Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-05-18

4 TRIAL OF PATIENCE
for most fishermen to endure, and many q
man ordinarily correct of speech in such
circumstances comes TO an intensity of ut
terance unjustifiable. Therefore no good
fisherman considers the time wasted that is
spent in mending his net Now the Bible
!. again and again represents Christian
workers as fishers of men. and we are all
sweeping through the sea of humanity some
kind OF Il net Indeed, there have been
enough nets out and enough fishermen busy
10 have landed the whole human race III the
kingdom of God long before this. What is
the matter The gospel is all right. and it
has been u good time for catching souls for
thousands OF years. Why, Their, the fail
ures, The trouble is with the nets and
most of them need TO be mended I propose
to show you what is the matter with most
of the nets and how to mend them. In the
text old Zebedee and his two boys James
and John, were doing good thing when
they sat i'll their boat mending their nets.
The trouble with many of our nets is that
the meShes are too large. If a fish can get
his gills and half his body through the net
work, he tears and rends and works his
way out and leaves the place through which
he squirIned tangle of broken threads.
The Bible weayes faith and works tight to-
gether, the law and the Gospel, righteous
ness and forgiveness. Some Of our nets
have meshes so wide that the sinner floats
.ie~snd out and is not at any moment caught
for the heavenly landing. In our desire to
make everything SO easy we relax, we
loosen. we widen. We let men after they
are once in the Gospel net escape into the
world and go into indulgenceS aud swim all
around Galilee from north side to south
side and from east side to west side, eX-
pecting that they will come back again.
We ought TO make it easy for them to get
into the kingdom OF God, as far as we can
make II impossible for
THEM To GET OUT.
The poor advice nowadays to many is:
GO and do just as you did before you were
captured for God and heaven. The net was
not intended to be any restraint or any
hindrance. What you did before you Were
a Christian, do now. Go TO all styles of
amusement, read all the styles of books, en-
gage in all the styles of behavior as before
YOU We're converted And so through
these mcshes of permission and laxity they
wriggle out, through this opening and that
opening, tearing the net as they go, and
soon all the souls that we expected to land
in heaven. before we know 1t are back in
the deep sea of the world. Oh, when we go
-gospel-fshing let us make it as easy as
possible for souls TO get in and as hard as
possible TO get out.
Is the Bible language an unmeaning
verbiage when it talks about self denial and
keeping the body under and about walking
the narrow way and entering the straight
gate and about carrying the cross! Is there
TO be no way of telling whether a man is 4
Christian except by his taking the COM
munion chalice on Sacramental dayl May a
man be as reckless about his thoughts.
about his words, about his temper, about
his amusements, about his dealings after
conversion rs before convensioni One-half
the gospel nets with which we have been
scooping the sea have had such wide meshes
that they have been all torn TO pieces by
the rushing out into the world of those
whom tighter net would have kept in.
The only use of a net is to keep the fish
from going back to where they were before
and taking them where they could not have
been taken by any other means. Alas, that
the words of Christ are so little needed
when He said: whatsoever doth not bear
his cross and come after me cannot be my
disciplen The church is fast becoming as
bad as the world, and when it gets as bad
rs the world it will be worse than the world
by SO much as it will add hypocrisy of a
most appalling kind TO
ITS OTHER DEFECTS.
Furthermore, many of our nets are torn
to pieces by being entangled with other
nets. 1t is a sad sight to see fishermen
fighting about sea-room and pulling in OPP
posite directions, each to get his net, both
nets damaged by the struggle and losing
all the fish. In q city like this of more
shan eight hundred thousand there are at
least five hundred thousand not in Sabbath
schools or churches. And in this land
where there are more than sixty-four
million people, there are at least thirty
million not in the Sabbath schools and
churches And in this world of more than
fourteen hundred million people there are
at least eight hundred million not in
Schools and churches. In such an Atlantic
ocean of opportunity, here is room for all
the nets and all the boats and all the fisher
men and for millions more. There
should be no rivalry between churches.
Each one does work peculiar to itself.
There should be no rivalry between minis
tiers. God never repeats Himself, and He
never makes two ministers alike, and each
one has work which no other man in the