Live Coal: Past Defects

“O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God:

O our God, what shall we say after this?“

Ezra 9:6, 10

To deliver sermons on each returning Sabbath; to administer the Lord’s Supper stately; to pay an occasional visit to those who request it; to attend religious meetings;– this, we fear, sums up the ministerial life of multitudes who are, by profession, overseers of the flock of Christ. An incumbency of thirty, forty, or fifty years, often yields no more than this. So many sermons, so many visits, so many meetings of various kinds– these are all the pastoral annals, the parish records, the ALL of a lifetime’s ministry to many! Of SOULS that have been saved, such a record could make no mention. Multitudes have perished under such a ministry; the judgment only will disclose whether so much as one has been saved.

• There might be learning, but there was no “tongue of the learned to speak a word in season to him that is weary.”¹

• There might be wisdom, but it was certainly not the wisdom that “winneth souls.”²

• There might even be the sound of the gospel, but it seemed to contain no glad tidings at all; it was not sounded forth from warm lips into startled ears as the message of eternal life– “the glorious gospel of the the blessed God.”³

Men lived, and it was never asked of them by their minister whether they were “born again!”⁴ Men sickened, sent for the minister and received a prayer upon their death-beds as their passport into heaven. Men died, and were buried where all their fathers had been laid; there was a prayer at their funeral, and decent respects paid to their remains; but their souls went up to the judgment-seat unthought of, uncared for; no man, not even the minister who had vowed to watch for them, having said to them, Are you ready? Or warned them to “flee from the wrath to come.”⁵

Are our efforts Fruitless?

Is not this description too true of many a district and many a minister in our land? We do not speak in anger; we do not speak in scorn: we ask the question solemnly and earnestly. It needs an answer. If ever there was a time when there should be “great searchings of heart,”⁶ and frank acknowledgment of unfaithfulness, it is now when God is visiting us– visiting us both in judgment and mercy. We speak in brotherly-kindness; surely the answer should not be of wrath and bitterness, and if this description be true, what sin there must be in ministers and people! How great must be the spiritual desolation that prevails! Surely there is something in such a case grievously wrong; something which calls for solemn self-examination in every minister; something which requires deep repentance.

Fields plowed and sown, yet yielding no fruit! Machinery constantly in motion, yet all without one particle of produce! Nets cast into the sea, and spread wide, yet no fishes inclosed! All this for years– for a lifetime! How strange! Yet it is true. There is neither fancy nor exaggeration in the matter.

Do we rely on Formality?

Question some ministers; and what account can they give? They can tell you of sermons preached, but of sermons blest they can say nothing. They can speak of discourses that were admired and praised, but of discourses that have been made effectual by the Holy Spirit, they can not speak. They can tell you how many have been baptized, how many communicants admitted; but of souls awakened, converted, ripening in grave, they can give no account.

They can enumerate the sacraments they have dispensed; but as to whether any of them have been “times of refreshing,”⁷ of times of awakening, they can not say. They can tell you what and how many cases of discipline have passed through their hands; but whether any of these have issued in godly sorrow for sin, whether the professed penitents, who were absolved by them, gave evidence of being “washed… sanctified… justified,”⁸ they can give no information; they never thought of such an issue!

They can tell you what is the attendance at achool, and waht are the abilities of the teacher; but how many of these precious little ones, whom they have vowed to feed, are seeking the Lord, they know not; or whether their teacher be a man of prayer and piety, they can not say. They can tell you the population of their parish, or the number of their congregation, or the temporal condition of thier flocks; but as to their spiritual state, how many are “followers of God as dear children,”⁹ they can not pretend to say.

Perhaps they would deem it rashness and presumption, if not fanaticism, to inquire. And yet they have sworn, before men and angels, to watch for their souls “as they that must give account!”¹⁰ But oh, of what use are sermons, sacraments, schools, if souls are left to perish; if living religion be lost sight of; if the Holy Spirit be not sought; if men are left to grow up and die unpitied, unprayed for, unwarned!

Of eternity, are we practically Faithless?

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 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.

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 hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man, what a soul in hell must suffer forever. Lord, give us “bowels of mercies!” ¹¹

What a mystery? The soul and eternity of one man depends upon the voice of another!

Selected From words to winners of souls by dr. horatius bonar,1808-1889

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Disclaimer: Recommending/republishing this article does not imply an agreement with all the content, information, or advice authored by Horatius Bonar. Please “chew the meat and spit out the bones.”

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1. Isaiah 50:4 ↩︎
2. Proverb 11:30 ↩︎
3. 1 Timothy 1:11 ↩︎
4. John 3:3 ↩︎
5. Luke 3:7 ↩︎
6. Judges 5:16 ↩︎
7. Acts 3:19 ↩︎
8. 1 Corinthians 6:11 ↩︎
9. Ephesians 5:1 ↩︎
10. Hebrews 13:17 ↩︎
11. Colossians 3:12 ↩︎