The Substance of the Church

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Acts 1:12-14

Then returned they to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a sabbath day's journey.…

There is a mine near Plymouth, where the men work in it two hundred and fifty feet below the surface, have a little shelf for their Bibles and their hymn-books, and a little place where every morning, when they go down in the black darkness, they bow before God, and praise Him whose tender mercies are over all His works. You never heard of these miners, perhaps, and do not know them; but possibly some of them are the very substance of the Church. There sits Mr. Somebody in that pew; oh, what a support he is to the Church! Yes, in money matters, perhaps; but do you know there is poor old Mrs. Nobody in the aisle that is most likely a greater pillar to the Church than he, for she is a holier Christian, one who lives nearer to her God and serves Him better, and she is "the substance thereof"? Ah, that old woman in the garret that is often in prayer, that old man on his bed that spends days and nights in supplication, such people as these are the substance of the Church.

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