Page 26 - word to PDF

effort as if he were determined to reap the whole field himself. The guide ordered him to join
this laborer, and seizing a sickle, showed

him how to proceed. Again, the guide led him to a hill. He surveyed the vast plain beneath
him, and, wondering, asked how long it would take to reap such a field with so few
labourers? "Before winter the last sickle must be thrust in," replied his guide. "Proceed
with all your might. The Lord of the harvest will send more reapers soon."

Wearied with his labor, Myconius rested for a little. Again the crucified One was at his side,
wasted and marred in form. The guide laid his hand on Myconius, saying: "You must be
conformed to Him." With these words the dreamer awoke. But he awoke to a life of zeal and
love. He found the Saviour for his own soul, and he went forth to preach of Him to others. He
took his place by the side of that noble reaper, Martin Luther. He was stimulated by his
example, and toiled with him in the vast field till laborers arose on every side and the
harvest was reaped before the winter came. The lesson to us is, thrust in your sickles. The
fields are white, and they are wide in compass; the laborers are few, but there are
some devoted ones toiling there already. In other years we have seen Whitefield and Hill
putting forth their enormous efforts, as if they would reap the whole field alone. Let us join
ourselves to such men, and the Lord of the harvest will not leave us to toil alone.

"When do you intend to stop?" was the question once put by a friend to Rowland Hill. "Not
till we have carried all before us," was the prompt reply. Such is our answer too. The fields
are vast, the grain whitens, the harvest waves; and through grace we shall go forth with our
sickles, never to rest till we shall lie down where the Lamb himself shall lead us, by the living
fountains of waters, where God shall wipe off the sweat of toil from our weary foreheads and
dry up all the tears of earth from our weeping eyes. Some of us are young and fresh; many
days may yet be, in the providence of God, before us. These must be days of strenuous,
ceaseless, persevering, and, if God bless us, successful toil. We shall labor till we are worn
out and laid to rest.

Many of our readers have seen, we doubt not, a small volume of Vincent, the non-conformist
minister, respecting the great plague and fire in London . Its title is "God's Terrible Voice
in the City." In it there is a description of the manner in which the faithful ministers who
remained amid the danger discharged their solemn duties to the dying inhabitants,

and of the manner in which the terror-stricken multitudes hung with breathless eagerness
upon their lips, to drink in salvation ere the dreaded pestilence had swept them away to the
tomb. Churches were flung open, but the pulpits were silent, for there was none to
occupy them; the hirelings had fled. Then did God's faithful band of persecuted ones come
forth from their hiding-places to fill the forsaken pulpits. Then did they stand up in the midst
of the dying and the dead, to proclaim eternal life to men who were expecting death before
the morrow. They preached in season and out of season. Weekday or Sunday was the same
to them. The hour might be canonical or uncanonical, it mattered not; they did not stand
upon nice points of ecclesiastical regularity or irregularity; they lifted up their voices