WEAK THINGS EMPLOYED TO CONFOUND

THE MIGHTY.

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I WANT to call your attention to that 27th verse of I Cor. 17, that chapter I read to you : But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things to confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. That no flesh should glory in His presence." There is just one sentence there I would like to call your attention to: "But God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." Then in the 29th verse He tells us why He has chosen the weak things" that no flesh may glory in His presence."

Now, if we are to have the Word in this City of New York, we must give God all the glory. I dread coming to a new place; it takes almost a week or a fortnight to come down to solid work. The people are thinking of the choir, and saying "What a large choir !" and "So many ministers! Surely there is going to be great work now, there is such a great choir and congregation and so many ministers." It is not by might and power, but by God's spirit, and we have got to get our eyes off of all those things, and there will be no work and no blessing until this is done. Now, we have not come with any new Gospel; it is the old Gospel, the old story, and we want the old power, the power of the Holy Ghost; and, if it is

anything less than that, it will all come to naught and be like a morning cloud-soon pass away. Now I can tell you, before the meetings go on any further, who will be disappointed and who in after years will say the meetings were a failure—every man and every woman that don't get quickened themselves. If there is a minister here in New York that doesn't get quickened himself, he will say the work has failed; but I have never known a man who has got quickened, to say the work has failed. Nowhere that we have been has it been the case. What we want is to get down to ourselves, and if there is to be a true revival, there must be first a casting down of ourselves before a lifting-up. It was only when Abraham was on his face in the dust before God that He would talk to him. And it is then that God lifts us up and the blessing comes. There is no true revival until God's own people are lifted, until they are quickened. It will be superficial until then. It will be a counterfeit. If you attempt to begin to work among the ungodly and unconverted before you get quickened yourself, God won't bless you. As the Psalmist says, When the Lord has restored to us the joy of His salvation, then we will be able to teach transgressors the way of the Kingdom of God," and not until then, and when we are cold and lukewarm and are conformed to the world, and have not the Holy Ghost resting upon us, why God is not going to revive His work. Here and there we will hear of one converted, but it won't be deep and thorough unless the Church of God is quickened.

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Now, I have just come here, and I confess I have seen nothing in America like what has pleased me in Princeton. I think they have a revival there, and the President of the college told me he had not seen anything like it, and one of the Faculty told me he didn't think there had ever been anything like it in the history of Princeton. Of course I inquired into it, and I found that they had sent for differ

ent ministers to come there and had been disappointed, and they got together-the Christians did-and prayed God to bless them, and one of the Faculty asked them to pray for him, and right there the work broke out, and there have been about fifty quickened and brought back who had wandered from Christ, and it looks now as if all Princeton was going to be blessed.

Oh that it may commence here to-night in our hearts; that we may be quickened first, and then how quick the Lord will bless us. If you want to introduce two men to each other you want to be near to them. If you want to introduce sinners to God you must be near to God and to the sinner, too; and if a man is near God he will have a love for the sinner and his heart will be near that man. But until we are brought near to God ourselves, we cannot introduce men to God. Somebody has said God uses the vessel that is nearest at hand, and if we are near to God He will use us, and if we are not of course He cannot. Now, what we want is to be in a position that will give God all the glory. There are some things that make me tremble at times as if the work will all come to naught, be cause there is so much man-worship. Now, we have got to get rid of this man worship before it will be a deep work. We have got to sink self. If we can only get "I" down in the dust and get outside of our dignity and get self out of the way and say, "Here, Lord, use me if Thou canst, and, if not, use somebody else," or in the spirit of the wilderness preacher who said, "I must decrease but He must increase," then the Lord will take us up and use us.

And right here, before I forget it, I want to urge the people of New York-the Christian people-not to buy anything of these people on the street. I am told that 65 men have come on from Philadelphia to sell photographs and medals, and I don't know what not, and they are hawking them in the streets. Why I would almost think