Work, Life the Time for – Charles Spurgeon

MOTHER, you cannot bend over your children and teach them the way of life when you have departed. If you would have them taught in the things of God, your voice at least will never teach them then of the love of Jesus. Missionary, if that district of yours be unattended, and souls be lost, you at least can never make up for the damage you have done, for the mischief which you have caused. Your memory and your love are past. You are gone. The place that knew you once knows you no more. Among the deeds of the living you can take no share. If you lifted, by your example, the floodgates of sin, you cannot return to let them down again, or to stem the current. If you missed opportunities of serving Jesus here, you cannot come back again to retrieve them. If one were a warrior, and had lost a battle, one might pant for another day to dawn, for another conflict yet to retrieve the campaign; but if you lose the battle of life, you shall never have it to fight again. The tradesman may have made a bankruptcy once, but he trusts that, with more careful dealing, he may yet achieve a success. But bankruptcy in our spiritual service is bankruptcy forever, and we have no chance of retrieving our loss. It is a night in which no man can work. The myriads before the throne can do no service here. The poverty of London they cannot alleviate; its shame and sin they cannot remove. They can praise God, but they cannot help man. They can sing unto him that loved them and washed them, but they cannot preach of him, nor proclaim to those who need to be washed at the fountain that is filled with his blood. It were almost to be desired that they could, for surely they would do the work so much better than we can do it! But the Master has decreed otherwise. They must fight no more: they must stand and look on at the battle. They must delve the field no longer: they shall eat the fruit, but they cannot until the soil. The work is left to those who are still here. Let us have no regrets because they cannot join in it, but rather let us thank God that he reserves to us all the honor as well as all the labor. Let us plunge into the work now. As the British soldiers in battle, when few, were told by their king that he hoped there was not one man there who desired that they should be more; for, said he, “the fewer the men, the greater each man’s share of the honor;” so let us scarce desire that we should have helpers from the skies. With the might of God upon us; with the open Word still full of precious promises; with the mercy-seat still rich in blessing; with the Holy Spirit, the irresistible Deity, still dwelling in us; with the precious name of Jesus, which makes Hell tremble, still to cheer us, let us go forth, feeling that we “must work while it is day: for the night comes when no man can work;” that we will work while the day lasts—hearing the chariot wheels of eternity behind us, we will speed on with all our might and main.