e doors
you may become princes of the Lord God Almighty. You remember what
excitement there was in this country, years ago, when the Prince of
Wales came here--how the people rushed out by hundreds of thousands to
see him. Why? Because they expected that some day he would sit upon
the throne of England. But what was all that honor compared with the
honor to which God calls you--to be sons and daughters of the Lord
Almighty; yea, to be queens and kings unto God? "They shall reign with
Him forever and forever."

But, my friends, you need to be aggressive Christians, and not like
those persons who spend their lives in hugging their Christian graces
and wondering why they do not make any progress. How much robustness
of health would a man have if he hid himself in a dark closet? A great
deal of the piety of the day is too exclusive. It hides itself. It
needs more fresh air, more out-door exercise. There are many
Christians who are giving their entire life to self-examination. They
are feeling their pulses to see what is the condition of their
spiritual health. How long would a man have robust physical health if
he kept all the days and weeks and months and years of his life
feeling his pulse instead of going out into active, earnest, every-day
work?

I was once amid the wonderful, bewitching cactus growths of North
Carolina. I never was more bewildered with the beauty of flowers, and
yet when I would take up one of these cactuses and pull the leaves
apart, the beauty was all gone. You could hardly tell that it had ever
been a flower. And there are a great many Christian people in this day
just pulling apart their Christian experiences to see what there is in
them, and there is nothing left in them. This style of
self-examination is a damage instead of an advantage to their
Christian character. I remember when I was a boy I used to have a
small piece in the garden that I called my own, and I planted corn
there, and every few days I would pull it up to see how fast it was
growing. Now, there are a great many Christian people in this day
whose self-examination merely amounts to the pulling up of that which
they only yesterday or the day before planted.

O my friends! if you want to have a stalwart Christian character,
plant it right out of doors in the great field of Christian
usefulness, and though storms may come upon it, and though the hot sun
of trial may try to consume it, it will thrive until it becomes a
great tree