Gold Nugget 307 - Little by Little
The larger part of the globe is yet unoccupied by Christianity. Heathen systems are in possession, supported by the combined influences of tradition, custom, prejudice, and superstition, and presenting an apparently impregnable front to the think ranks of their assailants. At home, how much of the Christianity is merely nominal! And how much of it is corrupted!
We live in days of intense worldliness. The skeptical spirit, likewise, is pronounced and active. Brain and pen power of the highest order is enlisted in its service. Unbelieving science, infidel philosophy, rationalism in the Church. The press is a tower of strength to anti-Christian views of life and duty. While, at the other end of the social scale, the multitudes are sunk in indifference and vice.
How are all these enemies to be overcome? May we not fear that, work as we will, we cannot succeed? The fears are groundless; but they are not without their use, if they make us feel that the conquest of the world is not to be achieved without much hard fighting. …
It is encouraging to recall the supernatural strength for conquest which the gospel has already displayed. Think of our own land penetrated by a faith which sprang up 1800 years ago in a remote, despised Judea, with churches for Christ’s worship dotting almost every street of every city, town, village, hamlet, throughout its length and breadth! How Utopian would such a work of conquest have seemed at the beginning – a dream of insanity! And this Divine energy for conquest inheres in the gospel to-day as truly as it did of old. … The forces of providence are on the side of those who are working for the advancement of his kingdom.
Little by little God gives a man conquest over the evil in self, and his nature is sanctified. Little by little the world is conquered for Christ. The reason of the law is obvious. There is no advantage in having more than be rightly used; … a man who has more money than he can turn to good account, who has a larger estate than he can manage, who reads more books than he can mentally digest. The best method is “little by little” - mastering, consolidating, using what we have, before hasting to get more.
The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy 148, Deuteronomy 7:17-25, (J. Orr)
Gold Nugget 307
Little by Little
