Page:Heralds of God.djvu/203

THE PREACHER'S INNER LIFE eyes from tears, their feet from falling, and their souls from death, the lonely wrestling with God at Peniel without which no blessing comes?

"We are seeking," cried Richard Baxter to his brother preachers, "to uphold the world, to save it from the curse of God, to perfect the creation, to attain the ends of Christ's redemption. And are these works to be done with a careless mind or a lazy mind or a lazy hand? O see that this work be done with all your might! Study hard, for the well is deep." It is indeed intolerable to be slack or lethargic in the preparation of a message upon which issues of such incalculable moment hang* What is at stake in our work is the lives of men. Every sermon is to be preached in the knowledge that for someone present it may be now the fulness of the time and the day of salvation- "I take you to record this day," exclaimed Paul, "that I am pure from the blood of all men." Dare we look such words in the face? There was a day when Ezekiel, caught up in the Spirit, heard a voice from heaven crying, "If the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from amongst them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand." And as he pondered the vision, suddenly with terrific dramatic force the voice went on: "So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel." Age after age, this has been the great prophetic motive. Always the man of God has been the watchman on the 197