How sweet is human sympathy to the heart of an evangelist! My heart is full as I think now of the overwhelming sympathy, and Christian love, and prayer, that have been mine for more than 50 years of Gospel work. It is a terrible battle this strife with sin and Satan. The soldiers of the Cross seem few, and the battalions of the enemy to be multitudinous in their fierce array. God help us, we must not give in: God help us, we must press on: God help us, we must overcome: God help us, we must go from victory to victory: God help us, there must be no parleying with the enemy. We must be out and out for Jesus―true soldiers of the Cross. And let us help one another. How I have been helped this year by the hundreds of letters I have received brimful of encouragement. To my deep sorrow I have not been able to answer many, suffering as I have been from “writers’ cramp,” but I have seen all and read all, and thanked God for all. If God spares me, I hope to be a better correspondent in 1924.
I also remember before God in deep thankfulness all the friends, God-given, who have helped and are now helping us daily in our work for God. The Lord bless them.
Two precious memories from the past stand out before me as I write. My beloved father’s help all through my gospel days until he left us, and his never-to-be-forgotten prayers for me and my work for souls when he was close to eternity. The fragrance of those prayers, spoken to God nearly 40 years ago is with me now, and tears unbidden start, as I hear again, like far-off music, the words, “God sustain and bless Thy sere ant in the Victoria Hall,” “God be with him in all he seeks to do for Thee,” “God bless and sustain him.” More, much more, was said in those hallowed breathings of his heart to God. He is in heaven with all of those whom he helped to Christ in our meetings and elsewhere, and bright will he that eternity where he and all the redeemed ones can realize the truth of the last hymn my father sang on earth, voicing the glories of our blessed Lord―
“Glory, glory everlasting,
Be to Him who bore the cross;
Who redeemed our souls by tasting
Death, the death deserved by us!
Spread His glory,
Who redeemed His people thus.”
The other precious memory is of the love and help of our well-esteemed and beloved brother Mr. W. K. He gave me counsel and advice when I was a young man about the taking of the Victoria Hall for our services. He was wholehearted with me in my work there, and he lectured and preached there whenever he came to Exeter. His last address was given in the Victoria Hall. When his wife was passing away he wrote me a post card, sitting by her bed-side, encouraging me to go on with my work. Every one of my printed “Victoria Hall Addresses” were sent to him to be read and corrected before they were printed. He, amid all his other work, gladly did this to encourage a young evangelist in his work for God.
Yes, this is the time to encourage one another. We shall all praise together yonder. You know, doubtless, those beautiful words about “Alabaster Boxes of Human Sympathy.” The writer says: ―
“Do not keep the Alabaster Boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them, and while their hearts can be thrilled and made happier by them; the kind things you mean to say when they are gone, say before they go. The flowers you mean to send for their coffins, send to brighten and sweeten their homes before they leave them. If my friends have Alabaster Boxes laid away, full of fragrant perfumes of sympathy and affection, which they intend to break over my dead body, I would rather they would bring them out in my weary and troubled hours, and open them that I may be refreshed and cheered by them while I need them. I would rather have a plain coffin without a flower, a funeral without a eulogy, than a life without the sweetness of love and sympathy. Let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. Postmortem kindness does not cheer the burdened spirit. Flowers on the coffin cast no fragrance backward over the weary way.”