The Faithful Steward eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 88 pages of information about The Faithful Steward.

The Faithful Steward eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 88 pages of information about The Faithful Steward.
movements of the times.  All these seem to declare unequivocally that the special work of the church in this age is benevolence—­to toil, to endure privations, to make sacrifices of ease and of property to evangelize the nations.  God has opened channels flowing past almost every man’s door, ready to convey his donations to distant regions of the globe, carrying light and salvation wherever they go.  The appalling condition of the heathen in bygone ages has been as great and pitiable as now; but never have there been so many available opportunities to reach them.  These opportunities impose new obligations.

We have seen in a preceding part of this essay, that our bounties should be in a compound proportion to calls and ability.  This is a principle which the present generation would do well to consider; letting it penetrate the very heart’s core.  To meet such emergencies as are now transpiring on the moral stage, perhaps, was one reason why Christ designated no specific ratio of income for charity.  He foresaw there would be crises when no proportion would be adequate, and when the christian heart would yearn to give more than his income, even all his living.  And may not the present be such a crisis?

Indeed, the multiplied opportunities afforded us of invading the dominions of the prince of darkness plainly intimate that the present is a crisis demanding the most generous sacrifices for God.  The sigh of every breeze that sweeps over the blood-stained regions of idolatry declares it.  The cries and outstretched arms of millions sinking into the everlasting gulf declare it.  Then let it be laid up in the mind as a settled truth, that it is our peculiar ministry to break the chains of ignorance and superstition, to demolish the habitations of cruelty, to crush the thrones of intellectual and moral enthralment, to overthrow the temples of idolatry, and bring up man from his long degradation to reunion with God through the blood of the Lamb.  There has probably been no age since the foundation of the world, which has demanded so great contributions as this, and, perhaps, no subsequent age will, till the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.  At least in a few generations we trust the Gospel light shall illumine every shore.  Then there will be no such urgent calls on our charities; certainly none pressing with such undying interests.  This, therefore, is emphatically the age of giving; for the bulk of the church can aid effectually in bringing about the happy consummation of millennial glory in no other way.  Would that Christians of the present generation could be induced to look at this truth in its intense application to themselves individually.  Would that its accents could be made to ring over every hill top, and echo through every valley in Christendom; startling the soldiers of the cross to deeds of love, as the voice of Peter the hermit once bristled with arms the plains of Europe to shed the blood of infidels.

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The Faithful Steward from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.