About that minister:  If he sunk under such a common matter as having certain ones in a church disaffected with him, it shows a weak mind, do you say?  He should have expected trials, and disappointments, and coldness, and disaffection.  “The servant is not greater than his lord.”  All true; he had preached that doctrine to himself for twenty years, and earnestly strove to live by it.  I do not say that he sunk under the humiliation; only, don’t you remember the fable of the last straw that broke the camel’s back?  What I do say is, that he had borne hundreds and thousands of “straws.”  Also, remember it was the Lord who called him from work.  Assuredly he did not call himself.  I think the master said:  “Let him come; it is enough; and we need him here.”

Then what about the unfinished work that he left?  What about the midnight prayer over that sermon, the wrestling for a sign of fruit?  Was it in vain?  There is fruit that you and I do not see, oftentimes.  Do you remember the young man, Dwight Brower, and the Sabbath afternoon communion that he had with himself?  Not with himself alone; the world, the flesh, and the devil were in full strength before him; and not them only—­the angel of the covenant was there beside him.  There was a conflict—­the world and the devil were vanquished.  Dwight Brower’s name was on the church-roll, but his heart had been with the world.  He came over that day, distinctly, firmly, strongly, to the Lord’s side.  He weighed the solemn words, “Take heed what ye do; let the fear of the Lord be upon you.”  They sounded to him as they never had before.  He resolved then and there that they should mean to him what they never had before, that they should mean to him what they evidently did to his pastor.

That was twenty years ago.  There were modern churches even then.  Dwight Brower has been a power in the land since then.  Not one, but scores—­aye, hundreds—­aye, thousands of souls has the Lord given him as seals to his ministry; and he is working now.  Once I visited where he preached.  I heard a lady say to him, “That was a wonderful sermon that you gave us to-day.  To begin with, it is a wonderful text.  I never before realized that the Lord was actually watching all our ways.”

He turned toward her with a smile, and said:  “It was Dr. Selmser who preached to-day.  He has been gone twenty years, and he is preaching yet.”

“And I heard a voice saying unto me, Write Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord:  Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.”

Does it seem to you a pity that he could not have known—­could not have had one glimpse of the fruit of his work?  How do you know what view of waving harvests being garnered in the Lord calls him to look down upon from the heights of Pisgah?  “When I awake with thy likeness I shall be satisfied.”  Be sure the Lord has satisfied him.