Christ: Intensity of his Zeal – Charles Spurgeon

FANCY yourselves, my brethren, standing on the beach when a ship is being broken on the rocks. If there were anything that you could do towards the rescue of the mariners, would you not feel within yourselves, “I must work”? Why, it is said that sometimes when the crowd see a vessel going to pieces, and hear the cries of the drowning men, they seem as if they were all seized with madness, because, not being able to give vent to their kindness and brotherly feeling towards the perishing ones by any practical activity, they know not what to do, and are ready to sacrifice their own lives if they might but do something to save others. Men feel that they must work in the presence of so dreadful a need. And Christ saw this world of ours quivering over the pit. He saw it floating, as it were, in an atmosphere of fire, and he wished to quench those flames, and make the world rejoice, and therefore he must work to that end. He could not, he could not possibly rest and be quiet. He knew not how to take his ease even at night.

“Cold mountains and the midnight air

Witnessed the fervor of his prayer.

And when he was faint and weary, and needed to eat, he would not eat, because the zeal of God’s house had eaten him up, and it was his meat and his drink to do the will of him that sent him. The love within and the need without acted towards one common end, and formed an intense necessity, so that the Savior must work.