher.” He said, “But I can’t preach, man.
I haven’t got anything to preach about.” “Well,”
answered the man, “you are the only one that I
know to go to. ’ ’ Tom then remembered what he had
said to God, and so he said, “Well, here I am.
Take me and use me in any way that you will.”
He said that he took it as an expression of provi
dence, and that he is still at it to the best of his
ability.
And how God has honored that ignorant life, a
man who in his community stands high before his
fellow men for consecration, piety and love for
Christ. And oh, my brethren, has he suffered? He
has just ten times as much of this world’s goods
as when he went into the work. Do not be afraid
to trust God. You are His property. Let Him
have that which He owns. Let God have day by
day that which He purchased. He has paid the
most precious price that was ever paid on this
earth, the blood of His own precious Son. Let God
have that which He has bought and paid for.
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