, in which the fowls of heaven may have their habitation. I
have no patience with these flower-pot Christians. They keep
themselves under shelter, and all their Christian experience in a
small, exclusive circle, when they ought to plant it in the great
garden of the Lord, so that the whole atmosphere could be aromatic
with their Christian usefulness. What we want in the Church of God is
more brawn of piety.

The century plant is wonderfully suggestive and wonderfully beautiful,
but I never look at it without thinking of its parsimony. It lets
whole generations go by before it puts forth one blossom; so I have
really more heartfelt admiration when I see the dewy tears in the blue
eyes of the violets, for they come every spring. My Christian friends,
time is going by so rapidly that we can not afford to be idle.

A recent statistician says that human life now has an average of only
thirty-two years. From these thirty-two years you must subtract all
the time you take for sleep and the taking of food and recreation;
that will leave you about sixteen years. From those sixteen years you
must subtract all the time that you are necessarily engaged in the
earning of a livelihood; that will leave you about eight years. From
those eight years you must take all the days and weeks and months--all
the length of time that is passed in childhood and sickness, leaving
you about one year in which to work for God. Oh, my soul, wake up!
How darest thou sleep in harvest-time and with so few hours in which
to reap? So that I state it as a simple fact that all the time that
the vast majority of you will have for the exclusive service of God
will be less than one year!

"But," says some man, "I liberally support the Gospel, and the church
is open and the Gospel is preached: all the spiritual advantages are
spread before men, and if they want to be saved, let them come to be
saved; I have discharged all my responsibility." Ah! is that the
Master's spirit? Is there not an old Book somewhere that commands us
to go out into the highways and the hedges and compel the people to
come in? What would have become of you and me if Christ had not come
down off the hills of heaven, and if He had not come through the door
of the Bethlehem caravansary, and if He had not with the crushed hand
of the crucifixion knocked at the iron gate of the sepulcher of our
spiritual death, crying, "Lazarus, come forth"? Oh, my Christian
friends, this is no time for iner