on, it ought to be laying
hold with all its might, and tugging away to lift up this sunken wreck
of a world.

It is a most shameful fact that much of the business of the Church and
of the world must be done by those comparatively invalid. Richard
Baxter, by reason of his diseases, all his days sitting in the door of
the tomb, yet writing more than a hundred volumes, and sending out an
influence for God that will endure as long as the "Saints' Everlasting
Rest." Edward Payson, never knowing a well day, yet how he preached,
and how he wrote, helping thousands of dying souls like himself to
swim in a sea of glory! And Robert M'Cheyne, a walking skeleton, yet
you know what he did in Dundee, and how he shook Scotland with zeal
for God. Philip Doddridge, advised by his friends, because of his
illness, not to enter the ministry, yet you know what he did for the
"rise and progress of religion" in the Church and in the world.

Wilberforce was told by his doctors that he could not live a
fortnight, yet at that very time entering upon philanthropic
enterprises that demanded the greatest endurance and persistence.
Robert Hall, suffering excruciations, so that often in his pulpit
while preaching he would stop and lie down on a sofa, then getting up
again to preach about heaven until the glories of the celestial city
dropped on the multitude, doing more work, perhaps, than almost any
well man in his day.

Oh, how often it is that men with great physical endurance are not as
great in moral and spiritual stature! While there are achievements for
those who are bent all their days with sickness--achievements of
patience, achievements of Christian endurance--I call upon men of
health to-day, men of muscle, men of nerve, men of physical power, to
devote themselves to the Lord. Giants in body, you ought to be giants
in soul.

II. Behold also, in the story of my text, illustration of the fact of
the damage that strength can do if it be misguided. It seems to me
that this man spent a great deal of his time in doing evil--this
Samson of my text. To pay a bet which he had lost by guessing of his
riddle he robs and kills thirty people. He was not only gigantic in
strength, but gigantic in mischief, and a type of those men in all
ages of the world who, powerful in body or mind, or any faculty of
social position or wealth, have used their strength for iniquitous
purposes.

It is not the small, weak men of the day who do the damage. These
s