Routine, Usefulness of – Charles Spurgeon

WE are told that in unhappy Paris, when first the mails were stopped, the drivers of the mail-carts took their seats upon their boxes and sat there, though no horse was forthcoming. Red tape commands as much reverence as the magic cord of the Brahmins. Formal routine satisfies many. Preachers, deacons, and teachers sit on the boxes of their mail-coaches for the appointed time, but the power which moves the whole is too much forgotten, and in some cases ignored. Souls are not saved by systems, but by the Spirit. Organizations without the Holy Spirit are windmills without wind. Methods and arrangements without grace are pipes from a dry conduit, lamps without oil. Even the most scriptural forms of church-government and effort are null and void without the “power from on high.