towards the spread of this gospel? should we not pray more agonizingly? and would there not be found many of us who would be ready to labour more indefatigably. If the minister of Christ is weak, rest assured it is because the church itself is not strong. The ministry is only the index of the church. If we often fail in our pulpits, because they are not filled with fervent men, we may reply to you, if the pews were fervent, the pulpit would catch the flame. I am not speaking of water; I know that water runs down hill; but I am now speaking of fire, and fire ascends. Let the fire begin with you, be in earnest, supplicating, striving, and wrestling with God in prayer, and the fire shall ascend to the pulpit, and we too, shall become as earnest as yourselves. Let us use no mutual recriminations. The whole church is infected at this present moment; it is all weak. There are very few and noble exceptions, only a few who are strong in prayer, who are mighty in serving their God. And hence it is that Satan still retains his throne, still darkness broods over the nations, and still men are not saved. May God strengthen us, or we do not know what shall become of the world.
13. Again, weak hands and feeble knees very much dishonour Christ. I wish to say nothing to grieve the heart of any weak believer here present this morning, but still we must speak the truth. Lack of faith and weakness in prayer dishonour Christ. Suppose you have a friend, and you say to him, “My friend, I have such confidence in you, that I will trust you with the title deeds of my estate, and with all I have. No, more; I will trust you with my health, I will trust you with my life. Do what you will with me; I have such faith in your goodness and your wisdom that I am sure you will not be unkind, and will not err. I trust you.” There is something honourable in faith to the object in whom it is reposed. Now, if you are able, with the strong hand of faith, to bring all you have and give it entirely to God, and say, “There, Lord, I surrender all to you; do with me as you will, and with my possessions too; take what you will away; give me what you please, or withhold what you choose; I leave everything in your hand; I can trust you entirely; I know you will make no mistake, I know you will not treat me harshly; I leave it all to you; without word, or thought, or wish, I surrender all.” If you can do this, then Christ is glorified; but if your hand is weak, and you are hiding away some choice thing that you cannot give up to him, if you do not completely surrender but keep back something from him, then that weak hand brings dishonour upon God. So also does the feeble knee. Someone has given you a promise, that if you are in need and go to him, he will give you whatever you want. You go up to his door, you knock timidly; and when he comes to meet you, you rush into the street and hide yourself, for you are ashamed that he should see you. Driven by necessity, however, you knock again; at last he comes and you stand trembling before him. “Well,” he says, “what do you want?” “You have given me a promise, sir, that when I am in need you will do so-and-so for me, and I really do not believe it: I have no confidence in you, and I do not like to ask.” There would be nothing honourable in that to any man. How far different was the example of Alexander’s courtier. The king said to him, “I will give to you whatever you request”; and the man asked for such a gift that it almost emptied Alexander’s coffers. “Indeed,” said the monarch, “it was a great thing for him to ask, but it is only a little thing for Alexander to give. I like the man’s confidence in me, in using my word to its fullest extent.” Now when the believer goes to his closet and bows there with his feeble knee, and asks God to bless him and does not half believe that he will, he dishonours God. But, when a man goes up to his room, saying in his heart, “There is something that I need, and I am going to get it.” and he falls on his knees, and cries, “Lord, you know all things: you know that such a thing is necessary for me; there is your promise; ‘Do as you have said,’ Lord; I know you will give it to me.” And when he rises from his knees, and goes down and says to his friend, “The blessing will come; I have asked for it; I have prayed the prayer of faith, and God will hear me”; why, such a man honours God. I would remind you again of a great proof of all this. Look at Mr. Muller at Ashleydown near Bristol. Could he have built that house for orphans if he had a weak hand and a feeble knee? No. But he had a strong hand; he meant to serve his God by feeding and clothing orphans. On the other hand he had a strong knee. “Lord,” he said, “I will do this enterprise — give me the means to do it.” And he went to God, and did not doubt that he would do it. And, lo! thousands have rolled into his treasury, and he has never known lack; and now, seven hundred children live under his care, and are fed and clothed to the honour of God. Let us also seek to have strong hands and mighty knees, and so shall we honour God. If we do not build an orphan house to his name, yet shall we raise our Ebenezer, and leave some trophy to the honour of his grace. These are some reasons why we should attend to our hands and knees.
14. III. And, now, the last point was this: THERE ARE CERTAIN CAUSES OF WEAK HANDS AND FEEBLE KNEES, and in mentioning them, I shall endeavour to correct them.
15. Some Christians have weak hands and feeble knees because they are only infants. They are young Christians, they have not been converted long. God’s family is like every other family; we do not expect the newly born convert to run alone at first. Perhaps, it will be months, maybe sometimes years, before he will be able to feel his feet. We thank God that there is a very comforting promise for those who are babes in Christ, and cannot run alone: — “He shall carry the lambs in his bosom.” “I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms,” says God, by the prophet Hosea. So you, just born to God, must not despair because you cannot as yet play the man with the promise; if you cannot now wrestle with the angel, remember, God does not require wrestling from infants. He will not overdrive his lambs. He does not expect long marches from feeble feet. Since you are only weak, you shall have lighter duties. Since you are at present only tender, and young, you shall not have heavy labours to perform. But seek to grow in grace. Feed upon the unadulterated milk of the Word of God, and pray that he would bring you up from babes into young men, and born young men into perfect men in Christ Jesus.
16. However, a more frequent cause of weak hands and feeble knees, is starvation, absolute starvation. Is there such a thing known in England as starvation? Yes, there is of a spiritual kind. There are many houses which are dedicated to the worship of God, that certainly never were dedicated to the profit of man. There are places into which a Christian might enter all the year around without ever receiving any understanding of the doctrines of God at all. Many a minister, in these days of fine language, and of polished rounded periods, resembles Nero, who when the city of Rome was starving, sent his galleys to Alexandria to bring back sand for the wrestlers, but not grain for hungry mouths. We have heard many a discourse that has been very fine indeed, as a moral essay, but it has had no food in it for the poor hungry mouths of God’s people. One has a very low opinion of the present race of professing Christians when you see their frequent changes. I know men in this day who hear an Arminian with the greatest possible delight — “Such a dear, good, earnest man!” And if a Calvinist preaches the next Sunday, who contradicts every word the other man said — “Oh he is such a precious creature!” because he happens to have a great flow of words. And then comes another who happens to be a hyper-Calvinist, and who says most extraordinary things — “He is a precious child of God, he preaches admirably!” And then there comes afterwards a Pelagian, or almost an Arian, and it is just the same — they take it all in, and delight in it. The reason is, because these people never taste the word of God at all. They look at it, but as long as they do not taste it and feed on it they do not know anything about it. If they fed on the Word, they would have their senses exercised by reason of the use, and they would be able to discern between the good and the evil, the precious and the vile. Many of our Calvinistic preachers do not feed God’s people. They believe in election, but they do not preach it. They think particular redemption is true, but they lock it up in the chest of their creed, and never bring it out in their ministry. They hold final perseverance, but they persevere in keeping quiet about it. They think there is such a thing as effectual calling, but they do not think they are called effectually to preach it. The great fault we find with many is, that they do not boldly speak what they do believe. You could not know if you heard them fifty times what were the doctrines of the gospel, or what was their system of salvation. And hence God’s people are starved. And all the while the only remedy they have for the poor, weak, starving child of God, is a long whip. They are always cracking this whip with the loud sound of
