vast tonnage, able to endure all stress of weather, yet swinging idly
at the docks, when these men ought to be crossing and recrossing the
great ocean of human suffering and sin with God's supplies of mercy.
How often it is that physical strength is used in doing positive
damage, or in luxurious ease, when, with sleeves rolled up and bronzed
bosom, fearless of the shafts of opposition, it ought to be laying
hold with all its might, and tugging away to lift up this sunken wreck
of a world.

It is a most shameful fact that much of the business of the Church and
of the world must be done by those comparatively invalid. Richard
Baxter, by reason of his diseases, all his days sitting in the door of
the tomb, yet writing more than a hundred volumes, and sending out an
influence for God that will endure as long as the "Saints' Everlasting
Rest." Edward Payson, never knowing a well day, yet how he preached,
and how he wrote, helping thousands of dying souls like himself to
swim in a sea of glory! And Robert M'Cheyne, a walking skeleton, yet
you know what he did in Dundee, and how he shook Scotland with zeal
for God. Philip Doddridge, advised by his friends, because of his
illness, not to enter the ministry, yet you know what he did for the
"rise and progress of religion" in the Church and in the world.

Wilberforce was told by his doctors that he could not live a
fortnight, yet at that very time entering upon philanthropic
enterprises that demanded the greatest endurance and persistence.
Robert Hall, suffering excruciations, so that often in his pulpit
while preaching he would stop and lie down on a sofa, then getting up
again to preach about heaven until the glories of the celestial city
dropped on the multitude, doing more work, perhaps, than almost any
well man in his day.