service, will be
the outcome of a real surrender of ourselves to Him in love and
obedience.

I cannot imagine a man who, in any deep sense, has realised his
obligations to that Saviour, and in any real sense has made the great
act of self-renunciation, and crowned Christ as his Lord, living for the
rest of his life, as so many professing Christians do, dumb and idle, in
so far as work for the Master is concerned. It seems to me that, among
the many wants of this generation of professing Christians, there is
none that is more needed than that a wave of new consecration should
pass over the Church. If men who call themselves Christians lived more
in habitual contact with the facts of their redeeming Saviour's
sacrifice for them, there would be no need to lament the fewness of the
labourers, as measured against the overwhelming multitude of the fields
that are white to harvest. If once that flood of a new sense of Christ's
gift, and a consequent new completeness of our returned gifts to Him,
flowed over the churches, then all the little empty ravines would be
filled with a flashing tide. Not a shuttle moves, not a spindle
revolves, until the strong impulse born of fire rushes in; and then, all
is activity. It is no use to flog, flog, flog, at idle Christians, and
try to make them work. There is only one thing that will set them to
work, and that is that they shall live nearer their Master, and find out
more of what they owe to Him; and so render themselves up to be His
instruments for any purpose for which He may choose to use them.

This surrender of ourselves for direct Christian service is the only
solution of the problem of how to win the world for Jesus Christ.
Professionals cannot do it. Men of my class cannot do it. We are clogged
very largely by the fact that, being necessarily dependent on our
congregations for a living, we cannot, with as clear an emphasis as you
can, go to people and say, 'We seek not yours, but you.' I have nothing
to say about the present ecclesiastical arrangements of modern Christian
communities. That would take me altogether from my present purposes, but
I want to lay this upon your consciences, dear brethren, that you who
have other means of living than proclaiming Christ's name have an
advantage, which it is at your peril that you fling away. As long as the
Christian Church thought that an ordained priest was a man who could do
things that laymen could not do, the limitation of Christian