Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from 1. The Work of Winning Souls, a Wise One, And, 2. The Spiritual Help Which a Church Gives to Its Minister: Two Sermons Preached in the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn, N. Y., November 18, 1866, on the Completion of Twenty Years of Pastoral Service
So when one suggests a new theory in science, and publishes that in volumes to the world: a great impression may be made by it for the time on the minds of thoughtful and studious men. But it is singular to see how, with the rarest possible exceptions, within a few years the theory that looked plausible and satis factory at the outset, has ceased to hold in allegiance to itself the minds of its students, and they have passed on, better instructed by other theories, to the larger view of the ampler system of which it showed but a partial conception. Or another devotes himself to the establishment of some special policy in the State, which seems to him to be right in itself, and for the advantage and interest of the State, in whose welfare and progress he is concerned. And after a little, when another generation has come upon the stage, and other questions have grown prominent and paramount, the policy to which he devoted so much of labor, of time, and of political skill, is found to have been wholly removed from the sphere of men's action and thought. It has simply passed away from their view, silently as the morning cloud; and the questions around which the minds of citizens surged and wrought so vehemently aforetime, have ceased to be questions appealing to them; the policy which the statesman sought so ear nestly to develope and establish, is now a mere matter of historical interest in which only the curious student of the Past finds any attraction.
So, everywhere, change is written on all the enter prises which men inaugurate, and all the establishments which they seek to build. And the question rises with a new emphasis: Is there any work which, when done, will remain? Is there anything which exists on the earth so substantial, and so enduring, that an effect produced upon it will stand, abiding and permanent as itself 2 And the answer is suggested by the words of the text He that winneth souls is wise.
The personal soul is the one thing which continuously and immortally lives; which outlasts the body; which lives when the stately house has fallen, and the splen did fortune has been scattered; which lives when the theory that once was accepted has been surpassed and forgotten, and the policy of the statesman has passed from men's sight; which outlasts even the world itself, and the stars in heaven, on which the earth is pmsed and hangs; which lives while God himself continues, and while his government continues to be exercised over intelligent moral beings. And he who devotes himself to accomplishing a work upon this personal human soul - that shall be for its essential welfare - undertakes' a work that must be enduring and not brief; a work that must abide in its fruits when all the precarious enterprises of man, whereby he is sur rounded, shall have come to their gradual or sudden termination.
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