_Yet Scripture regards earnestness in religion as essential_.--Indifference and lukewarmness it regards as hateful (Rev. iii. 15, 16). It calls us to a solemn choice and to a lifelong service. Its heroes are those who lived in the spirit of Brainerd's prayer, "Oh, that I were a flaming fire in the service of my God." There is an allegory of Luther which may be quoted here. "The devil," he says, "held a great anniversary, at which his emissaries were convened to report the results of their several missions. 'I let loose the wild beasts of the desert,' said one, 'on a caravan of Christians, and their bones are now bleaching on the sands.' 'What of that?' said the devil; 'their souls were all saved.' 'I drove the east wind,' said another, 'against a ship freighted with Christians, and they were all drowned.' 'What of that?' said the devil; 'their souls were all saved.' 'For ten years I tried to get a single Christian asleep,' said a third, 'and I succeeded, and left him so.' Then the devil shouted, and the night stars of hell sang for joy."
There are three spheres of religious life in which earnestness should be specially shown.
1. _In prayer_.--This is specially inculcated in the two parables of our Lord, the "unjust judge" and "the friend at midnight," and in His own words, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." One, it is said, came to Demosthenes, the great orator, and asked him to plead his cause. He heard him without attention while he told his story without earnestness. The man saw this, and cried out anxiously that it was all true. "Ah!" said Demosthenes, "I believe you _now_." The earnest prayer is the prevailing prayer.
2. _In sacrifice_.--This is in all life the test of earnestness. The student giving up time for the acquisition of knowledge; the merchant giving up his hours to the pursuit of business; the explorer braving the heat of the tropics and the cold of the arctic regions in his zeal for discovery. It is the same in religion. We must count all things, with St. Paul, "as loss, that we may win Christ, and be found in Him."
3. _In impressing others_.--It is "out of the heart that the mouth speaketh," and power to impress others is given only to those who do so with a full heart, and who are consumed with a burning zeal for the salvation of souls. These are they whom God has, in all ages, blessed in the conversion of men.