HERALDS OF GOD
the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them, that Thou shouldst say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me." It is out of such a mood of desperate defeat and bankruptcy that there rises, like a bright and morning star, the discovery of prayer's unsearchable riches, its power to steady the staggering soul, to replenish the lost virtue and the nervous energy which the toil of the passion for souls has drained away. Day after day, year after year, you will be expending yourselves, giving out to others. You simply cannot face the strain, except on one condition: you must simultaneously be taking in from God.
Once there was lived upon this earth a life of terrible self-giving, yet of uttermost serenity. Do not we, who grow so hectic often and strained and tired and overburdened, long to share the secret of Christ's peace? It was the secret known to the mountain-tops where He outwatched the stars, to the olive trees in the garden which heard His voice at midnight, to the winds and waves that were His shrine while He communed with God. How shall any man be strong to do Christ's work to-day, with the purposefulness and passion and mastery of life that shine on every page of the Gospels, if he neglects Christ's hidden secret? Chalmers was indeed going to the root of the matter when he declared that most failures in the ministry were due, not to lack of visiting or of study or of organizational activity, but to lack of prayer.
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