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rest satisfied without it. Their contentedness  is the result, not of heart- submission to God,
               but in reality of heart-indifference  to the salvation of their own souls. Exactly so it is with us
               as ministers:  when we can rest satisfied with using the means for saving souls without seeing
               them really saved, or we ourselves being broken-hearted  by it, and at the same time quietly
               talk of leaving the event to God's disposal, we make use of a truth to cover and excuse a
               falsehood; for our ability to leave the matter thus is not, as we imagine, the result of heart-
               submission  to God, but of heart- indifference  to the salvation  of the souls we deal with. No,
               truly, if the heart is really set on such an end, it must gain that end or break in losing it."



               He that saved our souls has taught us to weep over the unsaved. Lord, let that mind be in us
               that was in Thee! Give us thy tears to weep; for, Lord, our  hearts  are  hard  toward  our
               fellows.  We  can  see  thousands  perish around  us,  and  our  sleep  never  be disturbed;  no
               vision  of their  awful doom ever scaring us, no cry from their lost souls ever turning our
               peace into bitterness.



               It is told of Archbishop Usher that, at one period of his life, he used on Saturday  afternoon
               to  go  alone  to  a  river-side,  and  there  sorrowfully recount his sins, and confess and
               bewail them to the Lord with floods of tears. Is this not fitting to reprove many, many of us?
               And even where we lament our sins, how many of us go apart oftentimes  to weep over lost
               souls, to cry to the Lord for them, to implore, to beseech, to agonize with him in their behalf?
               Where is the water-side beside which our eyes have poured out streams in our intense
               compassion for the perishing?



               Do we believe there is an everlasting hell!—an everlasting hell for every Christless soul? And
               yet we are languid, formal, easy in dealing with and for the multitudes that are near the gate
               of that tremendous furnace of wrath! Our families, our schools, our congregations, not to
               speak of our cities at large, our land, our world, might well send us daily to our knees; for the
               loss of even one soul is terrible beyond conception. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has
               entered the heart of man, what a soul in hell must suffer forever. Lord, give us bowels of
               mercies! "What a mystery! The soul and eternity of one man depends upon the voice of
               another!"








               CHAPTER 4





               Ministerial Confession
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