The Passion for Souls
I
THE DISCIPLE’S THEME
“Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this
grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.”—EPH. 3: 8.
Mark how the apostle describes the evangel—“the unsearchable riches of
Christ!” It suggests the figure of a man standing, with uplifted hands, in a
posture of great amazement, before continuous revelations of immeasurable and
unspeakable glory. In whatever way he turns, the splendour confronts him! It is
not a single highway of enrichment. There are side-ways, byways, turnings here
and there, labyrinthine paths and recesses, and all of them abounding in
unsuspected jewels of grace. It is as if a miner, working away at the primary
vein of ore, should continually discover equally precious veins stretching out
on every side, and overwhelming him in rich embarrassment. It is as if a little
child, gathering the wild sweet heather at the fringe of the road, should lift his eyes and catch sight of the purple glory of a boundless moor.
“The unsearchable riches of Christ!” It is as if a man were tracking out the
confines of a lake, walking its boundaries, and when the circuit were almost
complete should discover that it was no lake at all, but an arm of the ocean,
and that he was confronted by the immeasurable sea! “The unsearchable riches
of Christ!” This sense of amazement is never absent from the apostle’s life
and writings. His wonder grows by what it feeds on. Today’s surprise almost
makes yesterday’s wonder a commonplace. Again and again he checks himself, and
stops the march of his argument, as the glory breathes upon him the new
freshness of the morning. You know how the familiar paean runs. “According to
the riches of His grace.” “That He would grant you, according to the riches of
His glory.” “God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by
Christ Jesus.” “The riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles.” “The same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him.”
“In everything ye are enriched in Him.” “The exceeding riches of His
grace.” His thought is overwhelmed. He is dazzled by the splendour. Speech is
useless. Description is impossible. He just breaks out in awed and exultant
exclamation. “O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God!” The riches are “unsearchable,” untrackable, “beyond all knowledge and all
thought.”
But now, to the Apostle Paul, these “unsearchable riches” are not merely
the subjects of contemplation, they are objects of appropriation. This ideal
wealth is usable glory, usable for the enrichment of the race. The “unsearchable riches” fit themselves into every possible condition of human
poverty and need. The ocean of grace flows about the shore of common life, into
all its distresses and gaping wants, and it fills every crack and crevice to the
full. That is the sublime confidence of the Apostle Paul. He stands before all
the desert places in human life, the mere cinder-heaps, the men and the women
with burnt-out enthusiasms and affections, and he boldly proclaims their possible enrichment. He stands
before sin, and proclaims that sin can be destroyed. He stands before sorrow,
and proclaims that sorrow can be transfigured. He stands before the broken and
perverted relationships of men, and proclaims that they can all be rectified.
And all this in the strength of “the unsearchable riches of Christ!” To this
man the wealth is realizable, and can be applied to the removal of all the
deepest needs of men. Let us fasten our attention here for a little while, in
the contemplation of this man’s amazing confidence in the triumphant powers of
grace.
He stands before sin and proclaims its possible destruction. It is not only
that he proclaims the general ministry of pardon and the general removal of sin.
He finds his special delight in specializing the ministry, and in proclaiming
the all-sufficiency of redeeming grace in its relationship to the worst. There
is about him the fearlessness of a man who knows that his evangel is that of a
redemption which cannot possibly fail. Turn to those gloomy catalogues which are found here and there in his epistles, long
appalling lists of human depravity and human need, and from these estimate his
glowing confidence in the powers of redeeming grace. Here is such a list:—“Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with men,
thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners.” Such were some of the
foul issues upon which the saving energies of grace were to be brought. And then
he adds—“And such were some of you. But ye were washed!” And when the Apostle
uses the word “washed” he suggests more than the washing out of an old sin, he
means the removal of an old affection; more than the removal of a pimple, he
means the purifying of the blood; more than the cancelling of guilt, he means
the transformation of desire. Such was this man’s belief in the saving ministry
of divine grace. Do we share his confidence? Do we speak with the same unshaken
assurance, or do we stagger through unbelief? Does our speech tremble with
hesitancy and indecision? If we had here a company of men and women whose condition might well place them in one of the
catalogues of the Apostle Paul, could we address to them an evangel of
untroubled assurance, and would our tones have that savour of persuasion which
would make our message believed? What could we tell them with firm and
illumined convictions? Could we tell them that the cinder-heaps can be made
into gardens, and that the desert can be made to rejoice and blossom as the rose?
I say, should we stagger in the presence of the worst, or should we triumphantly
exult in the power of Christ’s salvation?
It has always been characteristic of great soul-winners that, in the strength
of the unsearchable riches of Christ, they have proclaimed the possible
enrichment and ennoblement of the most debased. John Wesley appeared to take
almost a pride in recounting and describing the appalling ruin and defilement of
mankind, that he might then glory in all-sufficient power of redeeming grace. “I preached at Bath. Some of the rich and great were present, to whom, as to the
rest, I declared with all plainness of speech, (1) That by nature they were all
children of wrath. (2) That all their natural tempers were corrupted and
abominable. . . . One of my hearers, my Lord ——, stayed very impatiently until I
came to the middle of my fourth head. Then, starting up, he said, ‘’Tis hot! ’tis very hot,’ and got downstairs as fast as he could.”
My Lord ——
should have stayed a little longer, for John Wesley’s analysis of depravity and
of human need was only and always the preface to the introduction of the glories
of the unsearchable riches of Christ. My Lord —— should
have waited until Wesley got to the marrow of his text, “The Son of Man is come
to seek and to save that which was lost.”
There was a similar sublime confidence in the preaching of Spurgeon. What a
magnificent assurance breathes through these words, “The blood of Christ can
wash out blasphemy, adultery, fornication, lying, slander, perjury, theft,
murder. Though thou hast raked in the very kennels of hell, yet if thou wilt
come to Christ and ask mercy He will absolve thee from all sin.” That too, I think, is quite Pauline. Henry Drummond has
told us that he has sometimes listened to confessions of sin and to stories of
ill-living so filthy and so loathsome that he felt when he returned home that he
must change his very clothes. And yet to these plague-smitten children Drummond
offered with joyful confidence the robe of righteousness and the garment of
salvation. We need this confident hope to-day. Men and women are round about us,
will-less, heartless, hopeless, and there is something stimulating and magnetic
about a strong man’s confident speech. If we proclaim the unsearchable riches of
Christ, let us proclaim them with a confidence born of experimental fellowship
with the Lord, and with the untrembling assurance that the crown of life can be
brought to the most besotted, and the pure white robe to the most defiled.
What else does Paul find in the unsearchable riches of Christ?
He finds a
gracious ministry for the transfiguration of sorrow. The unsearchable riches of
Christ bring most winsome light and heat into the midst of human sorrow and grief.
“Our
consolations also abound through Christ.” Turn where you will, in the life of
Paul, into his darker seasons and experiences, and you will find that the
sublime and spiritual consolation is shedding its comforting rays. “We rejoice
in tribulations also.” Who would have expected to find the light burning there?
“We sorrow, yet not as others who have no hope.” “Not as others!” It is
sorrow with the light streaming through it! It is an April shower, mingled
sunshine and rain; the hope gleams through tears. The light transfigures what
it touches! Even the yew tree in my garden, so sombre and so sullen, shows
another face when the sunlight falls upon it. I think I have seen the yew tree
smile!
Even pain shows a new face when the glory-light beams upon it. Said Frances
Ridley Havergal, that exultant singing spirit, with the frail, shaking,
pain-ridden body, “Everybody is so sorry for me except myself.” And then she
uses the phrase, “I see my pain in the light of Calvary.” It is the yew tree with the light upon it! Such is the ministry of the unsearchable
riches in the night-time of pain. Professor Elmslie said to one of his dearest
friends towards the end of his days, “What people need most is comfort.” If
that be true, then the sad, tear-stricken, heavy-laden children of men will find
their satisfaction only in the unsearchable riches of Christ.
What further discoveries does the Apostle make in the unsearchable riches of
Christ? He not only confronts sin and claims that it can be destroyed, and
stands before sorrow and claims that it can be transfigured, he stands amid the
misunderstandings of men, amid the perversions in the purposed order of life,
the ugly twists that have been given to fellowships which were ordained to be
beautiful and true, and he proclaims their possible rectification in Christ.
When Paul wants to bring correcting and enriching forces into human affairs, he
seeks the wealthy energy in “the unsearchable riches of Christ” He finds the
ore for all ethical and social enrichments in this vast spiritual deposit. He goes into the home, and seeks the adjustment of the home
relationships, and the heightening and enrichment of the marriage vow. And by
what means does he seek it? By bringing Calvary’s tree to the very hearthstone,
the merits of the bleeding sacrifice to the enrichment of the wedded life. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for
it” He goes into the domain of labour, and seeks the resetting of the
relationships of master and servant. And by what means does he seek it? By
seeking the spiritual enrichment of both master and servant in a common
communion with the wealth of the blessed Lord. He takes our common intimacies,
our familiar contracts, the points where we meet in daily fellowship, and he
seeks to transform the touch which carries an ill contagion into a touch which
shall be the vehicle of contagious health. And by what means does he seek it? By
bringing the Cross to the common life and letting the wealth of that
transcendent sacrifice reveal the work of the individual soul. Everywhere the Apostle finds in the “unsearchable riches of Christ” life’s glorious ideal, and the all-sufficient dynamic by which it is to be attained.
Here, then, my brethren, are the “unsearchable riches” of Christ—riches of
love, riches of pardon, riches of comfort, riches of health, riches for
restoring the sin-scorched wastes of the soul, riches for transfiguring the
sullenness of sorrow and pain, and riches for healthily adjusting the perverted
relationships of the home, the state and the race. These riches are ours. Every
soul is heir to the vast inheritance! The riches are waiting for the claimants! And some, yea, multitudes of our fellows have claimed them, and they are
moving about in the humdrum ways of common life with the joyful consciousness of
spiritual millionaires. One such man is described by James Smetham. He was a
humble member of Smetham’s Methodist class-meeting. “He sold a bit of tea . . .
and staggered along in June days with a tendency to hernia, and prayed as if he
had a fortune of ten thousand a year, and were the best-off man in the world!” His “bit of tea” and his rupture! But with the
consciousness of a spiritual millionaire! “All this,” said the old woman to
Bishop Burnett, as she held up a crust, “all this and Christ!” These are the
folk who have inherited the promises, who have even now inherited the treasures
in heaven: and “unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace
given, to preach these unsearchable riches of Christ.”
Let me turn, in conclusion, from the disciple’s theme to the preacher
himself. “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints.” Then the disciple
is possessed by a sense of profound humility. “Unto me”—the standing amazement
of it, that he should have been chosen, first, to share the wealth, to claim the
inheritance, and then to make known his discovery to others. “Unto me, who am
less than the least”—he violates grammar, he coins a word which I suppose is
used nowhere else. It is not enough for Paul to obtain a word which signifies
the least, he wants a place beneath the least—“unto me, who am less than the
least”—such a word does he require in order to express his sense of his own
unworthiness. “Less than the least.” He gazes back; surely I don’t
misinterpret the Apostle when I say it—he gazes back upon the days of his
alienation, upon the days when he was deriding and scorning the supposed riches
of his Master’s kingdom. Again and again, in places where I least expect it, I
find the Apostle turning a powerful and, I think, pain-ridden gaze into those
early days when he lived in revolt. If you turn to Romans 16, that collection of
miscellanies, a chapter which I suppose we don’t often read, which is concerned
largely with salutations and the courtesies of common life, you get here and
there most vivid glimpses into the consciousness of the Apostle. Here is one: “Salute Andronicus, and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners who were in
Christ before me.” Do you feel the sob of it—“who were in Christ before me”?
They were serving Him, following Him, proclaiming Him, while I was still a
declared and implacable foe; they were in Christ before me. But unto me, less than Andronicus, less than Junia, and less than the least of all,
unto me was the grace given. I think we shall have to share it with him—this
sense of unworthiness at being called and elected by grace to preach the Gospel.
We shall have to enter into controversy even with the old Puritan who said, “I
do not quarrel with Paul’s language, but I do dispute his right to push me out
of my place.” “Less than the least,” said the Puritan, “is my place.” Surely
the preacher must sometimes lay down his pen, and pause in the very middle of
his preparation, in a sense of extreme wonderment that the condescending Lord
should have chosen him to be the vehicle and messenger of eternal grace. The man
who feels unworthy will be kept open and receptive towards the fountain. “Why
did Jesus choose Judas? “said an inquirer once to Dr. Parker. “I don’t know,”
replied the Doctor, “but I have a bigger mystery still. I cannot make out why
He chose me.” “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints was this grace
given.” I wish I could just read that in the very tone and accent in which I think the Apostle himself would have proclaimed it. I
think the early part of it would have to be read almost tremblingly. Mark the
mingling of profound humility with the tone of absolute confidence. When the
Apostle looked at himself he was filled with shrinkings and timidities, but when
he thought about his acceptance and his endowment he was possessed by confident
triumph. Whatever shrinking he had about himself, he had no shrinking that he
was the elect of God, endowed with the grace of God, in order to proclaim the
evangel of God. It was just because he was so perfectly assured of his
acceptance and of his vocation that he felt so perfectly unworthy. Did not
Cromwell say of George Fox that an enormous sacred self-confidence was not the
least of his attainments? I am not quite sure that Oliver Cromwell correctly
interpreted George Fox. I would be inclined to withdraw the word “self” and
insert the word “God,” and then we have got, not only what George Fox ought to
be, but what the Apostle Paul was, and what every minister of the Gospel is expected to be in Christ; we are expected to be the children of an enormous
God-confidence, we are to be children absolutely assured that we are in
communion with Christ, and are even now receptive of His grace.
“Unto me was the grace given.” Without that grace there can be no herald,
and without that grace there can, therefore, be no evangel. You have heard the
old legend of the noble hall, and the horn that hung by the gate waiting for the
heir’s return; none could blow the horn except the heir to the noble pile. One
stranger after another would come and put the horn to his lips, but fail to
sound the blast. Then the heir appeared, took the horn down from the gate, blew
it, and there came the blast that rang down the valley and wound round the
hills. “Unto me was the grace given” to blow the horn; “unto me was the
grace given” to preach; and none but the one who has the grace of the heir can
blow the horn of the Gospel. Our main work, our supreme work, our work, before
which all other pales and becomes dim, is to tell the good news, to go
everywhere, letting everybody know about the unsearchable riches of Christ. When Professor Elmslie was
dying, he said to his wife, “No man can deny that I have always preached the
love of God”; and just before he died he said again, “Kate, God is love, all
love. Kate, we will tell everybody that, but especially our own boy—at least,
you will—we will tell everybody that; that’s my vocation.” That is the vocation
of the disciple, to tell everybody of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
II
THE DISCIPLE’S SACRIFICE
“I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.”—COLOSSIANS 1: 24.
“I FILL up that which is behind!” Not that the ministry of reconciliation
is incomplete. Not that Gethsemane and Calvary have failed. Not that the debt of
guilt is only partially paid, and there is now a threatening remnant which
demands the sacrifice of human blood. The ministry of atonement is perfected.
There is no outstanding debt. “Jesus paid it all.” In the one commanding
sacrifice for human sin Calvary leaves nothing for you and me to do. In the
bundle of the Saviour’s sufferings every needful pang was borne.
Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood,
Sealed my pardon with His blood.
I can add nothing to that. There is nothing lacking. The sacrifice is all
sufficient.
And yet “I fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ.” The
sufferings need a herald. A story needs a teller. A gospel requires an
evangelist. A finished case demands efficient presentation. The monarch must
repeat himself through his ambassadors. The atoning Saviour must express Himself
through the ministering Paul. The work of Calvary must proclaim itself in the
sacrificial saints. In his own sphere, and in his own degree, Paul must be
Christ repeated. As a minister in Greece and Asia Minor Paul must reincarnate
the sacrificial spirit of Jerusalem and Galilee. He must “fill up that which is
behind in the sufferings of Christ.” The suggestion is this—all ministry for
the Master must be possessed by the sacrificial spirit of the Master. If Paul is
to help in the redemption of Rome he must himself incarnate the death of
Calvary. If he is to be a minister of life he must “die daily.” “The blood is
the life.” Without the shedding of blood there is no regenerative toil. Every
real lift implies a corresponding strain, and wherever the crooked is made straight “virtue” must go out of the erect.
The spirit of Calvary is to be reincarnated in Ephesus and Athens and Rome and
London and Birmingham; the sacrificial succession is to be maintained through
the ages, and we are to “fill up that which is behind in the sufferings of
Christ.”
“I fill up that which is behind”! That is not the presumptuous boast of
perilous pride; it is the quiet, awed aspiration of privileged fellowship with
the Lord. Here is an Apostle, a man who thinks meanly enough of himself,
counting himself an abortion, regarding himself as “the least of the apostles,
not worthy to be called an apostle,” and yet he dares to whisper his own name
alongside his Master’s, and humbly to associate his own pangs with the
sufferings of redemptive love. “I fill up that which is behind of the
sufferings of Christ.” Is the association permissible? Are the sufferings of
Christ and His Apostles complementary, and are they profoundly cooperative in
the ministry of salvation? Dare we proclaim them together?
Here is an association. “In all their afflictions He was afflicted.”
“Who
is weak and I am not weak; who is offended and I burn not?” Is the
association alien and uncongenial, or is it altogether legitimate and fitting? “In all their afflictions He was afflicted”—the deep, poignant, passionate
sympathy of the Saviour; “Who is weak and I am not weak”—the deep, poignant,
passionate sympathy of the ambassador. The kinship in the succession is vital.
The daily dying of the Apostle corroborates and drives home the one death of his
Lord. The suffering sympathies in Rome perfected the exquisite sensitiveness in
Galilee and Jerusalem. The bleeding heart in Rome perfected the ministry of the
broken heart upon the Cross. Paul “filled up that which was behind of the
sufferings of Christ.”
Here, then, is a principle. The gospel of a broken heart demands the ministry
of bleeding hearts. If that succession be broken we lose our fellowship with the
King. As soon as we cease to bleed we cease to bless. When our sympathy loses
its pang we can no longer be the servants of the passion. We no longer “fill up the
sufferings of Christ,” and not to “fill up” is to paralyze, and to “make the
cross of Christ of none effect.” Now the apostle was a man of the most vivid and
realistic sympathy. “Who is weak and I am not weak?” His sympathy was a
perpetuation of the Passion. I am amazed at its intensity and scope. What a
broad, exquisite surface of perceptiveness he exposed to the needs and sorrows
of the race! Wherever there was a pang it tore the strings of his sensitive
heart. Now it is the painful fears and alarms of a runaway slave, and now the
dumb, dark agonies of people far away. The Apostle felt as vividly as he
thought, and he lived through all he saw. He was being continually aroused by
the sighs and cries of his fellow men. He heard a cry from Macedonia, and the
pain on the distant shore was reflected in his own life. That is the only
recorded voice, but he was hearing them every day, wandering, pain-filled,
fear-filled voices, calling out of the night, voices from Corinth, from Athens, from Rome also, and from distant Spain!” Who is weak and I am
not weak?” He was exhausted with other folk’s exhaustion, and in the heavy
burdensomeness he touched the mystery of Gethsemane, and had fellowship with the
sufferings of his Lord.
My brethren, are we in this succession? Does the cry of the world’s need
pierce the heart, and ring even through the fabric of our dreams? Do we “fill
up” our Lord’s sufferings with our own sufferings, or are we the unsympathetic
ministers of a mighty Passion? I am amazed how easily I become callous. I am
ashamed how small and insensitive is the surface which I present to the needs
and sorrows of the world. I so easily become enwrapped in the soft wool of self-indulgency, and the cries from far and near cannot reach my easeful soul. “Why do you wish to return?” I asked a noble young missionary who had been
invalided home: “Why do you wish to return?” “Because I can’t sleep for
thinking of them!” But, my brethren, except when I spend a day with my Lord, the trend of my life is quite another way. I cannot think about
them because I am so inclined to sleep! A benumbment settles down upon my
spirit, and the pangs of the world awake no corresponding sympathy. I can take
my newspaper, which is ofttimes a veritable cup-full of horrors, and I can
peruse it at the breakfast table, and it does not add a single tang to my feast.
I wonder if one who is so unmoved can ever be a servant of the suffering Lord!
Here in my newspaper is the long, small-typed casualty list from the seat of
war; or here is half a column of the crimes and misdemeanours of my city; or
here is a couple of columns descriptive of the hot and frantic doings of the
race-course; or here is a small corner paragraph telling me about some
massacres in China; or here are two little hidden lines saying that a man named
James Chalmers has been murdered in New Guinea! And I can read it all while I
take my break fast, and the dark record does not haunt the day with the mingled
wails of the orphaned and the damned. My brethren, I do not know how any Christian service is to be fruitful if the servant is not
primarily baptized in the spirit of a suffering compassion. We can never heal the needs we do not feel. Tearless hearts can never be
the heralds of the Passion. We must pity if we would redeem. We must bleed if we
would be the ministers of the saving blood. We must perfect by our passion the
Passion of the Lord, and by our own suffering sympathies we must “fill up that
which is behind in the sufferings of Christ.” “Put on, therefore, as God’s elect, a heart of compassion.”
Here is another association. Can we find a vital kinship? “He offered up
prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears.” So far the Master. “I
would have you know how greatly I agonize for you.” So far the Apostle. The
Saviour prayed “with strong crying and tears”; His Apostle “agonized” in
intercession! Is the association legitimate? Did not the agony at Rome “fill
up” the “strong cryings” at Jerusalem? Does not the interceding Apostle enter
into the fellowship of his Master’s sufferings, and perfect that “which is behind”? The intercession in Rome is akin to the
intercession in Jerusalem, and both are affairs of blood. If the prayer of the
disciple is to “fill up” the intercession of the Master, the disciple’s prayer
must be stricken with much crying and many tears. The ministers of Calvary must
supplicate in bloody sweat, and their intercession must often touch the point of
agony. If we pray in cold blood we are no longer the ministers of the Cross.
True intercession is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice, a perpetuation of
Calvary, a “filling up” of the sufferings of Christ. St. Catherine told a
friend that the anguish which she experienced, in the realization of the
sufferings of Christ, was greatest at the moment when she was pleading for the
salvation of others. “Promise me that Thou wilt save them!” she cried, and
stretching forth her right hand to Jesus, she again implored in agony, “Promise
me, dear Lord, that Thou wilt save them. O give me a token that Thou wilt.” Then
her Lord seemed to clasp her outstretched hand in His, and to give her the promise, and she felt a piercing pain as though a nail had been driven
through the palm. I think I know the meaning of the mystic experience. She had
become so absolutely one with the interceding Saviour that she entered into the
fellowship of His crucifixion. Her prayers were red with sacrifice, and she felt
the grasp of the pierced hand.
My brethren, this is the ministry which the Master owns, the agonized
yearnings which perfect the sufferings of His own intercession. And we in the
succession? Do our prayers bleed? Have we felt the painful fellowship of the
pierced hand? I am so often ashamed of my prayers. They so frequently cost me
nothing; they shed no blood. I am amazed at the grace and condescension of my
Lord that He confers any fruitfulness upon my superficial pains. I think of
David Brainerd—I think of his magnificent ministry among the Indians, whole
tribes being swayed by the evangel of the Saviour’s love. I wonder at the
secret, and the secret stands revealed. Gethsemane had its pale reflection in
Susquahannah, and the “strong-crying” Saviour had a fellow labourer in His agonizing saint. Let
me give you a few words from his journal, after one hundred and fifty years
still wet with the hot tears of his supplications and prayers: “I think my
soul was never so drawn out in intercession for others as it has been this night; I hardly ever so longed to live to God, and to be altogether devoted to Him; I wanted to wear out my life for Him.” “I wrestled for the ingathering of
souls, for multitudes of poor souls, personally, in many distant places. I was
in such an agony, from sun half-an-hour high till near dark, that I was wet all
over with sweat; but O, my dear Lord did sweat blood for such poor souls: I
longed for more compassion.” Mark the words, “I was in such an agony from sun
half-an-hour high till near dark!” May we do what David Brainerd would not do,
may we reverently whisper the word side by side with another and a greater word,
“And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly.” I say, was not Susquahannah a
faint echo of Gethsemane, and was not David Brainerd filling up “that which was behind in the sufferings of Christ”?
Brethren, all vital intercession makes a draught upon a man’s vitality. Real
supplication leaves us tired and spent. Why the Apostle Paul, when he wishes to
express the poignancy of his yearning intercession for the souls of men, does
not hesitate to lay hold of the pangs of labour to give it adequate
interpretation. “Ye remember, brethren, our travail.” “My little children, of
whom I travail in birth again till Christ be formed in you.” Again I say, it was
only the echo of a stronger word, “He shall see of the travail of His soul and
shall be satisfied.” Are we in the succession? Is intercession with us a
travail, or is it a playtime, a recreation, the least exacting of all things, an
exercise in which there is neither labour nor blood? “The blood is the life.”
Bloodless intercession is dead. It is only the man whose prayer .is a vital
expenditure, a sacrifice, who holds fellowship with Calvary, and “fills up that
which is behind in the sufferings of Christ.”
Here is another association. Is it legitimate? “Master, the Jews of late
sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again?” “Having stoned Paul” (at Lystra)
“they drew him out of the city supposing he had been dead.” And
Paul “returned again to Lystra!” Back to the stones! Is that in the
succession? Is not the Apostle the complement of his Master? Is he not doing
in Lystra what his Master did in Judaea? Is he not filling up “that which was
behind of the sufferings of Christ”? Back to the stones! “Master, the Jews
of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again?” The Boxers of
late sought to decimate thee, poor little flock, and goest thou thither again?
The New Guineans have butchered thy Chalmers and thy Tompkins, and goest thou
thither again? Mongolia has swallowed thy men and thy treasure, and its
prejudice and its suspicions appear unmoved, and goest thou thither again? Thou
halt been tiring thyself for years, seeking to redeem this man and that man, and
he treats thee with indifference and contempt, and goest thou thither again? My brethren, are we familiar with the road that leads back to the
stones? It was familiar to the Apostle Paul, and when he trod the heavy way he
entered the fellowship of his Master’s pains, and knew that he “filled out that
which was behind of the sufferings” of his Lord. To go again and face the
stones is to perpetuate the spirit of the Man who “set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem,” even though it
meant derision, desertion, and the Cross. We never really know our Master until
we kneel and toil among the driving stones. Only as we experience the “fellowship of His sufferings can we know the power of His resurrection.” There
is a sentence in David Hill’s biography—that rare, gentle, refined spirit, who
moved like a fragrance in his little part of China—a sentence which has burned
itself into the very marrow of my mind. Disorder had broken out, and one of the
rioters seized a huge splinter of a smashed door and gave him a terrific blow on
the wrist, almost breaking his arm. And how is it all referred to? “There is a
deep joy in actually suffering physical violence for Christ’s sake.” That is all! It is a strange combination of
words—suffering, violence, joy! And yet I remember the evangel of the Apostle, “If we suffer with Him we shall also reign with Him,” and I cannot forget that
the epistle which has much to say about tribulation and loss, has most to say
about rejoicing! “As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation
also aboundeth through Christ.” “Out of the eater comes forth meat.” These men
did not shrink from the labour when the stones began to fly. Rebuff was an
invitation to return! The strength of opposition acted upon them like an
inspiration. Have you ever noticed that magnificent turn which the Apostle gives
to a certain passage in his second letter to the Corinthians? “I will tarry at
Ephesus . . . for a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are
many adversaries”! “There are many adversaries . . . I will tarry”! The
majestic opposition constitutes a reason to remain!” There are many
adversaries”; I will hold on! My brethren, that is the martyr’s road, and he who treads that way lives the martyr’s life, and even though he do not
die the martyr’s death he shall have the martyr’s crown. Back to the stones! “It
is the way the Master went,” and to be found in that way is to perpetuate the
sacrificial spirit, and to “fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of
Christ.”
To be, therefore, in the sacrifical succession, our sympathy must be a
passion, our intercession must be a groaning, our beneficence must be a
sacrifice, and our service must be a martyrdom. In everything there must be the
shedding of blood. How can we attain unto it? What is the secret of the
sacrificial life? It is here. The men and the women who willingly and joyfully
share the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings are vividly conscious of the
unspeakable reality of their own personal redemption. They never forget the pit
out of which they have been digged, and they never lose the remembrance of the
grace that saved them. “He loved me, and gave Himself for me”; therefore,
“I
glory in tribulation!” “by the grace of God I am what I am”; therefore “I will very gladly spend and be spent!” The insertion of
the “therefore” is not illegitimate: it is the implied conjunction which
reveals the secret of the sacrificial life. When Henry Martin reached the shores
of India he made this entry in his journal, “I desire to burn out for my
God,” and at the end of the far-off years the secret of his grand enthusiasm
stood openly revealed. “Look at me,” he said to those about him as he was
dying—“Look at me, the vilest of sinners, but saved by grace! Amazing that I
can be saved!” It was that amazement, wondering all through his years, that
made him such a fountain of sacrificial energy in the service of his Lord.
My brethren, are we in the succession? Are we shedding our blood? Are we
filling up “that which is behind in the sufferings of Christ”? They are doing
it among the heathen. It was done in Uganda, when that handful of lads, having
been tortured, and their arms cut off, and while they were being slowly burned
to death, raised a song of triumph, and praised their Saviour in the fire,
“singing till their shrivelled tongues refused to form the sound.” They are
doing it in China, the little remnant of the decimated Churches gathering here
and there upon the very spots of butchery and martyrdom, and renewing their
covenant with the Lord. They are “filling up that which is behind of the
sufferings of Christ.” They are doing it among the missionaries. James
Hannington was doing it when he wrote this splendidly heroic word, when he was
encountered by tremendous opposition: “I refuse to be disappointed; I will
only praise!” James Chalmers was doing it when, after long years of hardship
and difficulty, he proclaimed his unalterable choice: “Recall the twenty-one
years, give me back all its experience, give me its shipwrecks, give me its
standings in the face of death, give it me surrounded with savages with spears
and clubs, give it me back again with spears flying about me, with the club
knocking me to the ground—give it me back, and I will still be your missionary!” Are
we in the succession?
A noble army, men and boys,
The matron and the maid,
Around the Saviour’s throne rejoice,
In robes of light arrayed;
They climbed the steep ascent of Heaven
Through peril, toil and pain!
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train.
III
THE DISCIPLE’S TENDERNESS
“And I will betroth thee unto Me forever.”—Hosea 2: 19.
THAT is a tenderly beautiful figure; surely one of the sweetest and most
exquisite in God’s Word! “I will betroth thee unto Me forever!” The
communion of ideal wedlock is used to express the ideal relationship between the
soul and its Lord. We are to be married unto the Lord! Look into the heart of
it, and see how much the gracious figure reveals.
“I will betroth thee unto Me forever.” There is to be a wedding of the soul
and its Saviour, of the nation and its King. To bring that wedding about is the
aim and purpose of every kind and type of Christian ministry. We are to labour
to bring souls into marriage-covenant with their Lord. I wish for the present to
limit my outlook entirely to the winning of the children, and shall engage your thought to the
pertinent problem as to how they can be wooed into a marriage-contract with the
Lord of glory. What is the kind of wooing that will lead to a wedding?
Let me begin here. I do not think we greatly help the cause of the Lover by
proclaiming the remoteness of the Lover’s home. I have never been able to find
out what we gain by teaching children the “far-offness” of the Saviour’s dwelling.
There is a happy land
Far, far away!
How does that help the wooer?
For beyond the clouds and beyond the tomb
It is there, it is there, my child.
I say, how does that help the wooing? I am afraid that the remoteness of the
home tends to create a conception of the remoteness of the Lover; and, if the
Lover is away, the wooing will be very mechanical and cold.
There’s a Friend for little children
Above the
bright blue sky.
That is the only line I don’t like in that greatly beloved and very beautiful
hymn. In my childhood it helped to make my Saviour an absentee, and He was “above the bright blue sky,” when I wanted Him on the near and common earth. I
think that we shall perhaps best help the cause of the Wooer if we teach that
His home is very near, and that no clouds interpose between us and the place of
His abiding.
There is a happy land,
Not far away.
Destroying all sense of remoteness, we must labour to bring the children into
the immediate presence of the Lover Himself. How shall we do it? What is there
in the child of which we must lay hold? To what shall we make our appeal?
Ruskin was never weary of telling us that the two fundamental virtues in
childhood are reverence and compassion, the sympathetic perception of another’s weakness, and the venerating regard for another’s crown. To perceive the
sorrows of life, and to maintain a sense of the dignities of life, are two rare
and choice endowments; and, when these are exercised upon “the Man of
Sorrows,” and “the King with many crowns,” the issue will be a life of
commanding spiritual devotion. But Ruskin’s analysis does not altogether, and
quite fittingly, serve my purpose here. It is more to my purpose to borrow the
familiar line of Wordsworth, for his teaching includes the teaching of Ruskin,
and also adds to it—“We live by admiration, hope, and love.” In those three
attributes a man’s personality abides. Gain them, and you win the man! All the
three attributes must be regarded in indissoluble union. The quality of each
depends upon the presence of all. Strike out one, and you maim and impoverish
the rest. There is an imperfect love in which there is no admiration. There is
an imperfect admiration in which there is no love. Perfect love admires: perfect
admiration loves; and love and admiration are ever associated with the gracious spirit of hopeful aspiration. These three, I say, constitute
the very marrow of life—the deep, secret springs of character and conduct. “We
live by admiration, hope, and love.” To win a child’s love, and admiration, and
hope, is to grip his entire being, and make conquest of all the powers of his
soul. If the great Lover can win these, the wooing will be followed by the
wedding. How can we so represent Him, that this triumph shall be won?
We have so to reveal Jesus to the children, that He captivates their love.
What shall we reveal to them? Instinctively, I think, we feel that we must let
them gaze long at His beauteous simplicity. We must reveal Him handling the
lilies; we must strive to make it so real, that the children, with their
magnificently realistic imagination, shall feel that they are with Him among the
flowers of the field. We must reveal Him watching the graceful flight of the
birds of the air, and His peculiarly tender regard for the common sparrow. We
must reveal Him pausing to give thought to the hen and her chickens, and His wistful interest in the sheep and the sheepfold. We must reveal Him as the
approachable Jesus, with groups of little children clustering about His knees;
not bored by them, not too great for their companionship, but lovingly taking
them into His arms to bless them; and, if there is some puny weakling among
them, giving to that one some special caress and regard. Will these fascinating
simplicities, if vividly revealed, be ineffective in awaking the impressionable
responsiveness of a little child? Depend upon it, the heart will begin to
thrill! But not only His simplicity must we reveal, but His sympathy too! We
must whip up our own powers, and seek to clearly depict for the child the great
Lover’s love for the weak, the defenseless, the unloved, and the abandoned.
But cannot we go further? Must we confine the visions of the children to the
simplicities and sympathies of the Lover? Must we just keep to the fireside
Jesus, the Jesus of the lilies, the farmyard, and the sheepfold, the
good-Samaritan Jesus, binding up the wounds of the bruised and broken? Shall we keep the children in the “green pastures,” and by “the still waters,” or
shall we take them into “the valley of the shadow”? Shall they abide upon the
sunny slopes of Galilee, and watch the Lover there, or shall we guide their feet
into Gethsemane, and let them gaze on Calvary? Brethren, I will give my own
experience; at any rate, it is one man’s witness, and represents, I avow, the
findings of one who seeks to woo young life into covenant-communion with the
Lord. I sometimes take my young people into the garden of Gethsemane and up the
hill of Calvary; I do not do it frequently, lest the via dolorosa should become
a common way, and should be trod with flippant step; but now and again, when I
think I dare, I lead them into the shadow of the Passion, and whisper to them
hints of the awful mystery! And what do I find? My brethren, I find there is
no wooing like that! It is not only for the reprobate, but also for the little
child, that in the passion of the Lord there is unbared the infinite love of the
Lover. There is no need to be sensational. The sensational is never the parent of fruitful love. Gethsemane was very quiet, and
all we need to do is to walk very softly, taking the children with us, and let
them gaze upon the Sufferer as He bows amid the olive-groves on that most
eventful night. The spiritual appreciativeness of the child will supply the
rest. “I thank Thee, O Father . . . that Thou hast hid these things from the
wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” “Out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained praise.” I say there is no wooing like
this! The spiritual marriage contract is most frequently made in Gethsemane and
at the Cross. “The love of Christ constraineth me.”
“We live by love.” By “admiration” too! Our children must not only find
in the Lover their Saviour; they must find in Him their Hero too. Say to
yourself, “I will so present my Master as a Hero as to woo the adoring homage
of my boys.” Would you suffer from any lack of matter? Your eyes are closed and
sealed if you do not see the. heroic glowing upon every page of the sacred story! His splendid chivalry; His tremendous hatred of all
meanness and sin; His magnificent “aloneness” in the night; His strenuous
refusal of a popular crown, when the sovereignty would mean compromise with the
powers of darkness! Let these be unfolded with the same tremendous effort at
vivid realization which we make when we seek to unveil the heroisms of a
Cromwell, a Howard, or a Gordon, and our boys and girls will go on their knees
before the unveiling with reverent admiration and homage. “Thou art worthy, O Christ, to receive all honour and glory.”
Loving! Admiring! These fair dispositions will be assuredly associated with
the beautiful genius of hope. The glorious Lord will become the children’s bread. Their worship will become their hunger. Their loving will become their
longing. Their admiration will become their aspiration. Their faith will become
their hope. They will be laid hold of in all the fetters and feelings of
personality, and the great Wooer will have won.
What more shall we say about ourselves? Let this be said: while we are
employed in wooing do not let us be heedless as to the manner of our living. I
know that is a great commonplace, but I know also that it is by the
preservation of the commonplace that we maintain the wholeness and sanity of our
lives. Those who woo for the Master must be careful how they live. The detection
of inconsistency is fatal to the reception of our message. “A child is the most
rigid exacter of consistency.” “I say” may count for little or nothing. “I
know” may count for very little more. “I am” is the incarnation which gives
defense and confirmation to the Gospel, and reveals the deputy-wooer in
something of the reflected beauty of the glorious Lover Himself. The wooers must
themselves be won; and our own conquest must be proved by the brightness and
purity of our wedding apparel and the radiant buoyancy of our dispositions. I
say the wooers must be in wedding attire, and must be “children of light,”
children of the morning. “I wonder if there is so much laughter in any other home in England as in ours.” So wrote Charles Kingsley in one of
his incomparable letters to his wife! That sounds fascinating, captivating,
there is the ring of the wedding-bells in the quaint and only partially hidden
boast. I do not wonder that this child of the morning was such a mighty wooer
for his Lord! Let us beware of a forced seriousness. Let us discriminate
between sobriety and melancholy. It was a saying of David Brainerd’s that “there is nothing that the devil seems to make so great a handle of as a
melancholy humour.” Let us distinguish between a wedding and a funeral, and in
our wooing let it be the wedding-bells which lend their music to our speech. I
confess that in the school-teaching of my early days I think the wooers gave too
much prominence to the minor key, and the dirge of melancholy resignation too
often displaced the wedding-march of a triumphant walk with God.
When shall we begin the wooing? When I had written that sentence I chanced
to lift my eyes from the paper, and I saw a tender fruit-sapling just laden with blossom. At what age may a
sapling blossom? At what age may a young life begin to blossom for the King? To
revert to my figure—when shall we begin the wooing? Plato said, “The most
important part of education is right training in the nursery.” And Ruskin said;
“When do you suppose the education of a child begins? At six months old it can
answer smile with smile, and impatience with impatience.” Perhaps we have to
begin the wooing even in the speechless years. In the life of the Spirit I
believe in early wooings because I believe in early weddings! The wooing and the
wedding become increasingly difficult when we pass the age of twelve. As for the
wedding itself, the betrothal to the lord, I would have it a very decisive act.
It must be a conscious, intelligent consecration. The vow must not be made in
thoughtlessness; not in any bewildering and sensational transports. In the
rapture there must be the moderating presence of serious and illumined thought.
But mind you, the act of decision must be a wedding and not a funeral. It must be serious and yet glad.
I give my heart to Thee,
Saviour Divine.
For Thou art all to me
And I am Thine.
Is there on earth a closer bond than this
That my Beloved’s mine and I am His?
IV
THE DISCIPLE WATCHING FOR SOULS
“I will make you fishers of men.”—Matt. 4: 19.
I WISH to devote this chapter to the consideration of the serious work of
watching for souls. I do not presume to be a teacher who has secrets to unfold;
still less can I claim to be an expert in the great vocation. I suppose it is
true of all preachers that as we grow older our sense of the inefficiency of our
work becomes intensified. The wonder grows that God can accomplish so much with
such inadequate implements. One’s satisfaction with the evangel deepens with the
years; but one is increasingly discontented with the imperfect way in which we
present it. No, I do not write as one who is proficient; I am only a blunderer
at the best; but I write as one who is honestly desirous of better and more
useful equipment. I have often been amused by the headline to the preface in Isaac Walton’s “Compleat Angler.” Here is the quaint sentence:
“To the reader of this discourse, but especially to the Honest Angler.” And in
this chapter I conceive myself as writing, not to expert anglers, or even to
successful anglers, but to those who are “honest,” and who are sincerely
desirous to become proficient in their ministry. More than two hundred years ago
there was a young probationer in the Church of Scotland named Thomas Boston. He
was about to preach before the parish of Simprin. In contemplation of the
eventful visit he sat down to meditate and pray. “Reading in secret, my heart
was touched with Matt. 4: 19: ‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.’
My soul cried out for the accomplishing of that to me, and I was very desirous
to know how I might follow Christ so as to be a fisher of men, and for my own
instruction in that point I addressed myself to the consideration of it in that
manner.” Out of that honest and serious consideration there came that quaint and
spiritually profound and suggestive book: “A Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing.” All through Thomas
Boston’s book one feels the fervent intensity of a spirit eager to know the mind
of God in the great matter of fishing for souls. Without that passion our
enquiry is worthless. “The all-important matter in fishing is to have the desire
to learn.”
“Now for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a man—that
was not—to be an angler by a book; he that undertakes it shall undertake a
harder task than Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent fencer, who in the
printed book called ‘A Private School of Defence,’ undertook to teach that art
or science, and was laughed at for his labour—not that but many useful things
might be learned by that book, but he was laughed at because that art was not to
be taught by words.” So says Isaac Walton in his famous book on Angling. It is
painfully true. If books would make an angler, I should be the most expert
fisher in this neighbourhood. On one of my shelves there is quite a little
collection of fishing books, out of which I have been able to borrow many hints
and suggestions for my own particular labour. I think I know them fairly well,
and in many of their chapters could pass an examination with honours. But in the
practical handling of the rod I should come in the rear of the most incompetent.
In angling I am a splendid theorist, but useless in practice. Is it not here
that we must begin our consideration of the matter of the ministry of Christ?
Books cannot make a preacher; he may find them full of helps, but they are not
creators of gifts. They may teach how to make sermons, but they have nothing to
do with the creation of prophets. We are made by Christ. “I will make you.” We
are fashioned in His presence. Every wealthy and fruitful gift for our work is
born directly of His own grace and love. Ring out the music of the changing
emphasis in this phrase! The promise reveals its treasure as each word is taken
in turn and given distinct prominence. “I will make you”; no one else and
nothing else can do it. Neither books, nor colleges, nor friends! “I will make
you”; He will make us just in that secret and mysterious way in which true poetry comes into being. The gift
will come as a breath, as an inspiration, as a new creation. “When He ascended
on high . . . He gave gifts unto men.” He dropped one gift here, and a
commonplace man became a pastor. He dropped another gift there, and the
undistinguished became a prophet. He dropped a third gift yonder, and an
impotent man became a powerful evangelist. “I will make you fishers of men.”
But even though the germinal gifts of the preacher are Christ-born and
Christ-given, our Lord expects us to reverently and diligently use our minds. He
will further fashion and. enrich His gifts through our own alertness. The
incipient capacity will be developed by our own intelligent observation and
experience. What can we learn which will foster our heaven-born gift? Let us
turn to the fisher in natural waters, and see what hints he may give us for the
labours in our own sphere. What, then, does the angler say to fishers of men?
Keep out of sight! Mark Guy Pearse is an expert fisher, and rarely does a year pass without his paying a visit to
the rivers of Northumberland. And he has more than once laid down what he
considers to be the three essential rules for all successful fishing, and
concerning which he says, “It is no good trying if you don’t mind them. The
first rule is this: Keep yourself out of sight. And secondly, keep yourself
further out of sight. And thirdly, keep yourself further out of sight!” Mr.
Pearse’s counsel is confirmed by every fisher. A notable angler, writing
recently in one of our daily papers, summed up all his advice in what he
proclaims a golden maxim: “Let the trout see the angler and the angler will
catch no trout.” Now this is a first essential in the art of man-fishing: the
suppression and eclipse of the preacher. How easily we become obtrusive! How
easily we are tempted into self-aggressive prominence! How prone we are to push
ourselves to the front of our work in quest of fame and praise and glory! The
temptation comes in a hundred different ways. It steals upon us in the study and
spoils our secret labour. It destroys the efficacy even of the bait that we
prepare. It comes upon us in the pulpit and perverts our workmanship even when
we are in the very midst of our work. The devil secretly whispers to us in most
unctuous flattery: “That was a fine point you made.” And we readily respond to
the suggestion. And so the insidious destruction is wrought. We don’t stand
aside. If I may vary my figure, let me say that our function is to draw aside
the curtain and hide ourselves somewhere in its robes. Let us remember that so
soon as our people see the preacher they will not take his bait. As soon as we
become prominent our Lord is never seen. Keep out of sight!
Cultivate a mood of cheeriness and praise. Here is a bit of counsel from an
old book whose phraseology and spelling have quite an old-world flavour about
them. It is a book on fishing. The writer is recording the requisite virtues of
the angler: “He should not be unskillful in musick, that whensoever either
melancholy, heaviness of his thoughts, or the perturbations of his own fancies,
stirreth up sadness in him, he may remove the same with some godly hymn or
anthem, of which David gives him ample examples.” Is that not rather a
far-fetched notion of an angler’s equipment? Why should he require the gift of
music? Because, says my author, when the angler is depressed he cannot throw a
light line. When a man is melancholy his throw will be heavy. When his spirits
are light and exuberant, he will be able to touch the surface of the water with
the exquisite delicacy of a passing feather. Can we not apply the counsel to the
ministry of preaching? If we come into our pulpits in a depressed and
complaining frame of mind, we shall lack the requisite throw. If we are
possessed by melancholy we shall catch no fish. And therefore it is well that
we, too, should resort to the service of song. We must sing away our depressions
and melancholies before we preach the evangel of grace. We must put on “the
garment of praise.” I frequently consult a book given to me many years ago, and
now out of print: “Earnest Christianity,” an account of the life and journal of the Rev. James Caughey. There is much in that journal that
reminds me of David Brainerd and John Wesley. One day James Caughey was
depressed and melancholy, full of lamentation and complaint. There was no music
in his spirit and there was no power upon his tongue. He preached, but
ineffectively, because his words were not pervaded by the spirit of praise. And
then he took to the corrective of prayer and singing. He adopted William Law’s counsel, and chanted himself into lightness and buoyancy of heart. He exchanged
the “spirit of heaviness for the garment of praise.” And now mark the change in
the diary: “Easy preaching now. The sword has a new edge, more apt to
penetrate; more strength in my soul’s arm to lay it round me fearlessly.” That
is the spirit. We must address ourselves to the great act of preaching in the
exuberance which belongs to a thankful and praiseful heart.
Study the fish! George Eliot was once listening to the complaints of some
angling friends as they were describing their fruitless day’s work. Looking into their empty creels she said: “You should make a
deeper study of the subjectivity of the trout.” That is a very suggestive word,
and pregnant with significance for the fishers in the world of men. We must
study the fish that we may find out what will win them for the Lord. All fish
cannot be caught by the same bait. We must study the individual prejudices, and
habits and tastes. We must discover what will catch this man and that man, and
address ourselves accordingly. I was once passing through a little village in
the Lake district, and there was a card in the shop window which gave me more
than a passing thought. On the card were a number of artificial flies with this
engaging headline: “Flies with which to catch fish in this locality.” The
shopkeeper had nothing to say about the requirements of the Midlands. He had
studied the characteristics of the fish in his own neighbourhood, and he had
discovered what bait provided the best allurement. We preachers must do it in
our own localities. It was the practice of the Apostle Paul: “To
the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain the Jews.” He became “all things to
all men that he might gain some.” He baited his hook according to the fish he
wanted to catch. I don’t think we should fish with the same hook for Lydia and
the Philippian jailer. It may be that we shall discover that a sermon will never
effect the purpose. We may find out that a letter will do infinitely better
work. Or it may be that a direct talk may be the requisite constraint. Or,
again, it may be that a long conversation, apparently indirect and aimless, but
quietly dropping one delicate hint, may win a soul for Christ. Study the fish!
Learn from other fishermen! Other men will never make us fishers, but they
may make us better fishers. If we have the rudimentary gift their experience may
help to enrich it. Let us turn to the expert fishermen and see if their ways and
methods can give us helpful counsel. John Wesley was a great fisher, can we
learn anything from him? Dr. Alexander Whyte has told us how he has made a
patient and laborious study of John Wesley’s journals for the purpose of classifying all the texts
upon which the great preacher built his evangel. Is not that a splendid
discipline for any one who wishes to become skillful in the great ministry?
What did Wesley preach about? And how did he fit his message to the changing
circumstances of his varying spheres? The Salvation Army has a great body of
expert fishers. They lack many things, but they catch fish. .How do they do it?
We may dislike many of their ways, but what is it in their ministry which
enables them to win multitudes for the Lord? What was the secret of Finney and
Moody? And what is it about Torrey which constrains the people to become
disciples of the Christ? Let us set about this investigation like men who wish
to do great business for the Lord. Let us eagerly pick up any hints which these
highly endowed and experienced men may be able to give us.
“It is a great matter to take a trout early in your trial. It gives one more
heart. It seems to keep one about his business. Otherwise you are apt to fall into unproductive reverie.” I know no word more
closely applicable to the work of the ministry. If we do not catch men we are in
great danger of losing even the desire to catch them. Our purposed activity is
in peril of becoming a dream. Let me counsel my fellow preachers in the lay
ministry to make up their minds to catch one soul, to go about it day and night
until the soul is won. And when they have gained one man for the Master I have
then no fear as to what will be their resultant mood. The joy of catching a soul
is unspeakable! When we have got one soul we become possessed by the passion
for souls. Get one and you will want a crowd I And let me say this further word.
Keep a list of the names of the souls you win for the King, and if on any day
you are apt to be cast down, and the lightness and buoyancy go out of your
spirit, bring out that list and read it over, and let the contemplation of those
saved lives set your heart a-singing and inspire you to fresh and more strenuous
work. It is a good thing to have lists of the Lord’s mercies by which to drive away the clouds in a day of
adversity. Let your labour be directed to the immediate catching of men for the
Lord. “It is a great matter to take a trout early in your trial.”
And now I will close this meditation by offering a suggestion which I
obtained from an advertisement in an anglers’ paper some time ago. “Now is the
time for your old favourite rods to be overhauled and treated with a steel tonic
that will not fail to work wonders in the way of renewing their strength.” And
following this advertisement came this confirmatory testimonial: “I am glad to
acknowledge that a very whippy gig-whip of a rod has been converted into a
powerful weapon.” My hearers will immediately perceive the spiritual
significance of the words. There are times when we need the “steel tonic” in
order that our poor ministries may be converted into powerful weapons. And,
blessed be God, we have the promise of this redemptive work in the very names in
which the Holy Spirit is revealed to us. He is called the Renewer, the Reviver, the Restorer of souls, and by His baptism the
poorest, weakest agent can be turned into a powerful weapon. “They that wait
upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” Let us turn to our Lord this very
night, and seek for that renewal in the strength of which we shall turn to our
work with multiplied possibility, and with perfect assurance of success.
V
THE DISCIPLE’S COMPANION
“Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed? And they said unto him,
Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Ghost was given.”—Acts 19: 1-3.
“DID ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed?” Why did he put the
anxious question? Were there some ominous signs of impoverishment which aroused
this painful wonder? Did he miss something? He certainly did not suspect the
reality and sincerity of their faith. The separation of this little body of
twelve men from the mighty drift and popular fashion of Ephesian life was itself
an all-sufficient proof that they were moving in the fear of the Lord. And yet
to the Apostle’s trained and discerning eye there was something lacking! I know
not what were the signs which stirred his solicitude. Perhaps it was the large
care-lines ploughed so deeply upon their faces. Perhaps it was a certain slow heaviness in their walk, or a certain stale
flatness in their intercourse. Perhaps it was a look of defeat in their tired
eyes—the expression of exhausted reserves, the lack of exuberance, the want of a
swinging and jubilant optimism. Perhaps it was the absence of the bird-note from
their religious life. I know not what the signs may have been, but some
conspicuous gap yawned before the Apostle’s penetrating vision, which prompted
him to ask this trembling, searching question, “Did ye receive the Holy Ghost
when ye believed?” And the half-spent and wearied souls replied, “Nay, we did
not so much as hear whether the Holy Ghost was given!” How imperfect their
equipment! How inadequate their resources! They were resisting the day’s drift
with a quite insufficient endowment. They were endeavouring to counteract and
transform the fashion of the world with quite inferior dynamics. I know that
mighty dynamics can work along the flimsiest threads, and I know that the
heavenly powers can operate through the slenderest faith; but there is an unenlightened, a non-vigilant, a non-expectant attitude of mind which
negatives the divine ministry, which impedes the inflow of the divine power, and
which reduces the soul to comparative weakness and impoverishment. The day of
Pentecost had come; the marvellous promises had been fulfilled; the
wonder-ministry had begun; but these disciples were still in the pre-Pentecostal
days: they were behind the spiritual times!” We did not so much as hear whether
the Holy Ghost was given.” And if you would. discover what it means for men to
step from pre-Pentecostal dearth to Pentecostal fullness, you must compare the
earlier atmosphere of this incident with the atmosphere of its close, and you
will find how these weary, labouring men, heavy-footed, heavy-minded, with slow
and stammering lips, are transformed into nimble, buoyant, and resourceful
servants of the Lord. “The Holy Ghost came upon them, and they spake with the
tongues and prophesied.”
But what is the relevancy of all this to our own time? The precise lineaments
of this incident are not repeated to-day. No such impoverishing ignorance prevails
among the modern disciples. We know that the Holy Ghost has been given. We know! Ah, I am using a New Testament word, and I must attach to it the wealth of New
Testament significance. We may “know,” in the way of cognition: a bare act of
the intelligence; a merely mental acquisition. And we may “know,” in the way
of a living fellowship, by the intimate discernments of communion, by the
delights and satisfactions of the soul, by real and practical experience. As a
matter of cognition, of merely mental enlightenment, we may live in the spacious
days of Pentecost; but in daily usage and common experience we may be living in
the leaner and straitened days which preceded it. I am deeply persuaded that,
judged experimentally by our daily life and practice, much of the mental
attitude and spiritual pose of the modern Church is pre-Pentecostal, and that in
this thin and immature relationship is to be found the secret of our common
weariness and impotence. This is the relevancy of the ancient incident: Do we share their mental temper, their spiritual
standpoint, their angle of vision? Are we a little band of pilgrims,
laboriously toiling over desert sands, with now and again the privilege of
standing upon some Pisgah height and wistfully gazing upon the promised land
afar, or are we in the possession and enjoyment of the goodly land, “a land
that flows with milk and honey”? Are we still on the road, or have we arrived?
Are our religious thinking and experience up-to-date, or are we behind the
spiritual times?
If I go into one of our assemblies of praise I find that we are still
“tarrying at Jerusalem,” waiting for “the Promise of the Father.” We are busy
invoking instead of receiving, busy asking rather than using. If I listen to the
phraseology of the hymns I discover that the outlook of the soul is frequently
pre-Pentecostal:—
Father, glorify Thy Son:
Answering His all-powerful prayer,
Send that Intercessor down,
Send that other Comforter!
Descend with all Thy gracious powers;
O come, great Spirit, come!
I think that if the Apostle Paul were to visibly enter our assembly when we
are singing these strained and fervid supplications he would wonderingly and
anxiously ask: “Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed?” He would
wonder that men should plead for a Presence when the Presence Himself is
pleading to be received! He would wonder that men should continue the strains
of the exile when the native air is about their souls! When I listen to some of
our prayers, and mark the pose and inclination of the soul, and note its
uncertain longings, its timid askings, its trembling waiting for an event which
has happened, its sighing for a gift that is already given, I can scarcely
realize that the One with whom we are dealing is “a gracious willing Guest,
where He can find one humble heart wherein to rest.” The attitude is
pre-Pentecostal; it is the language of the wilderness; it is not “one of the
songs of Zion!”
But when I look a little more deeply at this mental temper, and investigate
more closely the nature of its conception, I find that we are still
more profoundly allied with the imperfect mood and inclination of the
pre-Pentecostal day. Is it native to the Christian inheritance that we should so
commonly conceive of the Spirit as an influence, a force, an energy, an
atmosphere, an impersonal breath? I know the limitations of the human mind, and
I know the fertile and helpful ministry of simile and symbol. I know how
inclined we are to dwell in the realm of effects, and to express those very
effects in the shrines of figurative speech. It is beautiful and true to speak
of some gracious influence upon the soul by the imagery of a wind, or a fire, or
of light, or of dew, or of rain. I say it is a beautiful and a helpful ministry;
but if this be the predominant characteristic of our thinking we are
pre-Pentecostal men and women, and we are self-deprived of the strength and
glory of our larger and richer day. The all-encompassing glory of the Christian
day is this—that we are dealing, not with an energy, but with a Person—not with
“it,” but with “Him”! Now, see our danger. We are living in a time when men are
busy reducing all phenomena beneath the categories of definite law and order. No
phenomenon is now regarded as a lawless vagrant, the sport of a sad or happy
chance, wandering as chartered libertine through the mighty wastes of space.
Everything pays obeisance to law. And so, too, in the realm of the spirit, we
are busy eliminating chance and caprice; we are taking the tides of ambition,
the gusts of passion, the movements of desire, and the kindlings of love, and we
are reducing them to the dominion of sovereign law. We are seeing more and more
clearly that things are not erratic and lawless just because they are spiritual
and ethereal, and that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” is as
constant as the laws that breathe in the material world. Well, all this is wise
and good and inevitable. Only let us see to it that we do not so far bow to a
tendency as to enthrone a law in place of a Companion, and exalt a force in
place of a Counsellor and Friend. We shall lose unspeakably, and
miss the fine fervour and flavour of Apostolic life, if our larger knowledge of
law attenuates our fellowship with a Person, and our greater familiarity with
forces impair our intimacy with the immediate heart of God. “A something not
ourselves that makes for righteousness” may be a notable expression of
scientific thought, but it is not the language of religion. “A something not
ourselves that makes for righteousness,” when translated into religious speech,
becomes “a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother,” and when translated into
the New Testament evangel it becomes “the communion of the Holy Ghost.” Our
fellowship is not with a “something” but with a “Somebody,” not with a force but
with a Spirit, not with “it” but with “Him”!
It is just here, I think, that Keswick is contributing a vital emphasis to
the thought of the modern Church. I do not identify myself with all the mental
methods and instruments of Keswick. I think its Old Testament exegesis is often
fanciful. I think its symbolisms are often forced and artificial. I
think it has often laboured to erect doctrinal structures upon a tabernacle-pin
when it could have found a much more satisfactory base. I think it has shown a
little timidity in the application of its dynamic in the wider fields of social
and national life. But even these are criticisms which are directed more at
yesterday than at the life and teaching of to-day. The all-predominant teaching
of Keswick is the personality of the Holy Ghost, and the wonderful and glorious
privilege of the Christian believer to have holy and intimate companionship with
Him. They do not deal with an influence, they walk with a Friend! There is
nothing new in the teaching it is only the recovery of an emphasis, with this
further uniqueness, that while so many of us are contented with the proclamation
of the fellowship they are busy in the enjoyment of it, and about their lives
there is a strength, and a serenity, and a flavour, and a fragrance, which mark
them off from the harassed, restless, feverish world they are seeking to redeem.
I miss this glaring contrast between the Church and the world! The saved are too much like the unsaved; the physician is labouring under
the disease of his patient; there is no outstanding and commanding difference;
we do not, with sufficient legibleness, bear God’s name “in our foreheads.”
What is the reason? Is it that we are not long enough in His company to receive
the imprint of the fair and gracious seal? Is it that we are having mental
commerce with an “it” instead of ceaseless communion with “Him”? I declare
my own conviction that here is the secret of much of our impoverishment. We are
living too much as men lived before the Holy Ghost was given. We have not
occupied the new and far-stretching land of Christian privilege. We have not
seized upon our inheritance of august and holy companionship, and, therefore,
many of the gifts and graces and perfumes of the Apostolic age are absent from
our modern religious life.
You cannot, by fellowship with an energy, produce that exquisite little
flower called “heart’s-ease,” which was so prolific and abounding in the life
of the Apostle Paul. The prophet of the Old Testament hints at the coming of the flower in his
illumined phrase, “He that believeth shall not make haste”! What a word for
our own day! He shall not get excited, become fussy, or be thrown into panic! “He shall not make haste”! There shall be progress without much perspiration! There shall be strenuousness without strain! There shall be running without
panting!” They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
They shall be fed with “hidden manna.” In the very midst of turbulence shall
heart’s-ease grow. “He that believeth shall not make haste.”
O blessed life! the heart at rest
When all without tumultuous seems!
I say you cannot grow that flower in cooperation with an influence or a
force, but only in the strength and grace of a glorious companionship. It is not
the product of an energy: it is born of a communion. It is “peace in the Holy
Ghost.” Do you see much of this flower called “heart’s-ease” about to-day? When the world gazes upon us, the professed disciples of the Master, does it
see just a reflection of itself, its own wear and tear, its own strain and
worry, or does it stoop to gaze upon a rare flower, and to wonder and to inquire
about the soil in which it was grown? Is there anything about our speech and
behaviour to suggest that “wear and tear” are counteracted by a secret
renewal, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, “the inward man being renewed day by
day”? Speaking for myself, I have to say that even when for a day I enter upon
my inheritance, and realize the ineffable nearness of the great
Companion-Spirit, the strain not only goes out of my mind and heart, but I feel
the very wrinkles and care-lines being smoothed out of my face. If we were
children of Pentecost, living up to our spiritual times, heart’s-ease would
bloom just within our gate, and the weary wayfarer would be stopped by its
perfume, and would question us as to the secret and manner of its growth.
You cannot, by fellowship with a force, produce the exquisite grace of
Apostolic tenderness. Have you ever studied the strength and softness of Apostolic
tenderness? Why, their very rebukes and severities emerge from their tendernesses! Mark the tenor and order of this Apostolic counsel: “Full of
goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish”! Do you see where
admonition has to be born? Who is to be the monitor? One “filled with all
knowledge”! Back still further! “Full of goodness!” Who would not be helped
by admonition which came clothed in this tender bloom? But see again: “Admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”; and even
this singing monitor has first of all to “put on a heart of compassion”! All
this tenderness is not the softness of weakness; it is the bloom of strength,
and is born of the refining and chastening ministry of a great Companionship. We
cannot live in the communion of the Holy Ghost without our unnecessary
asperities being smoothed, away; the very power of the fellowship subdues them
into tenderness. And, my brethren, there must never have been a time when it was more needful to ensure this tenderness than to-day. In these days of
hard controversy we must beware of becoming hard. Men who become hard lose the
power to inflict hard blows. The most tremendous antagonist is the man who is
inherently tender. The only overwhelming anger is “the wrath of the Lamb.” No,
my brethren; we cannot fight without it! We cannot preach without it! You may
perhaps remember how Andrew Bonar and Robert M’Cheyne were having one of their
frequent walks together, talking over the ways of their ministry, when “M’Cheyne asked me,” says Bonar,
“what my last Sabbath’s subject had been. It
had been: ‘The wicked shall be turned into hell.’ On hearing this awful text,
he asked: ‘Were you able to preach it with tenderness?’” Shall we repeat Robert M’Cheyne’s question to one another? When we speak on the destiny of the sinful,
or on any one of the awful severities of the Word, are we “able to preach it
with tenderness,” with a melting heart, with secret tears? They say that M’Cheyne’s severities were terrific, they were so tender! And I do not
wonder at his tenderness, for he lived enfolded in the companionship of the Holy Ghost. He was ever holding converse
with Him, and how could he become hard? “Oh,” said his domestic servant; “oh! to hear Mr. M’Cheyne at prayers in the mornin’! It was as if he would never
gi’e ower; he had sae muckle to ask.” How could he become hard, abiding in a
Companionship which was forever communicating to him the very gentleness of God? You will not get that exquisite sensitiveness from a force; you will get it
only from an intimate Friend. “Thy gentleness hath made me great”:—
Tender Spirit, dwell with me,
I myself would tender be:
And with words that help and heal,
Would Thy life in mine reveal;
And with actions brotherly,
Speak my Lord’s sincerity.
And let me add this further word. There is a certain compulsory
impressiveness of character which attaches to profound spirituality, and which
is commandingly present in those who walk in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. I know not how to
define it. It is a certain convincing aroma, self-witnessing, like the perfume
of a flower. It is independent of mental equipment, and it makes no preference
between a plenteous and a penurious estate. It works without the aid of speech
because it is the effluence of a silent and secret communion. It begins to
minister before you preach; it continues its ministry when the sermon is ended.
It is endowed with marvellous powers of compulsion, and it sways the lives of
others when mere words would miserably fail. The pitman away yonder in the
county of Durham felt the strength of this mystic constraint when he said of his
old vicar, “You have only to shake that man’s hand to feel that he is full of
the Holy Ghost”! And his fellow in toil, an agricultural labourer in a not
distant village, was bowing beneath the same persuasion when, speaking of
another, he said, “I never saw that man cross the common, sir, without being
the better for it”! What is it, this mysterious influence? It is this: “He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which
they that believed in Him were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given,
because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Then it was not the vicar whom the pitman
felt, but the vicar’s great Companion; it was not the man who crossed the
common, but the man’s inseparable Guest and Friend. My brethren, Jesus is now
glorified! The Holy Ghost has been given! We, too, may cross our common, and
by the very crossing make men better: for in the prayerful fostering of a
conscious friendship with Him the “rivers of living water” will flow from you
and me.
I have been leading you among the rudiments of our religious faith and
life. I make no apology. “We must need to learn the things we have known the
longest.” Why should a man apologize for leading his fellows to the running
waters and the bracing air of the open moor? We are infinitely richer than we
dream. Ours is the Pentecostal inheritance. Let us assume the Pentecostal attitude of zealous and hungry
reception. Above all, let us cultivate a sensitive intimacy with the Holy Spirit
Let us listen to Him, let us talk to Him, let us consult Him in all the changing
seasons of the changing days, and let us greedily receive His proffered gifts of
enlightenment and grace. He will be our all-sufficiency, and we shall move about
in the enduement of Pentecostal power.
A little while ago I had a day-dream, one of those subjective visions which
sometimes visit the mind in seasons of wakeful meditation and serious thought I
was in my study in the early morning, before the day’s work was begun, and I was
somewhat sadly contemplating the comparative weakness of my ministry and the
many shortcomings in my personal life. And while I pondered, with closed eyes, I
became aware of a Presence before whom my spirit bowed in trembling awe. He
lifted my garments, and I saw that they were badly stained. He went away, and
came again, and again He lifted my robes, and began to remove the stains, and I
saw that He was using the ministry of blood. And then He touched my lips, and
they became pure as the lips of a little child. And then He anointed mine eyes
with eye-salve, and I knew He was giving sight to the blind. Then He breathed
upon my brow, and my depression passed away like a morning cloud. And I wondered
what next my august Companion would do, and with the eyes and ears of my spirit
I watched and listened. Then He took a pen, and putting it into my hand He said,
“Write, for I will take of the things of Christ and show them unto thee.” And I
turned to my desk and I wrote in the communion of the Holy Ghost.
VI
THE DISCIPLE’S REST
“Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you
rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart,
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”—Matt. 11: 28, 29.
“I WILL give you rest.” Give! This kind of rest is always a gift; it is
never earned. It is not the emolument of toil; it is the dowry of grace. It is
not the prize of endeavour, its birth precedes endeavour, and is indeed the
spring and secret of it. It is not the perquisite of culture, for between it and
culture there is no necessary and inevitable communion. It broods in strange and
illiterate places, untouched by scholastic and academic refinement, but it
abides also in cultured souls which have been chastened by the manifold ministry
of the schools. It is not a work, but a fruit; not the product of organization, but the sure and silent issue
of a relationship. “Come unto Me, . . . and I will give you rest.”
But even the gift of rest does not disclose its unutterable contents in a
day. It is an immediate gift, but it is also a continuous discovery. “Learn of
Me, . . . and ye shall find rest.” Part of “the things which God hath prepared
for them that love Him” lie in this wealthy gift of rest, and it is one of the
frequent and delightful surprises of grace that we should repeatedly come upon
new and unexpected veins of ore in this deep mine of “the peace of God which
passeth all understanding.” I say that the rest of the Lord is an immediate gift
and a perpetual discovery. “Come unto Me, . . . and I will give you rest.”
“Learn of Me . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”
And so I am to speak to you of the riches of the Christian
rest. Do you feel it to be an irrelevant note, an inappropriate theme, in the
march and warfare of our times? Surely, we need to speak of battle-fields rather than of green pastures, and
to hear the nerving call to struggle and duty rather than the soft and gentle
wooings that call to rest! Our times demand the warrior’s bugle-peal, and not
the shepherd’s pipe of peace! Ah, but, brethren, in this warfare the trumpeter
himself is shorn of inspiration unless he have the gift of rest, and the warrior
himself is rendered impotent unless he be possessed by the secret of the
heavenly peace. The restless trumpeter ministers no thrill, and the perturbed
warrior lacks the very genius of conquest. I know the feverish motions of our
time, the restlessness of fruitless desire, the disturbing forebodings of
anxiety, the busy-ness of the devil, the sleepless and perspiring activity of
Mammon, the rush to be rich, the race to be happy, the craving for sensation,
the immense impetus and speed characterizing every interest in our varied life,
and added to all, the precipitate shedding of hoary forms and vestures, and the
re-clothing of the thoughts of men in modern and more congenial attire. I know
the general restlessness, the heated and consuming haste, and knowing them I
proclaim that the secret of a successful antagonism must be sought in the
profound restfulness of the Church. I do not wonder at the restlessness of the
world, but I stand amazed at the restlessness of the Saviour’s Church! We are encountering restlessness by restlessness, and on many sides we are
suffering defeat. The antagonist ought to be of quite another order. The
contendents must be restfulness versus rest, and the odds will be overwhelmingly
on our side. Let me pause to make a few distinctions in order that my argument
may not be misunderstood. We must distinguish between indolent passivity and
active restfulness. I am not pleading for enervating ease, but for enabling and
inspiring rest. Ease is an opiate; rest is a stimulant, say, rather a
nutriment. Ease is the enemy of strength; rest is its hidden resource. I do not
stand here, therefore, as the advocate of the couch, but as the advocate of
restful and therefore invincible movement. Our scientists distinguish between motion and energy, and I could wish that some similar distinction might be
transferred to the sphere of the Church. All activity is not influential. All
speech is not persuasive. All supplication is not effective. The secret of
effective supplication is a quiet faith. The secret of effective speech is a
hidden assurance. The secret of triumphant warfare is a permanent peace. The
essential and operative element in all fruitful activity is a deep and abiding
rest. We must fight the prevalent restlessness by a sovereign peace. “Come unto
Me, . . . and I will give you rest.”
Now, my brethren, I confess I miss this essential in the modern Church. How
think you? Is the Church of our day characterized by that wealthy peace and
rest which ought to be the portion of all saved, forgiven and sanctified men and
women? I confess that peace and rest are about the last grace I think about
when I gaze upon the modern Church! The care-lines, and the wrinkles of worry
and anxiety and uncertainty, and a general air of restlessness, seem to me almost as prevalent upon the
countenance of the Church as upon the face of the world. The Church is not
conspicuous by the smoothness of its brow! Everywhere I detect a certain
strain, a certain fussy precipitancy, a certain trembling activity, a certain
emasculating care. We look like men and women who are carrying more than we can
bear, and, who are attempting tasks that are quite beyond our strength. If I
listen to our prevailing vocabulary, and note the words that are most in
evidence, my impression of the general restlessness is only confirmed. The
vocabulary is scriptural enough so far as it goes, but the real fertilizing
terms are too much obscured or ignored. The great, hot, dry words in the
terminology are manifest enough: strive, fight, wrestle, oppose, work, war, do,
endeavour; but those gracious, energizing words, lying there with the soft dews
upon them: grace, rest, joy, quietness, assurance, these deep, generic words
are not sufficiently honoured in our modern speech. I am calling for the
resurrection of these domestic terms in order that the military terms may be revived. I am calling to
peace for the sake of warfare. I am calling to rest for the sake of labour. I
plead for a little more mysticism for the sake of our enthusiasms. I proclaim
the sacredness and necessity of the cloister in the soul, the necessity of a
chamber of peace, a centre of calmness, a “heart at rest, when all without
tumultuous seems.” Rest is the secret of conquest, and it is to the Church
therefore, and not to the world, that I primarily offer this evangel today: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Now, when I look around upon the strained and wrinkled Church, moving often
in the pallor of fear and uncertainty when she ought to exult in the pink of
strength and assurance, I am impressed with certain primary lacks in her
equipment. The strain frequently comes at the hill; not always so, perhaps not
even commonly so, for perhaps it is true both of men and of Churches that the
strain is not so much felt in the sharp and passing crisis as in the dull and jogging commonplace. Perhaps there is
more strain in the prolonged drudgery than in the sudden calamity. The dead
level may try us more than the hill! “Because they have no changes they fear
not God.” But come the strain how it may, all strain is suggestive of inadequate
resources; and the wrinkled, restless, careworn face of the Church makes it
abundantly evident that the Church is not entering into the fullness of “the
inheritance of the saints in light.” What does the Church require if her strain
and her paralyzing restlessness are to be removed? She needs a more restful
realization of her Lord’s Presence. My brethren, we fight too much as soldiers
whose leader is out of the field. We work too much as though our Exemplar were a
dead Nazarene, instead of a living and immediate friend. We tear about with the
aimless, pathetic wanderings of little chicks when the mother-bird is away. And
so our life is strained and restless and uninspired, when it might be filled
with a big and bracing contentment. We need the stimulating consciousness of a great and ever-present Companionship. We know the stimulus of
lofty companionship in other spheres and in smaller communions. We know the
influence of Stevenson’s companionship upon Mr. Barrie and Mr. Crockett. That
companionship acted like a second literary conscience, restraining all careless
and hasty work, but it also acted as an unfailing inspiration, quickening the
very tissues of their minds and souls. It was a companionship that was not only
like a great white throne of literary judgment, but a throne out of which there
flowed, as there does out of every engaging personality, a river of water of
life, vitalizing all who hold communion with it. But when we lift up the
relationship, and contemplate the great communion which we are all privileged to
share in the companionship of the Lord, all similes tire and fall limp and
ineffective, and leave the glory unexpressed! A restful realization of the
Lord’s companionship! That has been the characteristic of all men whose
religious activity has been forceful, influential and fertile in the purposes of the kingdom. At the very heart of all their labours, in the very centre of
their stormiest days, there is a sphere of sure and restful intimacy with the
Lord. You know how close and intimate and calm such intimacy can be. I think of
Samuel Rutherford. I think of the love-language which he uses in his communion
with the Lord. Only the Song of Solomon can supply him with suitable expressions
of holy passion wherewith to tell the story of his soul’s devotion. When I read
some of his words I almost feel as though I were eavesdropping, and had
overheard two lovers in their gentle and wooing speech. It is a fashion of
language not congenial to our time, but that is only because in our day we have
almost ceased to cultivate the affections, and confine our education to the
culture of the intellect and the conscience. “We now make critics, not lovers,”
and the love-impassioned speech of Samuel Rutherford sounds to us like an alien
tongue. Samuel Rutherford had a sweet and restful intimacy with his Lord, and
therefore he was never idle, and never feared the coming day. I think of Jonathan Edwards, a man of greatly differing type from Samuel
Rutherford, but also a man of multitudinous labours and of fearless persistence,
and whose activities rested upon a sublime repose in the abiding sense of the
reality and presence of his Lord. His latest biographer declares that he had “an immediate vision of the spiritual universe as the reality of realities,” that
“in exploring its recesses and in pondering its relations he did so as native
and to the manner born,” and that perhaps next to the Apostle John he exercised
the surest and most intimate familiarity with things unseen. I think of David
Hill, and I am conscious of the sweet and gracious perfume which was ever rising
from his full and ever-moving life. At the heart of this busy worker was the
restful lover; he moved about in assured and certain warfare because his soul
was ever feasting in love-companionship with his Lord. I like this sentence of
his: “What a thrill it gives me to meet with one who has fallen in love with
Jesus!” Ah, but that is the speech of a lover, who is himself in love with the Lord. It is the thrill of sympathetic vibrations; it is the thrill of one
who is already in love with the lover, and who delights to see the Lover come to
His own. David Hill’s sort of warfare finds its explanation in the lover’s thrill, and in the lover’s thrill has its secret in the lover’s rest. But why
should I keep upon these high planes of renowned and prominent personalities?
Get a man who is restfully intimate with his Lord, and you have a man whose
force is tremendous! Such men move in apparent ease, but it is the ease that is
linked with the infinite, it is the very rest of God. They may be engaged in
apparent trifles, but even in the doing of the trifles there emerges the
health-giving currents of the Kingdom of God. Listen to James Smetham: “I was
at the leaders’ meeting last night. There was the superintendent. There were a
gardener, a baker, a cheese-monger, a postman and myself. We sat till near to P.
M. Now what were the topics? When is the juvenile missionary meeting to be?
When the society tea-meeting? How best to distribute the poor money, etc.?” Here were these unknown and unlettered men, engaged in apparently
trivial business, but resting in the Lord, and pouring forth from their
rest-possessed souls spiritual energy which to James Smetham is like “healthy
air,” and “send me home,” he says, “as last night, cured to the core, so fresh,
so calm, so delivered from all my fears and troubles.” The man who is sure and
restful in the conscious companionship of his Lord has about him the
strainlessness and inevitableness of the ocean tide, and gives off bracing
influence like God’s fresh and wondrous sea. “Then had Thy peace been like a
river, and Thy righteousness like the waves of the sea.” Let us become restfully
sure of God, and we shall meet the battalions of the evil one unstrained and
undismayed. “Hold the fort, for I am coming!” The doctrine is pernicious, and
fills the life with strain, and fear, and uncertainty! “For I am coming!” “The Lord of Hosts is
with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” Let the Church
rest in her Lord, and she will become terrible as an army with banners. “Come unto Me, . . . and I will give you rest.”
What does the Church need if her strain and her wrinkles are to be removed?
She needs a more restful realization of the wealth and power of her allies. We
too often face our foes with the shiver of fear, and with the pallor of expected
defeat We too often manifest the symptoms of panic, instead of marching out in
orderly array with the restful assurance of conquest. The hosts of evil are even
now organizing their forces in threatening and terrific mass. Are our wrinkles
increasing? Is our fear intensifying our strain, and are we possessed by a
great uncertainty? Why, brethren, if we were conscious of our resources, and
recognized our cooperative allies, we should more frequently put the Doxology at
the beginning of our programmes, and our hearts would sing of victory even
before the conflict began! It is all a matter of being more restfully conscious
of the allies that fight on our side. Paul was a great hand at numbering up his
friends, and so great was the company that he always felt his side was overwhelming! He periodically reviews the
cooperative forces, and invariably marches on with a more impassioned Doxology.
Think of our resources in grace. You cannot turn to any of the epistles of the
great Apostle without feeling how immense and immediate is his conception of his
helpmeets in grace. Grace runs through all his arguments. It is allied with all
his counsel. It bathes all his ethical ideals. It flows like a river close by
the highway of his life, winding with all his windings, and remaining in
inseparable companionship. But my figure is altogether ineffective. Paul’s conception of life was not that of road and river—the common highway of duty
with its associated refreshment of grace. Grace was to Paul an all-enveloping
atmosphere, a defensive and oxygenating air, which braced and nourished his own
spirit, and wasted and consumed his foes. “The abundant grace”! “The riches
of the grace”! “The exceeding riches of His grace”! can never recall
Paul’s conception of grace without thinking of broad, full rivers when the snows have melted on the heights, of brimming springtides,
and of overwhelming and submerging floods. “Where sin abounded grace did much
more abound”! And, brethren, these glorious resources of grace are ours, our
allies in the work, and march, and conflict of our times. Don’t you think that
if she realized them, the Church would lose her wrinkles and her strain, and
would move in the strength and the assurance of a glorious rest? I like that
dream of Josephine Butler’s, when her life passed into deep shadow, amid many
frowning and threatening besetments: “I thought I was lying flat, with a
restful feeling, on a smooth, still sea, a boundless ocean, with no limit or
shore on any side. It was strong and held me up, and there was light and
sunshine all around me. And I heard a voice say, ‘Such is the grace of God!’” Let the Church even dimly realize the force of this tremendous ally, and she
will move with a strength and quietness which will give her the secret of
perpetual conquest.
And think of our allies in circumstances! Devilry has not the unimpeded run of the field. Somewhere in the field, let
me rather say everywhere in the field, there is hidden the Divine Antagonist.
The apparent is not the fundamental. The immediate trend does not represent the
final issue. The roystering adversary runs up against Almighty God, and all his
feverish schemes are turned agley. It is marvellous to watch the terrific twist
given to circumstances by the compulsion of an unseen and mysterious hand. “The
things that happened unto me have turned out rather unto the progress of the
Gospel.” So sings the Apostle Paul, and the experience has become so familiar to
him that now, in the days of his great besetments, he always quietly and
confidently awaits the action of the mighty, secret pressure which changes the
temporary misfortune into permanent advantage. “I know that even this shall
turn to my salvation through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Christ
Jesus.” How can a man with that persuasion be shaken with panic? How can he
fight and labour in any spirit but the restful optimism of a triumphant hope? Do not let us quake before circumstances, or
lapse into unbelieving restlessness and strain. The secret of circumstance
belongeth unto God. The unseen drift is with us. The nature of things is on our
side. “Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field.” The universal
yearning of the material world corroborates the purpose of our advance. “The
whole creation groaneth and travaileth” in profoundest sympathy with the
evolution and “manifestation of the children of God.” The planet itself is
pledged against the devil. “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” “They that be with us are more than they that be against us.”
“And Elijah
prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord
opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was
full of horses and chariots of fire.” Our allies are everywhere and anywhere! Why should our faces be strained? Why should we toil in restless fear? Why
should the Church be wrinkled like the world? “Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, . . . that He might present
it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such
thing.”
And let me add one closing word. I think the Church needs a more restful
disposition in the ministry of prayer. I am amazed at the want of restfulness in
our communion with the Lord! I do not speak of our unnecessary loudness, but of
the feverish uncertainty, the strained and painful clutch and cleaving, the
perspiring pleading which is half-suggestive of unbelief. Let me say it in great
reverence, and not in a spirit of idle and careless criticism, when I listen to
some prayers I find it difficult to realize that we are speaking to the One who
said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and
open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me.” Our
strained and restless prayers do not suggest the quiet opening of a door, they
rather suggest a frenzied and fearful prisoner, hallooing to a God who has
turned His back upon our door, and the sound of whose retreating footsteps is lessening in the far-away. We need a firmer and
quieter assurance while we pray. Yes, even in our supplications it is needful to
“rest in the Lord.” Perhaps it would be a good thing for many of us in our
praying seasons if we were to say less and to listen more. “I will hear what
God the Lord will speak.” Listening might bring restfulness where speech would
only inflame us. It is not an insignificant thing that the marginal rendering of
that lovely phrase, “Rest in the Lord,” is just this, “Be silent unto the Lord”! Perhaps we need a little more of the Quaker silence and receptiveness, and a
little less of heated speech and aggression. At any rate, we must get the
doubt-wrinkles out of our prayers, and in our speech with God we must manifest
the assurance of a calm and fruitful faith.
I call you then to rest! Nay, the Master Himself is the
caller: “Come unto Me,” thou strained and care-worn Church, “Come unto Me,” and
I will distinguish thee from the world, for “I will give thee rest.”
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
VII
THE DISCIPLE’S VISION
“But in the latter days it shall come to pass.”—Micah 4:
1.
“BUT in the latter days it shall come to pass. . . .” The prophet lifts his
eyes away to the latter days to gain refreshment in his present toil. He feasts
his soul upon the golden age which is to be, in order that he may nerve himself
in his immediate service. Without the anticipation of a golden age he would
lose his buoyantly, and the spirit of endeavour would go out of his work. Our
visions always determine the quality of our tasks. Our dominant thought
regulates our activities. What pattern any I working by? What golden age have I
in my mind? What do I see as the possible consummation of my labours? I may be
keenly conscious of what I am working at, but what am I working for? What do I
see in the latter days? There is your child at home. You are ministering to him in your daily
attention and service. What is your pattern in the mind? How do you see him in
the long run? How looks he in your mind’s eye? What sort of a man do you see
in your boy? How would you fill up this imperfect phrase concerning him “In
the latter days it shall come to pass . . .?” Have you ever painted his
possibilities? If you have no clear golden age for the boy your training will
be uncertain, your discipline will be a guesswork and a chance. You must come to
your child with a vision of the man you would like him to be, and the vision
will shape and control all your ministries. Our visions are our dies, quietly,
ceaselessly pressing against the plastic material of the lives for which we
labour. Our vision of possibilities helps to shape the actuality.
There is the scholar in the school. When a teacher goes to his class, be it a
class of boys or girls, what kind of men and women has he in his eye? Surely we
do not go to work among our children in blind and good-humoured chance? We are the architects and builders of their characters, and
we must have some completed conception even before we begin our work. I suppose
the architect sees the finished building in his eye even before he takes a
pencil in his hand, and certainly long before the pick and the spade touch the
virgin soil. It is built up in imagination before he cuts the first sod. It must
not be otherwise with our children in the schools. Again I say, we must be able
to complete the unfinished phrase: “In the latter days it shall come to pass.
. . .” We must deliberately fill in the blank, and see clearly the consummation
at which we aim. That boy who gives the teacher so much trouble; restless,
indifferent, bursting with animal vitality, how is he depicted as man in your
chamber of imagery? Do you only see him as he is? Little, then, will be your
influence to make him what he might be. You must see a golden age for the boy, a
splendid prime, and so every moment your ardent vision will be operating to
realize itself in the unpromising material of the present.
Let me assume that your work is among the outcasts. When you go to court and
alley, or to the elegant house in the favoured suburb, and find men and women
sunk in animalism, trailing the robes of human dignity in unnameable mire, how
do you see them with the eyes of the soul? “In the latter days it shall come
to pass. . . .” What? To the eye of sense they are filthy, offensive,
repellent. What like are their faces, and what sort of robes do they wear in the
vision of the soul? Do we address the beast as the gentleman-to-be? Are we
dealing with the “might-be” or only with the thing that is? Sir Titus Salt
was pacing the docks at Liverpool and saw great quantities of dirty, waste
material lying in unregarded heaps. He looked at the unpromising substance, and
in his mind’s eye saw finished fabrics and warm and welcome garments; and ere
long the power of the imagination devised ministries for converting the outcast
stuff into refined and finished robes. We must look at all our waste material in
human life and see the vision of the “might-be.” I took out a little sentence the other day from a book I was reading, a
sentence which fell from the lips of one of the unfortunate women who so greatly
add to the sins of our great cities. Some man had done her a courtesy, spoken to
her in kindly tone and manner, and surprised and thrilled her cold and careless
heart. “He raised his hat to me as if I were a lady!” The man had addressed
her as she might be, and the buried dignity within her rose to the call. He
spoke to her in the language of the golden age, and she lifted her eyes to the
vision revealed.
Surely this was the Master’s way! He is always calling the thing that is by
the name of its “might-be.” “Thou art Simon,” a mere hearer; “Thou shalt be
called Peter,” a rock. To the woman of sin, the outcast child of the city, He
addressed the gracious word “daughter,” and spoke to her as if she were already
a child of the golden age; her weary heart leaped to the welcome speech. And so
we have got to come to our work with visions of the latter days, glimpses of the
“might-be,” pictures of the golden age, or the cheap and tinselled present will never be enriched. Take your child,
your scholar, or the outcast man in the court, or the degraded man in the villa,
and get well into your mind and heart a vision of all they might be. Spend time
over it. Work it out line upon line. Make it superlatively beautiful and noble.
Then, with that vision of the later day, address yourself to the present day;
and your vision will dominate your very muscles, and every movement of service
will be a minister of elevation and refinement.
I am not surprised, therefore, that all great reformers and all men and women
who have profoundly influenced the life and thought of their day have been
visionaries, having a clear sight of things as they might be, feeling the cheery
glow of the light and heat of the golden age. Abraham, amid the idolatrous
cities of his own day, had a vision of the latter days, and, while labouring in
the present, “looked for the city which hath foundations whose builder and
maker is God.” The Apostle John, in the Island of Patmos, while impressed with the iniquity of Rome seated on her seven hills,
and drunk with the blood of saints, saw through the Rome that was to the Rome
that might be, “The Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of
heaven, made ready as a bride adorned for husband.” And so has it been through
all the changing centuries right down to our own time. In my own city of
Birmingham forty years ago, when North and South America were locked in bloody
strife, and it seemed as though the future were pregnant with nothing but
quarrel and discord, John Bright lifted the eyes of his countrymen to the glory
of the latter days, and unfolded to them the radiant colours of the golden age:
“It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it; I see one vast federation
stretch from the frozen north in unbroken line to the glowing south, and from
the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific
main. And I see one people and one language, and one law and one faith, and over
all that white continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and every clime.”
And so the prophet Amos, in a book that is crowded with severity and
denunciation and indictment, and noisy with thunder and frightful in its
lightning, still lets us hear the music of the latter days, and permits us to
contemplate the vision of the golden age in which he travailed and toiled: “In
the latter days it shall come to pass. . . .” What are the characteristics of
the golden age to which the prophet was looking with hungry and aspiring spirit?
“The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the
mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills.” Then in the golden age
emphasis is to be given to the spiritual. The mountain of the Lord’s house is to
be established at the top of the mountain. I think of Durham city as an emblem
of the prophet’s thought. Away in the lower reaches of the city there is the
river, on which boats are plying for pleasure and recreation. A little higher up
on the slopes are the places of business, the ways and byways of trade. A little higher there is the castle hill, on which the turretted tower presents
its imposing front; but on a higher summit, commanding all and overlooking all,
there rises and towers aloft the majesty of the glorious old cathedral. Let me
interpret the emblem. The river is typical of pleasure, the ways of business are
representatives of money, the castle is the symbol of armaments, the cathedral
is significant of God. In the latter days the spiritual is to have emphasis
above pleasure, money, armaments. In whatever prominence these may be seen, they are all to be subordinate to the reverence and worship of God.
Military prowess and money-making and pleasure-seeking are to be put in their
own place, and not to be permitted to leave it. First things first I “In the
beginning God.” This is the first characteristic of the golden age.
“And many nations shall come and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain
of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways,
and we will walk in His paths.” Then the second characteristic of the golden age is that people are to find their confluence and
unity in common worship. The brotherhood is to be discovered in spiritual
communion. We are not to find profound community upon the river of pleasure or
in the ways of business or in the armaments of the castle. These are never
permanently cohesive. Pleasure is more frequently divisive than cohesive. At the
present time we have abundant evidence that commerce may be a severing ministry
among the peoples of the earth. And certainly we do not find union in common
armaments. Two nations may fight side by side to-day, and may confront each
other tomorrow. No, it is in the mountain of the Lord’s house the peoples will
discover their unity and kinship. It is in the common worship of the one Lord,
in united adoration of the God revealed in Christ, that our brotherhood will be
unburied, and we shall realize how rich is our oneness in Him.
“And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks.” Then the third characteristic of the golden age is to be the
conversion of merely destructive force into positive and constructive
ministries. No energy is to be destroyed: it is all to be transfigured. The
sword is to become a ploughshare; the weapon of destruction an implement of
culture. I saw a picture the other day which was intended to represent the
re-enshrinement of peace. A cannon had dropped from its battered carriage and
was lying in the meadow, rusting away to ruin. A lamb was feeding at its very
mouth, and round it on every side the flowers were growing. But really that is
not a picture of the golden age. The cannon is not to rust, it is to be
converted, its strength is to be transfigured. After the Franco-German war many
of the cannon balls were re-made into church bells. One of our manufacturers in
Birmingham told me only a week ago that he was busy turning the empty cases of
the shells used in the recent war into dinner gongs! That is the suggestion we
seek in the golden age: all destructive forces are to be changed into helpful ministries. Tongues that speak
nothing but malice are to be turned into instructors of wisdom. Passions that
are working havoc and ruin are to be made the nourishers of fine endeavour and
holy work. All men’s gifts and powers, and all material forces, are to be used
in the employment of the kingdom of God.
“They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree.” That
savours of Bournville! Yes, and Bournville is in the prophetic line, and has got
something of the light and colour of the golden age. There is to be a
distribution of comforts. Life’s monotony is to be broken up. Sweet and winsome
things are to be brought into the common life. Dinginess and want are both to be
banished. There is to be a little beauty for everybody, something of the vine
and the fig-tree. There is to be a little ease for everybody, time to sit down
and rest. To every mortal man there is to be given a little treasure, a little
leisure and a little pleasure. “And none shall make them afraid.” And they are not only to have comfort but
the added glory of peace. The gift of the vine and fig-tree would be nothing if
peace remained an exile. There are many people who have both the vine and the
fig-tree, but their life is haunted and disturbed by fears. In the golden age
peace is to be the attendant of comfort, and both are to be guests in every
man’s dwelling.
And now mark the beautiful final touches in this prophet’s dream:
“I will
assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her
that is afflicted.” They are all to be found in God’s family. “Her that halteth,”
the child of “ifs” and “buts” and fears and indecision, she shall lose her
halting and obtain a firm and confident step. “And her that is driven out,” the
child of exile, the self-banished son or daughter, the outcast by reason of sin; they shall all be home again!
“He gathereth together the outcasts.” And
along with these there is to come “her that is afflicted,” the child of sorrows. The day of grief is to be ended, morning shall be the
thing of the preparatory day which is over; “He shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”