The Great Dr. Brengle
Story★★★★On one occasion Samuel Brengle, longtime revered leader of the Salvation Army, was introduced as “the great Dr. Brengle.” In his diary he wrote: “If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him, and helping me to keep little in my own eyes. He does use me. But I am so concerned that He uses me and that it is not of me the work is done. The axe cannot boast of the trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, and he used it. The moment he throws it aside, it becomes only old iron. O that I may never lose sight of this.”
The point
Samuel Brengle reflected that any usefulness in his ministry was like an axe's edge—entirely dependent on the Woodsman who wields it, not on the axe itself.