The water and wedges are left to do their work.  The damp wood swells.  The particles must have more room as they swell.  The granite heart of rock can’t stand against this new pressure.  It takes longer than with iron wedges and sledge, but after a while the rock yields and lies split wide-open.  The water works on the wood, and that in turn on the stone.  The iron wedges sometimes fail, but the wood and water never fail.

It seems to be a part of our make-up to make plans, and to count on the plans.  And planning does much.  We don’t want to plan less, necessarily, but to learn to depend more in our planning on the soft, noiseless, but resistless power of the Holy Spirit.

“The day is long, and the day is hard; We are tired of the march and of keeping guard; Tired of the sense of a fight to be won, Of days to live through, and of work to be done; Tired of ourselves and of being alone:  Yet all the while, did we only see, We walk in the Lord’s own company. We fight, but ’tis He who nerves our arm; He turns the arrows that else might harm, And out of the storm He brings a calm; And the work that we count so hard to do, He makes it easy, for He works, too:  And the days that seem long to live are His—­ bit of His bright eternities—­and close to our need
   His helping is."[26]

The Trinity of Service.

Now, we want to mark keenly that full power depends upon three things.  There is a trinity of service, a human-divine trinity.  The full results can come only through its working.  The ideal winner of men needs to believe thoroughly in this trinity.

First of all is the message.  There needs to be a clear understanding of the Gospel.  That is the winner’s message.  That is the direct thing he uses in approaching and laying siege to some man’s heart.  It is a simple message, but very often it is grasped only partly by those who tell it.

That message needs to be understood clearly and fully by the man who would have the greatest power in winning men.  From its first plain teaching about sin, on to the terrible results that sin left to itself works out; through the blessed teaching of love as shown most in the sacrifice for sin which Jesus made on the cross; the need of a clean cutting with sin, and clear-out surrender to Jesus as Saviour and Master; the work of the Holy Spirit in one’s heart; and then the climax of service out among men—­this simple message needs to be grasped fully and clearly.  This is the first great essential hi the trinity of service.

There is a second thing, yet more important, that must go with this first.  And that is a man who embodies the message in himself.  It isn’t enough to know the story of the Gospel, nor to tell it.  It must be lived.  That is the best telling of it.  The man must be a living illustration of the truth he is telling.  He may be conscious of not illustrating it as he should.  The earnest man is never aware that he is as good an illustration of it as he is.  He may think himself a poor illustration.  He is quite apt to.  But he is yet more apt not to be thinking of that side as he attempts to win men.  He will be all taken up with Jesus, and with getting men to know Him.