Sturga-8'
1862- li£e
The church 9
THE CHURCH'S LIFE
A STUDY OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHURCH'S MISSION
BY
WM. C. STURGIS, A.M., Ph.D.
NEW YORK DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY
281 FOURTH AVENUE 1920
PREFACE
This book is the outcome of dire need on my part. When, in 191 7, I accepted the posi- tion of Educational Secretary of the Board of Missions and began work as such, a very seri- ous difficulty at once presented itself. Al- though a lifelong Churchman, a member of the Board of Missions for nearly ten years, and a leader of men's Bible classes for thirty, I had only the most rudimentary idea of what the Church exists for, what the word "mis- sions" means, and what is the teaching of the Scriptures on this subject. It was quite obvi- ous that if, as was necessary, I was at once to begin trying to make these matters clear to others, I must first clarify my own mind. For four months, sleeping and waking, I thought of little else; and then I became bold enough to prepare notes and to lead a Summer con- ference class on 'The Fundamentals of the Church's Mission." Whether my students re- ceived anything of value is of little importance. I did. For three successive years I gave the same course, always once, sometimes twice, constantly expanding it under the stimulus of the Holy Spirit's teaching, and the invaluable experience of being obliged to think logically and to express myself clearly. The attempt to
Preface
convince others is the only way to become con- vinced oneself; teaching is the only road to learning; one makes the best advance in com- pany. By this process my brief notes gradu- ally became sufficiently copious to form the basis of a volume; and as there seemed to be a need for such a book — judging at least by my own abysmal ignorance when I began — it seemed advisable to place them in that form, as a textbook for a study of the Church's mis- sion in the world.
The book, I think, contains nothing new. Indeed he would be venturesome who dared imagine that he had discovered anything new upon this well-worn topic. Still, the point of view may, in some cases, be found to differ from that commonly occupied. I do not, for example, remember having seen in any book a statement of the objective of the Church's mission as being the transmission of life from those who have it to those who have it not. Certainly "missions," as commonly defined, fall far short of this, and hence do not appeal to the average layman.
The reader at all acquainted with the subject will have no difficulty in tracing my constant indebtedness to certain notable books, espe- cially Dr. McLean's, Where the Book Speaks; Dr. Lawrence's, Introduction to the Study of Foreign Missions; and Bishop Gore's, The Sermon on the Mount.
New York, August, 1920.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Failure of a Nation. . i
II. A Chosen Generation ... 25
III. Life More Abundantly ... 53
The Church and Physical Well- being 64
The Church and Education . 71
IV. The Model Missionary ... 81 V. The Great Charter of the Church no
VI. The Call to Intelligence VII. The Power in the Church
135 168
THE CHURCH'S LIFE
CHAPTER I
THE FAILURE OF A NATION
However much there may be which the average layman can neither understand nor explain in religion — whether natural or re- vealed— one thing seems fairly obvious, i. e., that the whole story of both nature and revela- tion is, to any man who looks about him and reads his Bible, a record of God's eager desire to make Himself known to man and to make man able to learn at least something about God.
Undoubtedly there are men — often even students of science — who are so inexpressibly dull or so hopelessly immersed in things which they can see and taste and smell, and which therefore they take to be real, that they can look up at the sky on a clear night of stars, or feel the out-poured vigor of the sun, or catch the odor of flowers fresh blown, or watch the ebb and flow of life in a microscopic cell, with- out a thought of the Power hidden behind the
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The Church's Life
mere things seen. But I imagine that the majority of men, on the rare occasions when they really think, get, from the varied aspects of nature, some inkling of law and order and beauty, and have occasional fleeting impres- sions that, hidden away behind material things, there is something spiritual which is trying with all its might to get a message across to them. Many go so far as to think of this "some thing" as "some One." The impression is vague and momentary ; it doesn't amount to much and it isn't of much use. But it repre- sents a distinct effort on God's part, and it would have a measure of success— has had, in- deed, in rare instances, marked success — if only the man would not immediately proceed to hide himself from God's search in a fog of in- difference or laziness, on the ground that, after all, we are "men in a world of men," that the daily struggle for subsistence is quite enough to engage all the faculties of a normal man, and that the bridge to any other life is to be crossed when we get there. The truth is that Natural Religion, as a revelation of God, may make its appeal to some men all the time and to all men some time, but, as an adequate expression of God's passionate desire to convey to man a mes- sage concerning Himself, it has proved a fail- ure.
What is there left to be tried? What other means are possible ? If the heavens themselves fail to declare to men the glory of God; if men
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The Failure of a Nation
decline to see, in the ordered course of the firmament, any evidence of His handiwork; if sunshine and rain, the ordered seasons, the majesty of the sea, the infinite accuracy of created adjustments, give to the average man no thought of the wisdom and power and good- ness of God, how can God make Himself known? What avenue of approach can there possibly be between pure spirit and that seem- ingly indissoluble mixture of spirit and flesh which we know as Man? How can man, whether evolved from the beast or recovering from a lapse into beast-hood, rise to a point where he can see God for himself as not a stranger?
Faced by this dilemma God brought to light the greatest discovery of all time — that He could and must use man as the means for making Himself known to all mankind; in other words, that He must find some human being to whom He could reveal Himself, and who, in turn, could pass the knowledge on to others. The man so chosen must evidently possess two qualifications — first, he must have some unique spiritual capacity for receiving God; secondly, he must value the revelation so highly as to make it his business to tell others.
In the very early dawn of history such a man appears. Before Abraham's time, there appear to have been individual cases of men to whom God was able to make Himself known in some measure. But Abraham was the first
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who, having come to trust God, was willing to surrender his life, and to leave home and coun- try, "not knowing whither he went," in order to conserve, for the benefit of his race, the knowledge of God which he had received. He was already an old man, judged by our stand- ards; his knowledge of God was fragmentary and incomplete ; he probably had his eyes fixed quite as much on the temporal promises made to him as on the rather vague and long- deferred blessings predicted for his race; he was by no means perfect morally; but he had the one thing which God appears to deem es- sential in His messengers — a capacity for be- coming something worth while.
Where the man came from is uncertain, ex- cept that it was somewhere in that wide region on the northern confines of Babylonia between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and hence known to us as Mesopotamia. What his ante- cedents were we know only from a list of names. But one fact stands out prominently — he had received and cherished a true concep- tion of the unity and personality of God. Amid the polytheism and idolatry of Babylonia and Egypt, this was a unique revelation. It came to Abraham with an intensely personal meaning, so much so that later God, through the prophet Isaiah, speaks of "Abraham, my friend." This recognition of the oneness of God, this realization of God as a personal, guiding, trustworthy Presence, was what set
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The Failure of a Nation
Abraham apart from all who had preceded him, from his contemporaries, and from the tribes of Canaan among whom he eventually settled. And because God saw in Abraham a capacity for conserving this first successful attempt to reveal His essential nature to a man, and a further ability on Abraham's part to pass on this new-found knowledge to "his children and his household after him,,, in order that finally, through Abraham's descendants holding fast to this faith, its blessings should overflow to "all the families of the earth" — for these rea- sons God determined to separate this first mis- sionary of His from the contaminating sur- roundings of his own land and to plant him in a distant, restricted and isolated region which, after being purged of its idolatrous inhabitants, might become for Abraham and his countless descendants the fruitful seed-bed for further revelations, culminating in a complete and final revealing of Himself which should be man's salvation to all eternity.
It was a plan in keeping with the all-seeing wisdom of God; but its success depended abso- lutely on man's cooperation. For God to reveal Himself to man is one thing — and always pos- sible. For God to force man to pass on the revelation to some one else is quite another thing — and always impossible so long as man retains his God-given freedom of will. So it was with Abraham's descendants. Selected, isolated, protected, disciplined, enlightened by
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God Himself in order that they might become His missionaries — the bearers of His messages to the outside nations — the Jewish people saw in His promises merely a one-sided compact of which they were the beneficiaries, and in His protection only the flattering evidence that they were His chosen people because of their "righteousness." As a people they seem to have had no conception of the fact that if they were really a nation selected out of all the world, they had been so selected for a definite purpose in which all nations were included ; or that if they had been given even a partial knowledge of God, it was with the sole object of their sharing that knowledge with the whole world. Their attitude of mind would appear incredible were it not that precisely the same mental attitude is characteristic of the Church today as represented by the average Christian. It is interesting to note how patiently God tried to make His nature more and more clear to this peculiarly dull-minded people, and how wise and practical were His methods. First, selecting one man in the person of Abraham, He promised him, in return for obedience to th« point of exile, a secure foothold on earth and a multitude of descendants compacted into one nation which should be a blessing to the world. Between Abraham's immediate family He made a selection, rejecting Hagar and her son Ishmael as having no capacity for spiritual development (a selection justified in the Edo-
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The Failure of a Nation
mites and in the Midianites and the nomadic Arabs of today), and choosing Isaac as the vehicle of further revelation. Of Isaac's two sons God chose one, and rejected the other, again because of the fact, justified in the events, that Esau was distinctly commonplace and fit only to breed an earthy, unprogressive race; while Jacob, with all his glaring faults, did value spiritual things above material, and was fit to breed a race of God-servers. The revelation to Isaac is not on a much higher level than it had been to his father, neverthe- less so evident was it that he stood in a peculiar relation with God that even the Philistine chief, Abimelech, thought it the part of wisdom to be on friendly terms with one with whom God was plainly on friendly terms.
With Jacob the revelation proceeds apace. The promises heard by him at Bethel are, it is true, still distinctly material; but the impres- sion made upon him in this vivid experience of God's presence, as also later at the ford of Jabbok, wras a profound and lasting one, full of mysterious meaning but none the less real for that. To Jacob such an experience as the dream of a possible approach between heaven and earth — between God and man — through man — was a vision of what he — his people — the world — might attain to through obedience to a divine friend. To Esau such an experience would have been merely a nightmare brought on by over-indulgence in bean-pottage.
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In Jacob's large family of sons, some bet- ter, some worse, appears the first evidence of the fulfillment of God's promise to make of Abraham's descendants a great nation, in num- bers like the stars of heaven or the dust of the earth, mighty and numerous in order to be a spiritual force among the less developed peo- ples of the world. How these sons stand re- vealed in Jacob's final words to them! Insta- bility, ungoverned passions, materialism, sloth, falsity — such are the characteristics appearing in this extraordinary family. But among the twelve, two are found worthy of carrying on the destiny of the race of Israel. Through the obscure blessing pronounced on Judah — the lawgiver, the object of praise, the masterful — shine flashes of prophetic vision pointing to a far-ofl time when the nations shall be united in obedience to one divine authority. In the outpouring of blessings upon Joseph appear the compensating rewards attending persecution and suffering borne steadfastly for the truth's sake.
Both Judah and Joseph are men of force and vision, but it is Judah alone who is worthy to plant the stock from which, in the fullness of time, should spring the supreme and ultimate Revealer and Messenger of God.
Such was God's plan — such the foundations on which He built His vast design of a world- wide revelation of Himself to man through the obedience, first of an individual, then of a na-
The Failure of a Nation
tion selected and commissioned — His "chosen people/' Israel. To no race of men had ever been given so vast an opportunity; no nation had ever been so trained for an exalted mission in the fulfillment of God's world-wide plan. Yet never has there been in all history so tragic a failure. The very means which God took to make Himself known to the Jewish people be- came the rock on which they foundered. His almighty power revealed in awful majesty on Sinai was interpreted in terms of protection for themselves and destruction for their en- emies. This universal love, of which they were given countless evidences, was, in their minds, narrowed and confined lest it might touch others than themselves. His very presence, re- vealed to them in glory, was localized ; and the Creator of the universe, the Lover of all man- kind, was moulded into the measure of a tribal god inclosed within the material walls of taber- nacle and temple to be worshipped and honored by formal sacrifice and legal obedience, and only then so long as He proved considerate of their personal well-being and friendly to their national aims. And surely this was not the fault of God. By a great deliverance He had freed them from bondage; but for what pur- pose? With food from heaven He had fed them in their wanderings, and brought them into the land promised to their forbears and had given them national greatness; but to what end? In His love and wisdom He sent
The Church's Life
them messengers — poets, prophets, teachers. Through these He warned, appealed, besought, and threatened. But what was the meaning of it all? It must be confessed that such ques- tions had no interest for them, except as they could be answered in terms of personal or national blessing. Childishly self-complacent, arrogantly provincial, they turned deaf ears and blind eyes to the appeals and example of God's messengers and, refusing to see that they had been chosen, saved and given power solely in order to fulfill the mission of making God known to all the world, they precipitated the very disasters from which they trusted their God to deliver them. Time and again, with unwearying patience, God showed the Jews the inevitable consequences of their crim- inal blindness and narrowrness, until at last with two mighty strokes He drove them out of their seclusion and dispersed them, agonized and despairing, among their hated enemies of Assyria (B. C. 722) and Babylonia (B. C. 586).
For a century and a half the Jews remained in exile. Meantime Jerusalem had been de- stroyed, and its walls levelled ; the Temple had been burned. Thus not only was the center of Jewish worship laid waste, and Jewish nation- ality destroyed, but their reliance upon God as their peculiar protector and deliverer had proved false. Sad and tragic as the Babylo- nian captivity was, it seems to have been the
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The Failure of a Nation
only means by which God could make any im- pression upon the hardened exclusiveness in which the Jews had encased themselves. In one way it worked well. They of the captivity did come to look with loathing upon the religion of their captors, and they returned to Palestine in a chastened spirit, holding fast the concep- tion of the unity of God, and thereby made fit to serve once more as the vehicle of God's further revelation of Himself to all the world. Once more the phrase, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord," became the char- acteristic expression of Jewish faith; once more Israel saw itself as the servant and messenger of the Most High.
The nation returned to its Holy Land to find the latter a shrunken territory indeed. Galilee — the ancient kingdom of Israel — had become largely a Gentile colony ; Samaria to the south was found to have been occupied by a mixed race of Jews and Assyrian colonists who won the bitter hatred of the orthodox by imitating, in debased forms, the ancient religion of Juda- ism, and by actually building a rival temple of their own on Mount Gerizim. To the return- ing Jews remained only the restricted area of Judaea ; and here, with devout and concen- trated energy, they set about restoring their former capitol, rebuilding the sacred Temple, and again enforcing the rediscovered Law. It was as though God had, with undiscouraged patience, again implanted in the minds of this
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recalcitrant people the fundamental truth about Himself, and had determined to give them one more chance to make that truth known to a waiting world.
But history repeated itself. Once more the Jew gradually returned to his tribal conception of God, deliberately scorning his God-given mission. The history of the centuries inter- posed between the close of the Old Testament record and the beginning of the New is a dim and confused story of futile struggles for Jewish independence and nationality, of selfish withdrawals into themselves, of deepening scorn for their neighbors, of steadily increas- ing religious formality and legalism. The average Jew of that time could, no more than the average Churchman of today, see the hand of God in his training, or hear the voice of God in his mission, or realize the inevitable result of his self-centered religion. The Jew, refus- ing to be set free in order to bear a message, slowly became forced into physical and mental bondage. Slowly but inexorably the bonds of foreign domination tightened about him until, at the dawn of the Christian era, we find him the despised subject of Rome, yet willfully un- conscious of his bondage and of the tragic fact that the glorious opportunity which was once his had passed from his grasp forever.*
* See, in this connection, an admirable article by P. F. Underhill, entitled "On the 'Failure of the Church'," in The Holy Cross Magazine for June, 1920.
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The Failure of a Nation
Here it would be well to pause for a moment and consider the question whether what we have been assuming as a fact is really so. Was God's revelation of Himself to the Jews ever meant to be universal ? Did He really in- tend them to carry His message into all the world? Was it in order to assure them of His favor and goodness toward them that He gave them the knowledge of Himself, or was it in order that they might be His means of bless- ing all the nations of the earth? In a word, Does God believe in foreign missions, or not? This is rather a crucial question because, if He does, there are many Christians today who do not agree with Him. Let us see, then, what the great men of the Jewish Church thought about this.
It is perhaps unnecessary to dwell upon those prophecies which were at the very foundation of that one family which God selected in order to accomplish His purpose for the world. To Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob Jehovah promised that the knowledge of God which had come to them should, through them, be a blessing to all the nations of the earth (Cf. Gen. 12:1-3; 26:4; 28:14). He swears by Himself and by His very existence that the whole earth shall, one day, be filled with His glory (Num. 14:21). The poets of Israel, having in mind the nature of God, are filled with the glorious assurance that there is no other possible objective in God's plan. It is im-
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possible to read the Psalms * without realizing that, to the minds of the writers, the supremacy of God, over-ruling the evil in the world, over- throwing all opposition to His universal will and His supreme authority throughout the whole world, is a dominant note; and, more- over, that there is equally present to their minds the fact that this end is to be accom- plished primarily through a realization, on the part of the Jews themselves, that the mis- sionary responsibility rests upon them, and that they have, indeed, been set apart for that purpose, through the fulfilling of which alone they can confidently expect God's mercy and blessing. "God be merciful to us and bless us," they cry; but only "that Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations." Perhaps the most perfect expression of this all-embracing expectancy is to be found in the great hymn of Asaph, David's choir- master, sung at the bringing up of the ark, and its establishment in the tabernacle (i Chron. 16:8-36). It is the same with the great seers of Israel. What they see most clearly, and what they passionately long to make the people see, is that Israel is intended to be a center of light for all mankind, and that selfishly to appropriate that light or carelessly to hide it is to forfeit all claim to be the chosen of God. It would be impossible in a brief space to re-
* See especially Psalms 2, 22 (latter portion), 45, 46, 67, 96, 97, 148.
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view the message of the prophets, but through all their writings sounds the eager, dreadful cry against a people who had forsaken right- eousness, scorned alike the promises and the warnings of God, and, in seeking to monop- olize the grace of God, had blinded themselves to their high calling as a missionary people.
The Book of Deuteronomy sets before the people the moral obligation of knowing and keeping God's law. Its acceptance will inevi- tably result in the outpouring of God's blessing ; its rejection is, as inevitably, the source of every misfortune. It is to be thought about, talked about, written up in their houses, above all it is to be taught to the children so as never to be forgotten. Religious education was to play a supremely important part in the family life of the Jew — it was to be one of the greatest expressions of his mission (C/.#Deut. 6:4-15; 11:18-21). And this was in order that the active righteousness of the Jewish people might be an example to all who came among them. Solomon builds and dedicates a temple for Jehovah. It is a place of worship primarily for the Jew, but not alone for him. To it, Solomon foresees, many will be attracted from other lands — strangers, not people of Israel; and for them he asks of God that when these Gentiles recognize the power and beauty of God as set forth visibly before them, He will answer their prayers as He answers those of His own people, that so "all the peoples of the
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earth may know Thy name and fear Thee" ( II Chron. 6 132, 33 ) . Long afterwards Isaiah, too, sees the attractive power of a people among whom God is truly worshipped. To him, as to Solomon, the Temple is the natural gathering-place for strangers; there they will be accepted with their prayers and offerings, "for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all peoples. The Lord God which ' gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet will I gather others to him, beside his own they are gathered" (Is. 56:7, 8).
Undoubtedly to both Solomon and Isaiah the attractive power of the Temple and of the worship of Jehovah had only one objective so far as Gentiles were concerned. They were thereby to be converted and brought into the commonwealth of Israel. But, after all, was not this ideal perfectly right and logical at the time ? To the Jews alone of all people on earth had been given "the oracles of God," they alone were the chosen of God, only within the Jewish Church was there safety and light through the knowledge of God. To convert.the Gentiles to Judaism was therefore the chief function of the Jewish- people, and this Isaiah says can be done and will be done by the manifest loyalty of the people toward God's law and worship. To this he urges them, not for themselves within the covenant, but for the sake of those outside. It was God's will that all nations should have been brought to His Israel's light,
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if only, alas, she had kept it burning (Is. 60: 1-3). This is the attracting power of loyalty to God.
But that loyalty must have an out-reaching expression as well. Not only must outsiders be drawn in from all nations, but insiders must be sent out to all nations. This too is part of the message of the prophets. What is the Book of Jonah but a parable setting forth the su- preme obligation of the Jewish people toward the heathen? God's plan is to draw all men unto Himself to be united — Jew and Gentile alike — in one great community over which God Himself is King. In and through this "new Israel" shall be given the complete and final revelation of God. Even this final consumma- tion the prophets appear to see dimly. It is too small a task for the coming Messiah merely to raise up the tribes of Jacob; He is to bring salvation to the Gentiles throughout all the world (Is. 49:5, 6). To Him— the "Root of Jesus" — shall all nations seek (Is. 11:10). Through Him the glory of the Lord is to be revealed to all flesh (Is. 40:3-5).
With clear, though doubtless contracted vision, Micah sees the day when God will be recognized as the source and center of all law and light, and when all nations shall seek Him (Micah 4:1-3). To Daniel is shown a vision of the time when all the kingdoms of the earth and all human sovereignty shall give way to the everlasting Kingdom of God (Dan. 2:44).
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Through Zephaniah, the Lord speaks His ulti- mate purpose of bringing the peoples of the earth to serve Him in unity of purpose (Zeph. 3:9). Zechariah pictures Jehovah as a man arousing himself in order to bring many na- tions to join themselves to the Lord and to rejoice in His presence (Zech. 2:10-13). Again he sees Jehovah as King over all the earth, while from His presence flow forth, east and west, His life-giving waters (Zech. 14: 8, 9). Finally, Malachi sees the "one far-off divine event'' as already present — the ultimate purpose of God already fully accomplished. "From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name is great among the Gentiles ; and in every place incense and a pure oblation are offered unto my name : for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of Hosts" (Mai. 1:11).
Such is the trumpet-call of the prophets of Israel sounding in the dull ears of their people; by such appeals do they strive to arouse the Jewish Church from its self-complacency and apathy. Obedience — Loyalty — High Example — Out-going Activity — Zeal for God and His Church — these are the notes of their call. "Mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." So, in the fullness of time, did a priest of God sum up the message of the prophets. "A light to lighten the Gentiles"!
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Had the Jews but seen the determinate will and purpose of God, what glory would have been theirs today!
Three other features of the prophets' mes- sage should be noted. The Jew had a respon- sibility covering not only Religious Education and World-wide Evangelization, but toward Social Service as well. For this mission he had been given the most careful preparation. His code of moral and social law, his rules of hygiene, were perfect so far as they went. He had been taught his responsibility toward all others of his own race. Nevertheless, by the time of the prophets, he had forgotten many of these lessons. As in our own social system today, pride of wealth and position, oppression, greed, injustice, had dulled the feeling of brotherhood. Against these sins the prophets fulminated. Their warnings have a familiar sound in our ears. It is vain, they say, to attempt to serve God acceptably by sacrifices and offerings and worship, when all the time injustice and evil-doing characterize your rela- tions toward one another. The sight of you among the nations, so far from winning the Gentiles, can only serve to repel them from you and from your God. "Seek judgment, re- lieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Only so can your scarlet sins be washed out clean (Is. 1:16-18). Again, "Make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday" (how cool that sounds in a torrid
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climate !). "Let mine outcasts dwell with thee" (Is. 16:3, 4). As to formal observances, surely self-discipline and self-sacrifice are not ends in themselves. Rather are they the means which enable you to have time and spirit to check oppression and to break evil bonds; ability and desire to feed hungry people and to provide poor people with shelter (Is. 58:5-7). It is Isaiah, too, who sees and points out the merciful character of the longed-for Messiah, which if the people will only show forth now they shall be so blessed of the Lord that all nations shall take notice (Is. 61:1, 2; 8, 9). Indeed the mercy and righteousness of God, reflected in the behavior of His people toward one another, is not for them alone; for all nations await the reign of righteousness, and the servant of God shall not fail nor be dis- couraged until justice is established throughout the world (Is. 42:1-4). Secondly, we should note how the prophets emphasize personal re- sponsibility in the discharge of the world-wide mission. Perhaps the most solemn of all their appeals to personal service is voiced by Ezekiel. The watchman on the walls has an individual responsibility; in sounding the warning of the enemy's approach he discharges that respon- sibility. So when God warns the wicked, through His watchman, and His watchman is quick to give the warning, he has performed his duty; but if he fails, he is guilty of the death of the wicked. This is the equal justice
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of God (Ezek. 33). Isaiah enforces the duty of personal service in a similar way. Jehovah has set watchmen on the walls of His city — they are the "Lord's remembrancers/' to bring the things of the Lord to the minds of others. "Take ye no rest, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. " Righteousness going forth as brightness, and salvation as a lamp that burnetii — this is the objective of the Lord's remembrancers, for they have seen His righteousness ; they have experienced His sal- vation (see Is. 62:1-2, 6-7). It is to those who, in personal service, are thus faithful to their trust that Jehovah promises a glory never to be dimmed. "They that teach others shall shine as the brightness of the firma- ment; and they that turn many to righteous- ness as the stars for ever and ever" (Dan. 12:3).
Thirdly, Ezekiel saw very clearly a fact which is quite as evident to us today. At the time he wrote, the Jews had become widely scattered. Ezekiel himself, while still a young man, had witnessed the overthrow of the King- dom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar, and had been one of the multitude deported to Babylon where, for the remainder of his life, he shared the fortunes of the Jewish exiles. As a prom- inent member of the colony thus placed in the midst of a heathen population, he had abundant opportunity to note how inadequately his fel-
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low-exiles bore witness to their religion. Had they shown faithfulness to their God, they would have proved the "leaven to leaven the whole lump" of Babylonian idolatry (Cf. Ezek. 36:23, last clause). As it was, however, they had proved anything but faithful. Indeed God's judgment against them is that they had profaned His holy name to such an extent that the Babylonians themselves scorned them for their inconsistency and taunted them and their God. These, they mocked, are the people of the mighty Jehovah, a god unable even to keep them in His own land (Ezek. 36:20, 21). Today Christians are scattered all over the known world. Colonies of baptized busi- ness people from a Christian land are to be found in every great center of heathendom. Are they faithful in worship and witness ? Are they conscious of their missionary responsi- bility, or do they not rather bring scorn, by life and example, upon their religion, "profaning the holy name among the nations whither they went"? No man on earth has quite the mis- sionary opportunity of the Christian man of affairs in a heathen country, unless it be the Christian on his summer holiday in rural dis- tricts; yet one would almost say that by none other is the opportunity more fatally neg- lected. One can only fall back on God's as- surance through Ezekiel that, notwithstanding the disloyalty of His own people, He is deter- mined to sanctify His great name among the
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nations, and make them know that He is the LORD.
This, then, is the message of the great poets and prophets of Israel. God revealed Himself to the Jewish people not for their own sake, but in order that, through them, His revela- tion might be made known to all nations. By every conceivable means He tried to show them the glorious opportunity. Time and time again He showed it to them, but as often as He showed it so often did they turn their backs on it.
Then, at last, when His plan for revealing Himself to man had been thwarted by man's own will, God put forth the supreme effort of determined love. "For us men and for our salvation, He came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." These are the words in which you and I express, week by week, the stupendous fact. That any wholly human being could serve as the revealer of God had proved a vain hope, but in the Son of God become man, the divine and human blend in one. In His divine nature Jesus Christ per- fectly apprehends God and becomes the mirror of God, looking into which we see God; in His human nature He is one with us, and adapts His revelation to our capacity to receive it. Looking upon Him, we know what God is like. And on this basis God formed a new creation — a race of twice-born men, possibly as dis-
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tinct from and as far above ordinary men in the scale of being as the latter are distinct from and above the lower creation. The mem- bers of this new race derive their life directly from Christ the Living One; from them God builds up His Family, His Church. He loves to call them His "new Israel," for through them He plans to make Himself known to all men everywhere. To them He entrusts His message. To them He gives a mission. "Go ye," said the Son of God, "into all the world, and proclaim the good news."
God has done His part, He has taken the last step possible. It rests with us, the mem- bers of His Church, as to whether again His plans miscarry, or whether, faithful to our trust, we carry our new life to those not yet reborn, whether close at hand or in the utter- most parts of the earth.
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CHAPTER II
A CHOSEN GENERATION
Perhaps enough has been said in the pre- vious chapter to indicate two facts: first, that God has a message to man which He is keenly interested in having delivered; and, secondly, that, failing natural means, He has resorted to human agency. The message is no less than the revelation of Himself. His plan has been to reveal Himself first to one carefully selected man of spiritual capacity to receive the revela- tion; then, from him, to build up a people, chosen, isolated, disciplined, instructed, blessed; in order that, through them, the message might be carried everywhere. The man was Abra- ham, the people, Israel, God's ancient Church.
The plan proved successful in only small measure. Abraham and his immediate de- scendants— Isaac and Jacob — developed great spiritual capacity, and had their descendants shown a like spirit, there is no knowing how far the Jewish people might have progressed as messengers of God to all the world. Unfor- tunately the spiritual history of the race proved an ever-darkening sky in which appear, only here and there, a few planets of the first mag- nitude. Such men as Joshua, Samuel, David,
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Elijah, a few of the kings, all of the great prophets — these men shine out as brilliant examples of faithfulness. But on the whole it must be acknowledged that so far as the Jews, as a people, were concerned, they failed to fulfill the purpose for which God had set them apart. To this general statement, certain ex- ceptions should be noted. First, the Jew early seized upon and held with unshakable tenacity the conception of the personality and unity of God; to this fact he testified vigorously and universally. Secondly, he preserved with scru- pulous care the sacred writings of his seers, which writings have come down to us as an inestimably precious heritage. For these two facts the world owes to the Jew more than it can ever repay. Thirdly — most important of all — there did develop among the Jews a spir- itual capacity which God could seize upon for the fulfillment of His ultimate purpose in the final revelation of Himself to man. The crowning glory of the Jewish race, as it is the culmination of its tragedy, is that it was a people worthy to bring the Christ to birth, but unable to recognize Him when He appeared among them.
The New Testament introduces us to God's supreme venture of love. Again He chooses a man, but now it is the incarnation of Himself, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. To Him He entrusts the perfect revelation of Himself; to Him He gives the task of begetting a new
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race — a new Israel — a new Church — built up, not as before, from one nation, but from all nations and tongues, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, with no distinctions among themselves, but distinguished from all others by their son- ship toward God, their knowledge of Him, and their determination to make that knowledge world-wide. So the Christian Church arises as God's messenger like the Jewish Church of old, but having this supreme advantage, that she is born of One divinely human and humanly divine, able perfectly to receive and perfectly to impart the complete revelation of God, and able further to make of His Church a trust- worthy witness, proclaiming God's message to all men everywhere, and thus fulfilling her mission. Such being the case, the mission of the Church — her reason for existence — be- comes a matter of very serious concern to every one of her members. For surely if a message from God to man is of any value at all, it is the one thing in human experience which is really vital, not only for the world to come but for this world. It is literally, as we shall see later, a matter of life and death. The message itself is supremely worth while, there- fore it is equally worth while to consider very carefully what that message is and what it involves. And here let me say in passing that there are very many people who, though they have been made members of the Church by Baptism, are quite unconscious of any special
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benefit which has accrued to them thereby and naturally therefore feel no desire or obligation toward others in regard to it. Having little in the way of faith or of the knowledge of God, which is of any real use to themselves, why should they want to pass it on? With such I have no quarrel. Their religion — what there is of it — is merely a decoration, a super- fluity, it involves no issues to themselves, it entails no privilege or responsibility toward others. Why should it ? They fail to see that the Church has a mission, they are "not inter- ested in missions" ; therefore, for them, any consideration of the subject is dull and aimless. But there are others to whom God is real, religion vital, faith uplifting. These have something worth sharing. Yet, for one reason or another, largely through lack of thought and knowledge, they have never been led to see the enormous significance of "missions." They have listened to "missionary" addresses; they have been periodically stirred to give some- thing— not much — to "missions"; they have possibly heard of The Spirit of Missions; but they have never really taken in the fact that the Church's mission has a very vital relation to themselves. Their attitude is like that of the boy at one of our Church Schools. His father, visiting the school on a certain occa- sion, met the master of mathematics, and in the course of conversation remarked, "My son, I believe, took algebra with you last year."
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"Yes," replied the master somewhat quizzi- cally; "but I shouldn't put it that way. He was exposed to it, but he never took it." It is for such persons that this book is written. They should be interested and active in the Church's mission.
I say "The Church's Mission" rather than "Missions." And this because the latter word, whatever it meant a hundred years ago, has come to mean to the average layman something far smaller than the cause it represents. A palm tree and, standing under it, a tall indi- vidual in black coat, white tie and top hat, and, in the background, a crouching cannibal — isn't this the picture that rises before the mind of the average man upon hearing the word "Mis- sions"? Similarly a "missionary" is usually thought of as a peculiar person who feels called to go and "preach the gospel to the heathen"; the whole conception being based on a mis- understanding of what is meant by "the gos- pel," and the equally mistaken idea that, in order to see a "heathen," what is needed is a telescope, when, as a matter of fact, the naked eye, or even a looking-glass may serve the pur- pose admirably. Then, too, the words which suit the usual mental picture of "Missions," and have had their share in accentuating a totally inadequate conception, are those of the familiar "missionary" hymn,
"From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand, 29
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Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand:"
The words are rightly endeared to many people, but the trouble with them is that while they mention several places with which most of us have no conceivable contact, which we have never seen and never expect to see, they say nothing of New York or Omaha or San Fran- cisco or any other place where you and I live, and where, therefore, you and I, as members of a Church with a mission, have a message to give.
The word "Missions" also gives the unfor- tunate impression that there are all kinds of missions, and therefore all sorts of messages. Consequently the average layman has come to speak of "foreign missions'* and "domestic missions" and "diocesan missions" and "paro- chial missions" ; and, worse still, he even picks and chooses among these, and states, some- times, as though he were perfectly reasonable, that he believes in one kind but not in another. Of course this is stupid, and could have been largely avoided if only we Churchmen had all been taught, from childhood up, that the one Church has one mission, which is to carry a message received from God and to deliver it to every man, woman and child within reach — to John Smith around the corner in my town, quite as much as to John Chinaman in Hankow, and vice versa.
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that we have come to use the words "missions" and "missionaries" in a special sense just as we speak of the sun's "rising" and "setting," though we know perfectly well that the sun does nothing of the kind. But the two cases are not parallel. It makes no practical differ- ence to us whether the sun rises in the morning or whether the earth turns round to meet it; we wake up and go to work just the same. But when we speak of "missions" and "missiona- ries" and limit the words to a special and pecu- liar type of far-off work or workers, we pro- duce a wrong impression, and do practical harm to the cause of Christ and to the general sense of personal responsibility toward the Church's mission.
What, then, is the Church's mission, and what does it involve ? Let us consider the sec- ond question first. Suppose I am busy at my desk and want to see Mr. Jones presently. I say to my secretary, "I want to see Mr. Jones of 30 Main Street here or at his office an hour from now." This is sufficient if my secretary has ordinary intelligence. He at once does something — goes, writes, telephones or hires a messenger-boy. Of course he goes himself in case other duties permit; but in any case he doesn't sit still and take no action. He has a mission to perform, and evidently the discharge of that mission involves personal activity of some sort. The word "mission" implies activ- ity— doing something. When we speak of
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activity in connection with the Church's mis- sion, we do not of course mean only moving about. There are many kinds of activity other than physical. One of the most efficient mis- sionaries I ever knew was a bed-ridden woman. She read about the Church's work and work- ers ; she prayed for them ; her hands and brain were constantly active on their behalf. Her activity, constantly exercised, was of mind and hands. I know of another who, in the course of her latter fifty years, had amassed a for- tune of 1 08 godchildren, with every one of whom she kept in touch at monthly intervals and every one of whom was active in Church work. Her own activity as a missionary was of the letter-writing variety, and who can measure its value ? Again, there is the activity of putting one's hand into one's purse and taking it out again with the wherewithal to further the Church's mission. Very different kinds of activity, these; but all exceedingly valuable.
But the discharge of a mission implies some- thing besides activity. There must also be the delivery of a message. Mere activity is not sufficient. My secretary must see to it that by some means Mr. Jones gets my message and gets it in time. It would be quite useless for him merely to walk to 30 Main Street and then walk back. He must, in some way, either di- rectly or indirectly, accomplish his object.
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Secondly, then, a mission implies the delivery of a message.
These facts are true of the Church's mis- sion as of every other mission. They apply to every member of the Church. Every baptized person has a specific message which he is called upon to deliver to one specific person or pos- sibly to many. It devolves upon him to take some direct action without delay. For it must be quite plain that if the gospel is really what it claims to be — good news — much is involved in its announcement. Thus, in order to be "news" it must be taken to those who are either ignorant or unappreciative of it; to be "good news" it must be news the acceptance of which adds to the joy of living; and in order to be of use, as a matter of life and death, it must be brought in time. A messenger bearing abundant food to a starving man is of little use if he delays his mission and arrives only after the man has starved to death.
Thirdly, if a man has a message to deliver, it is essential that he know precisely what that message is. It is not so necessary for him to determine just how he is to get the message across; but he must, at least, know what the message is about.
What, then, is God's message to the world? The simplest way is to go straight to the Gos- pels— the record of the Great Messenger Him- self. A message appears very early in His active ministry, indeed even before His min-
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istry began ; for John the Baptist heralded His coming by the statement, "Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Make straight the way of the Lord" ( St. Matt. 3 : 1 -2 ; St. John 1:23). This announcement appears to have been an important one in the mind of Christ, for as soon as John is no longer able to pro- nounce it publicly, He adopts it as His own preliminary message to the world (St. Mark 1:14, 15). And surely there are abundant signs that the Kingdom of God is today nearer at hand than ever before in the world's history. God seems to have used even war to further His own ends. The determined efforts toward moral and social reforms throughout Christen- dom— efforts sometimes ill-directed and exag- gerated it may be, but none the less earnest; the suppression of "the people that delight in war"; the saner forms of social unrest; the vast swing of all civil government toward de- mocracy; the growing passion for Christian unity ; the increasing coordination of Christian forces ; the rapid spread of the Gospel in pagan lands, attaining, in some cases, the proportions of mass movements — what are all these but steps in the drawing nigh of God's Kingdom? Never was there a time when that declaration, made by the great Messenger of God so long ago, seemed nearer its fulfillment. But, as a preparation for that fulfillment, God calls man to repentance. Because the Kingdom is nearer than ever before, the deeper is the need for
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men to examine themselves and their motives of conduct, and, wherever they have offended against righteousness, to repent and be con- verted— to turn around and take the opposite course.
The whole trouble with the world today is, as it always has been, that the Church is not producing a sufficient supply of visible and effective righteousness to go round. This in turn is due to the fact that there are not enough Christians working overtime at producing more Christians. Hence, the coming of the King- dom of God on earth lags. This might be illustrated by a simple analogy. We are all painfully aware of the fact that if we need a new pair of shoes we have to pay two or three times as much as we paid for the same quality five years ago. Why ? Because there are not shoes enough to go round. But wThy is the supply so short? One reason may be that the shoemakers who worked overtime during the war are now experiencing the let-down that every worker feels after a period of unusual energy, and they have made up their minds to limit their hours of work; therefore fewer shoes are produced, and up goes the price. It is much the same with us Christians. The objective of the war was to overthrow the rule of might and to substitute for it the rule of right ; to this end — surely a righteous end — we all worked overtime. But the moment the armistice was signed we all experienced a les-
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sening of morale and began to congratulate ourselves on the fact that we could now take a rest, or at 'least that we were justified in diverting our thoughts and energies to the less serious concerns which we delighted in before the war startled us into the consciousness that we were in fearful danger of seeing the law of might actually put into effect the world over, and that we must stop the process at all costs. The blind folly of such an easeful course is becoming more and more apparent. The war proved a mighty stimulus to the effort to pro- duce more righteousness and peace in the world, but now all sorts of new unrighteous- nesses are cropping up ; the world is in turmoil and its peace is threatened in all directions; wide-spread discontent is apparent, and the discontented appear to be again prepared to invoke the old law of might in order to gain their ends. The truth is that the greatest dangers inherent in war are not those existing during the actual hostilities when a great cause keeps fighters and workers keyed up to high endeavor and limitless sacrifice, but rather those characteristic of the aftermath of war when the stimulus is gone and men are tired of struggling even for the right. It is the period of reconstruction, such as that we are now in the midst of, which really tries men's souls. What else brought on the war, what else explains conditions in the world now that the war is over, except the fact that the visible
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supply of righteousness has never equalled the demand — that there have never been enough real Christians? And the remedy?
Well, in the case of shoes, the remedy for the inadequate supply is to be found only in making more shoes. To this end every shoe- maker must work harder ; he might even devote part of his time to teaching some one else how to be a shoemaker. Not shorter hours than during the war, but longer ; not less work, but more and of a better quality. Precisely the same is it with us Christians. The present is no time for relaxing effort or shirking work. Righteousness and peace are scarce commod- ities today, the cost of producing Christians is high, the supply short. (The crowning trag- edy of the war was that it destroyed Christians and non-Christians indiscriminately, thereby decreasing the already too scanty supply.) What is needed on the part of Christians is not less work, but more and of a better quality than ever; not less determination to make the law of right supreme, but more. The job of every Christian at this present moment is surely to devote part of his time to showing some one else how to be a Christian. We have seen the actual good which God brought out of the war, but let us remember that while God does overrule and bless man's efforts to pro- mote His cause on earth, inadequate though these efforts may be, He cannot overrule for
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good man's sheer indifference and laziness, or even his "faintness in well doing."
But to return to our theme of God's mes- sage. However much our Lord, throughout His ministry, dwelt on the teaching of the Kingdom, this was rather the result of the accepted message than the message itself. The latter is found, in its most succinct form, in those words which are perhaps more univer- sally familiar than any others in the Gospel: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him, should not perish, but have everlasting life" (St. John 3:16). Could any announcement open up more marvelous vistas of possibility; could the divine will for man be more per- fectly expressed ? Note the outstanding words : ;'God," "loved," "world," "gave," "life." Here is the clarion announcement of the redemption of all mankind ; here also is the whisper to the individual soul — "whosoever believeth."
This, then, is the fundamental, primary mes- sage of God through Christ. We may be able neither to understand it nor to explain it, but we can receive, believe and announce it. In- deed, as Christians, we can do no less. The disciples certainly had no conception of its meaning; it dawned upon them only as the weeks drew to months and the months to years. Nevertheless note how their Lord used these men — untrained, without understanding — as His messengers. Presently, when the impos-
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sibility of His reaching large numbers of peo- ple personally becomes apparent, he chooses first twelve and later seventy of his followers. He tells them to proclaim the approach of the Kingdom, but, more than that, He gives to these ignorant, uninformed, men spiritual power to such a degree that the results astound them. And this, simply because they were willing to place themselves in His hands, to step out regardless of their self-evident unfit- ness, asking no questions, urging no excuses. Why can't Christian men and women show a like spirit today? Why will they sit down and manufacture excuses, when Jesus Christ has come to them as closely as, for example, in the Blessed Sacrament, and bids them show at least some form of activity as His messengers? For remember, those early disciples, whatever they lacked, had the one essential quality — they were "willing in the day of God's power." Moreover, they learned through their experi- ence itself. They doubtless expected no great results in themselves or others; but at their Lord's command they tried the experiment, and, like the crew of fishermen later, they re- turned elated, strengthened and blessed. Try it you who are shrinking, doubtful of your own ability, satisfied to remain inactive ! Note this also for your encouragement: In the case of the Seventy, at least, the Lord followed them, going to each place which they visited,
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no doubt correcting their mistakes, certainly reenforcing their message.
But let us go a step farther in discovering God's message and method. Occasionally be- fore the close of the Gospel narrative, almost always later, we find that these messengers heretofore called "disciples" — learners, are given a new title — "Apostles" — men sent. This is significant, for if a man is sent it must be with a purpose, and if we can find the pur- pose we shall also probably find the message. Pass from the Gospels to the Acts, noting by the way that it was only after Christ's physical presence was withdrawn from the disciples that they are commonly called Apostles. It is as if He knew that He could now depend upon them to bear the message as He had borne it, to be sent as He was sent. Indeed He knew that it was better, for the wider procla- mation of God's message, that His physical presence, with its limitations, should be with- drawn and that they should be left to other guidance in the task of proclaiming the mes- sage, increasing the number of messengers, and building up the Church to accomplish what He had begun (St. John 16:7-14). What, then, was the purpose for which the Apostles were sent ? It is very plainly stated — "Ye shall be witnesses unto me" (Acts 1:8). Consider the word witness. It has two meanings as commonly used. It may have the meaning to see an occurrence ; or it may mean to bear testi-
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mony to something known or experienced. Every lawyer is familiar with this latter use of the word. I may say, "I witnessed a display of Northern Lights last night." You may doubt it. I reply, "But I am ready to bear wit- ness to the fact that I witnessed it."
Now what was it that these disciples had witnessed or seen — an event of such a stupen- dous character that they could not help bearing testimony at once to the fact? In other words, what was their immediate message after the Day of Pentecost, and what relation did it bear to their Lord's message to the world? The fact was evidently the Resurrection. They had seen their Lord done to death beyond all doubt ; equally beyond all doubt, they had seen Him risen from the dead. It was an astounding fact, unique in human experience. If even to the disciples, duly warned beforehand to expect the Resurrection, the event appeared beyond belief, it was doubly necessary that it be abso- lutely proven for the sake of those who should come after. No wonder, therefore, that when, owing to Judas Iscariot's treason and suicide, it became at once advisable to choose some one to take his place, only one requirement ap- peared essential ! It must be one who, like the Eleven, had witnessed the Resurrection (Acts i :22). This was the fact to which they were all to bear witness, and therefore it was this, rather than repentance, or the coming of the Kingdom, or even God's announcement of His
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love, which became the center and core of their first preaching. Many deductions were drawn from this great fact, but St. Peter's first ad- dress to the people has for its fundamental theme the certainty of the Lord's Resurrection and continued life. Their message was that, in one case at least, and to their certain knowl- edge, death was vanquished and eternal life proved possible.
But possibly this case was a unique one. It may be objected that Jesus Christ rose from the dead because He was God, and that there- fore His Resurrection has no significance for us ordinary men. To this it may be replied that to the disciples certainly this explanation never presented itself. They had seen Him live as a man, be tempted as a man, suffer as a man, die as a man; and now they had seen Him rise from the dead as a man. An ordi- nary man? No. But the kind of man which every human being has the privilege of becom- ing when he is made a son of God. While the writers of the New Testament nowhere teach the inherent immortality of man as such, they do teach constantly that eternal life becomes the possession of every man new-born into God's family, and kept in touch with the life of God in Christ.
But there was still another message — an- other reason for testimony. "Ye shall be wit- nesses unto me," their Lord had said. Who was it whom they had seen, and lived with and
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known through three years of close intimacy? St. John, the Apostle of deepest insight into the true nature of Him whom he loved so pro- foundly, gives the answer. "The Word of life," he calls Him (i John 1:1). There is no doubt of whom he is speaking. The phrase instantly recalls the prologue of his Gospel — "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... In him was life" (St. John i n-4). And turning again to the epistle, we read, "The life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear wit- ness, and show unto you that eternal life'' ( 1 John 1:2). This was the Being whom their eyes had looked upon, whom their hands had handled, of whom they had had a personal experience. It was to Him that they were to bear witness; and He was "the Word" — the expression — of God Himself. Was not this precisely what He had said of Himself in the days when they had failed to understand? "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (St. John 14:9). They had seen God in the flesh; so far as human minds can apprehend God, they knew, by experience, what God was like; and, best of all, they could tell others. Here, surely, was a message worth telling to men groping for God in the dark, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him. And how about ourselves who, though not having seen Him, yet have believed; who have before us the record of His life and words ; who can turn
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to that record and see in it a perfect picture of what God is like? Then, having mastered every detail of that picture, how can we resist the insistent call to show it to others, even to one other, and thus dispel the gloom of those who, consciously or unconsciously, are in that most desperate and heart-breaking of condi- tions, "without Christ, having no hope, and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12)?
Finally, let us see the climax of the whole message of those first Apostles. We have seen how eagerly and insistently they dwelt upon the message of the Resurrection — of the vic- tory of life — a message to an ignorant, dying world. We have seen, too, how, having seen God in the flesh, having heard Him and lived with Him and been taught by Him, having experienced His love and pity and sympathy and patience and majesty, they were in a posi- tion to tell all men what God was like. One thing only remained: from their contact with the ever-living Christ, they became aware of a new life in themselves. Somehow the Christ was able to transmit His own indestructible, unending life to others. I don't mean to say that this was realized at once. Indeed the fact, though witnessed to by every one of them whose testimony we have, is not fully and gen- erally grasped even today. Yet the testimony is perfectly plain. Let us examine it.
To the biologist, one fact is incontrovertible. No created being possesses inherent life. Life
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is an endowment of all organized beings, from the lowliest up to man, but it is a transient endowment. It may be short, or it may outlast centuries, but sooner or later death intervenes, life vanishes, and the creature returns to the elements of which it was composed. In God alone — the Source of life — the I AM — the Everlasting One — is life inherent. What then is this that Jesus Christ says of Himself ? "As the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself" (St. John 5 126). It is one of those quiet statements of fact such as our Lord was constantly mak- ing about Himself, only to be as constantly misunderstood because of the implications im- possible at first to grasp, and therefore, as many modern teachers would have us believe, to be explained away somehow. And doubtless some of His similar statements are open to such interpretation. "I and my Father are one." Is there not a sense in which a similar oneness exists between a truly married husband and wife? Or take the saying previously quoted, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." St. John later recognized its full meaning; but, after all, might it not mean merely that, in character, Christ more nearly resembled the imagined divine ideal than has any other human being? And so with the other claims of Christ. But how about this, of inherent life? Read it again. The statement is very direct; the words perfectly simple. But how
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stupendous the claim ! No less than the claim to have in Himself inherent, indestructible, communicable life, in the same degree and measure as has the Eternal God, Creator of all things visible and invisible. Explain it away if you can! Reject it if you like! But there it stands for every Christian to accept with all its implications. If proof be needed over and above His own word, it is found in the Resur- rection. His life had so strong and inherent a quality as to be invincible even in the pres- ence of Death.
Nor, as we have just seen, is this all. The Apostles certainly believed and taught that this ever-living Christ is able to communicate to otherwise mortal human beings His own inherent, indestructible, eternal life. Indeed He Himself gives this assurance: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life" (St. John 5 124) . Here is held out, not some future hope, but a present reality — not "shall have," but "hath" eternal life— not "shall pass" out of death, but "hath passed." How well St. John realized eternal life as an accomplished fact in himself and others who had touched the Living One! "God gave unto us," he writes years later, "eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life"
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(i John 5:11, 12). There is no message worth giving unless Christ rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:14). The message of the Resurrec- tion lacks point unless, because He lives, we also live (St. John 14:19). It was not so much a proof of His deity as an assurance of invincible life to all who are in union with Him. So our Lord sums up the objective of His mission in words fraught with a glorious op- portunity for all the sons of men in every phase of existence — "I came that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly" (St. John 10:10). No darkest corner of earth is beyond the reach of that shining message; no aspect of human life need remain untouched by it. This is the objective of "missions"; in these terms we may find the perfect definition of that ill-used word.
Tremendous as is the responsibility thus en- tailed upon us Christians, the privilege is no less. Eternal life is our possession. For us death has no terrors. Yet all about us are men and women who have not the life, and who, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews ex- presses it, are "through fear of death, all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb. 2:15). From the African savage with his fetich against the ubiquitous powers of evil and death, to the modern man of super-civilized terror of germs, the majority of mankind — of our own acquaintances — exist under the shadow of fearful death, and spend their hours guarding
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against its insidious approach. But for the Christian there is no death, only a momentary falling asleep when his limited work is done and he is ready to continue that work else- where, free and unhampered; 'Tor the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2). Under the power of such an assurance, other promises of the Master of Life become realized. Anxiety and worry in the present, uncertainty and fear regarding the future — these curses of modern life which drive men and women into premature old age— are super- seded by their direct opposites. 'These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be fulfilled (com- plete)" (St. John 15:11). "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you" (St. John 14: 27). "These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace" (St. John 16: 33). What more could we want? What greater assurance of happiness could we imagine? The fear of death gone forever; life eternal our possession here and now; all anxiety dissipated ; peace and joy our portion. This seems to me the crowning message of God, through Christ, to a world in desperate need of just what the message promises.
If this be true, it follows that what our Lord says about a new birth, and the expression used by St. Paul to describe Christians, are literal facts. "Except a man be born anew
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A Chosen Generation
(from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God" (St. John 3:3). "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (St. John 3:5). "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature" (11 Cor. 5:17). This may oblige us to revise our ideas regarding the ascending scale of created things. It seems to introduce us to a new order of beings. Heretofore we have been accus- tomed to think of the inorganic Mineral King- dom; next above it the Vegetable Kingdom, above this the Animal, and, at the summit of the latter, Man. But how if above Man there is a higher Kingdom of new-born men — a "new creation" ? So it surely is ; and this new crea- tion— the citizens of God's Kingdom — the members of God's Family — of His Church — constitutes a new class of human beings, dis- tinguished from all below it by the fact that those admitted to it possess a kind of life, described as everlasting, which is different from that possessed by ordinary mortals, and is as much higher in the scale of being as human life is above that of the lower animals.* Of course it must be added, with the utmost degree of emphasis, that, like all analogies, this cannot be pressed to a purely logical conclu- sion; for the glory of human beings is the fact that every one of them has the capacity of
*This will be recognized as the view so convincingly set forth years ago by Professor Drummond in his book, Nat- ural Law in the Spiritual World.
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being born again into immortality — to rise in the scale of existence; while the lower animals, so far as we know, can not. In this tran- scendent possibility lies your opportunity and mine. For to us is entrusted this message of life; and, more than that, we know how the life may be secured. Jesus Christ said that unless a man is born anew of water and the Spirit he has no entrance into the Kingdom of God; and the implication is that by such Bap- tism he does obtain the new birth and begins the new life. This is the door into the King- dom— we know of none other. It is true that God may provide other means of entrance. Who would place limitations upon His infinite grace? But we are not assured of any other; we are assured of this. We know, too, both by teaching and experience, how the new life — weak and incomplete at first — may be nour- ished and strengthened. By the careful nur- ture of the new-born life, by the strength of the Holy Spirit given with the laying on of hands in Confirmation, by the receiving of Christ Himself in the Holy Communion, by purposeful prayer, by study of God's word — in brief, by all the means of grace, the new life develops and expands until it reaches its earthly consummation and attains unto "the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). In the whole process,
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A Chosen Generation
Baptism is the birth, completed in Confirma- tion ; the Holy Communion is the development ; likeness to Christ is the objective; eternal life is the possession. The Church selects these Sacraments as all-important and, indeed, as "generally necessary to salvation" (A Cate- chism. tThe Book of Common Prayer, p. 270). If it be objected that in thus emphasizing God's manner of working through material means trivial in themselves — water, bread, wine — we are limiting His freedom of opera- tion, we may reply that, in the first place, we are not presuming to say what He can or what He can not do; and, in the second place, that the consensus of Christian thought through- out the centuries is our warrant for believing not only that God works by self-imposed law, but that the Sacraments are the normal expres- sion of His law working in the realm of grace. The liberty of God never degenerates into license. Since first He moved on the face of the waters creating life, He has been self- restrained by law and order. The law by which the planets revolve in their appointed orbits, or water becomes wine in the vital pro- cesses of growth, or the ocean breathes in rhythmic tides, or bread is transmuted into the Body of Christ, or consecrated hands become the channels of grace — in these alike we recog- nize the operation of Law. If the labors of scientific men and their consensus of opinion have sufficed to reveal the laws of God in the
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material realm so that we guide our daily actions by them, even though there may be operations of law unknown to us as yet; it would be strange indeed if the mind of the Church has been led astray when it sought to discover God's laws in the spiritual realm, and has failed to formulate them aright, even though much yet remains to be revealed. The theory of the freedom of the Holy Spirit apart from law has its logical outcome in the mad delusions of the "Holy Rollers." When, there- fore, we would show men the way of salvation, we can do so, with assurance and safety, only as we direct them to Baptism and the whole sacramental life of the Church.
Such, then, is the message of "good news," and it is only that final and complete revelation of God in Christ which we call Christianity that brings any sufficient assurance of eternal life and adds to that assurance the perfect means of securing and maintaining it. No other revelation, such as is to be found express- ed in incomplete forms among all nations, pos- sesses this assurance or this power. To every doubting, struggling, fearing son of man, the Christian can point the way to life and peace and joy ; to every mortal, it is within the Chris- tian's privilege to open the Kingdom's gates. "Here is water; what doth hinder thee to be baptized ?" "Take, eat ; this is my body." "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life" (Acts 8:36; St. Matt. 26:26).
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CHAPTER III
LIFE MORE ABUNDANTLY
We have seen that God's supreme message, through and in Christ, to us men, is the good news of life eternal, beginning normally at Baptism, empowered in Confirmation, main- tained by constant contact with the living Son of God through the Eucharist and God's other means of grace. We Christians are thus re- born into conditions of existence infinitely above that of ordinary humanity, and in that higher realm of being we are maintained with increasing fullness, if we choose. The funda- mental characteristics of that plane in the ascending scale of life are its eternal quality, its perfect peace and the fullness of joy, quite irrespective of surrounding conditions. This is a certainty of common experience. We have seen, too, that it is our manifest duty, as it is our privilege, knowing the way of life, to lead some one else to see and follow it.
It is surely remarkable that, if these are real experiences, they should have so small a part in the thought and life of the average run of new-born people. It is almost impossible, m most cases, to distinguish them from the lower
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The Church's Life
order of mortals. Once on Sunday they are seen to enter the doors of a special building, but why they do it and what they do when they get inside, are enigmas to their friends out- side. Possibly if the latter knew that the new- born man merely followed a custom of his kind, and that all he did was to say Amen a dozen or more times in an hour; repeat, with perfect unconcern, a formula of life-changing beliefs, hands in pockets, on his face a vacant stare at his neighbors ; listen drowsily to some reading and talking; once a month or even less fre- quently be given a bit of bread and a sip of wine — perhaps, if they knew this, they might wonder still more whether there was, between the Christian and the non-Christian, any real difference of such a character as to make in- vestigation worth while. The Christian has been re-born into a higher sphere of existence, yet most of his concern is with affairs in the lower sphere. Thus the birthday which he celebrates so joyously is obviously not his real birthday (though exception might here be made of the Roman Catholic who, as a rule, does recall his "name-day" and does celebrate its anniversaries). When he was baptized, the Christian was endowed with life unending; yet, in his more serious moments, he speaks of the "end of life," and the prospect of "death" rather appals him. A fellow-Christian passes over into Paradise, and he says, "Poor fel- low!"; if the relationship has been a close one,
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Life More Abundantly
he dresses in somber black and mourns visibly and at length. Even the religious press has caught the habit, and prints notices to the effect that such and such an aged Christian has just "entered upon eternal life.^
The Christian has vowed before God to be and to remain all his life a faithful soldier and servant of Christ, and therefore to obey God, to fight for His cause against every evil thing, and to serve in His Name. This he has adopted as his profession, whatever he may do to get a living; yet one is forced to acknowledge that if every soldier fought as half-heartedly, and every servant gave as inefficient service as does the average Christian, the world would be nothing but a hideous caricature of what God intended it to be. He has probably forgotten the date of his Confirmation, when the Holy Ghost came upon him with power, eager to abide with him forever. To go without his breakfast is a hardship not easily to be borne, but to forego his bit of morning prayer or to oversleep himself and miss the early Eucharist does not disconcert him much. In a word, this average Christian seems habitually to think of life in terms of mortality, and of his relation to God in terms of unreality. Given the power to live on a high plane, he is content to exist most of the time on a lower. One recalls the clever remark of a famous English actor when discussing with a certain Bishop the relative appeal of the stage and the pulpit. "The truth
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The Church's Life
is," said he, "that whereas we actors present fiction as if it were fact, you parsons present fact as if it were fiction. " It is needless to say that the fault today lies not so much with the clergy as with the laity. The religion of the average layman appears to have little foundation in recognized and valued fact. The whole matter is exceedingly puz- zling, if God and everything connected with Him is more than the vain imaginings of man.
I am not arguing for a life withdrawn, re- mote, secluded; but I know that every Chris- tian needs to make God more real to himself if he is to make Him real to any one else; in other words, the Christian needs to model his thinking and his daily life more literally upon that of Christ. This by no means implies separation from the world or from the affairs of the world. Our Lord never prayed that His disciples should be secluded. He Himself was anything but a recluse. He was keenly alive to the world about Him. He was interested in people's marriages and funerals, in their social gatherings, in their fishing, their tax- gathering, their homely pursuits, their busi- ness. He knows quite well — He proved it Him- self— that the possession of eternal life is not a search-light directed heavenwards only, but a glowing sun to irradiate every corner of earth and every phase of human life.
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what our Lord meant when He spoke of a more abundant life. Had He in mind only spiritual life, and was His message only to the souls of men, or did "life" mean to Him all its mani- festations? You and I are conscious, if we are normal human beings, of three kinds of life. I walk from my house to my office and sit down at my desk, thereby showing that I pos- sess physical life. I write a page of this book; my mind works; I perceive evidences of mental life. The Church bell rings, and I find myself able and glad to pray; I confess my sins, am assured of pardon, and I receive the blessed Sacrament; I have come into contact with spiritual presences and realities, and I immedi- ately become as conscious of renewed life in my soul — that is, of spiritual life, as I was, a few moments before, of physical and mental life; indeed, in joining in that half-hour's service, I have exhibited all evidences of life which I possess — physical, mental, spiritual — body, mind, soul.
Surely then in promising to men a more abundant life, our Lord must have had in mind, not spiritual life only, but every aspect of life. His actions bear this out. The sight of imper- fect or maimed bodies drew His instant and active sympathy — He laid His hands upon them and healed them. He found in His dis- ciples a body of ''unlearned and ignorant men," and for three years He developed their mental life until their minds became so abundantly
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The Church's Life
alive that the product of some of them has lived through twenty centuries, and shows today more practical vitality than that of any other group of philosophers which the world has ever known. So, finally, with His main objective — more abundant spiritual life. Oftentimes He appears to have exerted His healing power on men's bodies merely as a means of reaching their souls ; but always He was pouring out His own richness of spiritual experience and the abundant vitality of His own soul upon all who would receive. Thus, His disciples had been taught to pray all their lives, but seeing Him in the spiritual activity of prayer, they realized their own pitiable deficiencies and begged Him to supply their souls' want (St. Luke 1 1 : i ) . Thereupon He taught them to pray in the words so familiar to us. Later, toward the end, He taught them the very spirit of prayer, reminding them that hitherto, though they had learned the outward form of acceptable prayer, they had never realized what it meant to pray in His Name or character, nor could they until His likeness and character had become more perfectly reproduced in them (St. John 16:24). Finally, He gave them the Sacrament of His Body and Blood to be their spiritual food and sustenance. Thus, by teach- ing them to worship as He worshipped, and by giving them the means of coming into the closest conceivable touch with Him and of abiding in Him and He in them, He, the life
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Life More Abundantly
of the soul, shared with them His own abun- dant spiritual life.
The practical bearing of all this on the Church's mission in the world today is obvi- ous. If it be true — as I think it is — that the Church's business, and therefore that of every member of the Church, is to touch, with vitaliz- ing power, every man's life in all three of its manifestations, then the Church has been right in these latter years, in going throughout the world establishing her hospitals and schools, that through their instrumentality the living Christ may minister to the bodies and minds of people everywhere; and, above all, in seek- ing to transmit life for the soul by providing for Church extension in the broadest sense of the term, including evangelization in all its forms, the teaching and training of converts, the administration of Baptism, and the erection of suitable church-buildings where the people may be taught the dignity of worship and the beauty of holiness, and where they may receive the Holy Communion rightly and duly admin- istered.
Time was when people conceived of the Church's mission as strictly limited to pure evangelism, and when they even decried all social and educational work in connection with "Missions" as a dangerous departure from an ideal. With this discussion we need not con- cern ourselves. All we need do is to discover, if possible, the manner in which Christ re-
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The Church's Life
garded His mission and what means He took to fulfill it. Personally, I cannot avoid the con- clusion that when He spoke of "life more abun- dantly" He saw the full round of man's life, in all its manifestations, as the object of His expansive and uplifting power — that He was eager for all men to have "salvation" — abun- dant health — in body, mind and soul. Yet no one can fail to recognize that the soul was always His chief concern, to be reached and given life and health by any and every means, and that, consequently, hospitals and schools — medical practice and education — in fact, all philanthropic agencies meet their highest ob- jective, from Christ's standpoint, only when they are fundamentally Christian, and when they recognize in all their work, that the appli- cation of Christ's power to the soul is the one supremely important and ultimate aim.
If this be true, it will be interesting to con- sider whether the principle is applicable to the Church's mission everywhere, and, if so, how it is to be applied. If the Church represents the projection of Christ's life in the world, and the continuation of His ministry to the world; and if, further, He is our supreme ex- ample in connection with our mission, it would appear that that mission should always and everywhere include hospitals, homes for the poor and neglected, asylums, orphanages, play- grounds and other agencies for ministering to bodily needs ; schools, colleges, seminaries and
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Life More Abundantly
other means of mental and industrial train- ing; and, above all, church buildings and an adequate supply of workers, ordained and lay, to preach the Word, to administer the Sacra- ments, to provide opportunity for worship, and to minister effectively to the spiritual needs of the community. Evidently these three forms of missionary activity are expressed today by the terms, Social Service, Religions Education and Church Extension. These, together, con- stitute the full round of the Church's mission, and those Christians who engage in them are properly "missionaries."
Two important points, however, are to be noted in connection with this programme: — first, that only as philanthropy and education are permeated with and directed by the spirit and power of Jesus Christ, are they truly ex- pressions of the Church's mission; and, sec- ondly, that every baptized man, woman and child, as a member of the Church, is bound to be a missionary, i. e., to take some active part in Christian Social Service, Religious Educa- tion, or Church Extension.
How far and in what way this three- fold ex- pression of the Church's mission is carried out depends on circumstances. When the Church enters a heathen or pagan country, she has to perform her mission unaided by any institutions about her. It may be that the best opening is through preaching, the distribution of Christian literature, or some other form of
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The Church's Life
making the Gospel known. This is Evangel- isation. Or it may be that the work of a phy- sician presents the best opportunity at the mo- ment; or possibly a hold can best be secured upon the children, and, through them, their parents be attracted, by means of a Christian school. Here are Social Service and Religious Education. But, however the work starts, it must eventually include ministry to the whole of life — Body, Mind and Soul; hence the typ- ical mission station in the foreign field, when developed, will include, as a minimum, a church building, a school and a hospital, or at least some representation of all of these activities. In the domestic field the case is somewhat different, and, while the theory remains the same, its application may have to be modified. The controlling factor which obliges the Church, when establishing herself in a foreign field, to provide medical service and education as well as churches, is of course the lack of any such agencies having a Christian foundation and motive, and, in many cases of any such agencies at all. In China, e. g., the first Christian missionaries found no facilities for education along useful lines, and Chinese med- ical practice was worse than useless. The lack had to be supplied. Modern Japan has estab- lished an admirable public school system, and her medical practice is of the very best, but the Christian motive is, of course, lacking. Both China and Japan owe their advance in
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Life More Abundantly
public education and medical science to the ex- ample and teaching of Christian missions, but in both instances the Christian motive is want- ing, and I repeat again that if medical science and education are to fulfil their ultimate aim, they must be built upon and permeated by the spirit and power of Christ. Deprived of that, the doctor is comparatively helpless, the teacher is without adequate objective. Be- cause China had neither modern schools nor hospitals when the Church first went there on her mission, she had to establish these institu- tions herself, and this is true of all lands to which the Church first carries her message. But in the United States, the Government as- sisted by private enterprise does provide abun- dant means for education and health. Schools are everywhere; the country is, if anything, overstocked with doctors ; philanthropic works form a part of the social programme in every community; and it is a country governed by ideals which have their source in Christianity. Under these circumstances, what is the Church's duty in fulfilling her three-fold mis- sion— physical, mental and spiritual? Be- cause the public school system is not definitely Christian, is she to follow the Roman com- munion, and establish generally her own schools; because medical schools are not con- cerned with the religious belief of their stu- dents, is the Church to go into the business of training doctors and nurses herself and plac-
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The Church's Life
ing them in her own hospitals? Or is there some other alternative which, under the cir- cumstances, she ought to adopt? To these and similar questions there must be some ade- quate answer which, as members of the Church, you and I are bound to think out and reply.
The Church and Physical Well-being
Taking physical well-being as the objective of social service — hospitals and medical prac- tice in general, as an illustration — what re- ply are we to give to the above questions ?
On the whole we would probably agree that the abundance of first-class hospitals in Amer- ica, as compared with China, and the admir- able service rendered by them to the com- munity, make it unwise for the Church to duplicate them by establishing hospitals of her own. Under certain circumstances it may be advisable for a large institutional parish to have its own free dispensary, or for the Church at large to maintain a hospital; and the same is true of homes for the aged and infirm, or- phanages, and other philanthropic agencies. But, as a rule, there are plenty of such insti- tutions established by the State or through public or private enterprise. This fact, how- ever, by no means implies that Church people are free from responsibility in the matter. On the contrary, such institutions present one of
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the most fruitful fields for missionary work on the part of Christians. If Christ, with the limited and narrow opportunities which His surroundings presented, was constantly and actively interested in the physical welfare of people about Him, it is all the more incumbent upon us, His followers, with facilities enor- mously increased, to make every possible use of those facilities. It is the obvious duty of the Christian layman to seize every opportu- nity, with the Lord Himself as his Companion, to carry to the sick, the suffering and the de- spondent the encouragement and good cheer of his own abundant life. Ready access, un- der proper restrictions, is usually obtainable, and there is no more useful outlet for Chris- tian sympathy and helpfulness than frequent visits to those less fortunate than ourselves; nor is there any work more richly rewarded. Such practical mercy "is twice bless'd; it bless- eth him that gives, and him that takes ... it is an attribute to God Himself."
There is another approach to this matter which Christians should carefully consider. Hospitals, Social Settlements, etc., — even those established by the Church herself — show a de- plorable tendency to become secularized or at least to admit the presence of Christ only on sufferance, as it were. At least it is rare, ex- cept among Roman Catholics, to find that Presence recognized and relied upon to any great degree, in hospital-management or prac-
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The Church's Life
tice, among patients or staff. This fact is the more striking when we consider our Lord's prominence in healing as in all works of mercy, and the further fact that practically every modern philanthropic enterprise owes its or- igin to the Church, and was at one time re- garded as a special function of the Church. It is unnecessary to inquire here how the Church came to relinquish a work peculiarly her own ; but it is pertinent to ask whether, in view of the secularizing tendency in modern medical and other philanthropic work, and the development of medical science and practice on a materialistic basis, a serious obligation does not rest upon every Christian to bring his personal influence and example to bear upon the situation, to the end that Christ Himself shall walk the hospital wards in the fullness of His strength and comfort; and, further, that every prospective medical student be shown the example of Christ — the Source of life and health; and his own need of Christ, in the daily practice of his profession, not only for himself but for his patients. The Christian physician or surgeon has opportunities for mis- sionary service unequalled in any other voca- tion. Of all men, the doctor has most need to be a Christian.
But there is still another and most vitally important aspect of this matter to be consid- ered, if we are convinced that the practice and teaching of our Lord and His immediate fol-
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lowers are guides for the Church today. A full discussion of the direct action of the power of Christ, through faith, to the healing of dis- ease may well be left to wiser heads than ours. But the following facts are plain enough : Our Lord healed those who were willing to be healed, and who had faith in His ability (St. Matt. 9:28-30; 13:55-58; St. Mark 9:22-29). This was done, sometimes privately (St. Mark 7:32-34), more often publicly (St. Mark 1 :32- 34) ; sometimes with a visible act (St. Luke 13:12, 13 ; St. John 9 :6, 7) ; sometimes at a dis- tance and with no physical contact (St. Matt. 15:22-28; St. Luke 7:2-10). In some cases an act of prayer on His part is either stated or implied (e. g., St. John 11 41-44), though it is doubtful whether, in His constant life of prayer, any request for healing power in a specific case was needed. He recognized, in certain stated instances at least, that disease was of Satan, or his agents (St. Luke 13:16; St. Matt. 12:22, 28. Cf. also 11 Cor. 127); when He instructed His disciples regarding their mission, and sent them out, He associated healing of the sick with the casting out of dev- ils (St. Matt. 10:8; St. Luke 10:17-20). He promised His disciples further, that the power manifested through them should exceed even that which they had seen in Him (St. John 14:12). After the coming of the Holy Ghost, as previously, though now in greater measure, this power became manifest in miracles of
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The Church's Life
healing wrought through the Apostles and others working in Christ's Name. It is im- plied that even their shadow passing over the sick had a healing effect, and that the same effect was produced by articles of apparel which had been in contact with them (Acts 5:15; 19:11-12. Cf. St. Matt. 14:36).
These extraordinary and "special" demon- strations of power seem to become less fre- quent as the period covered by the Book of Acts draws to a close; but as the Church be- came more fully organized, we find that one of her many functions was that of healing, and that this function was concentrated in cer- tain individuals, especially the presbyters (1 Cor. 12:28; Jas. 5:14, 15). This quotation from St. James indicates that, by the begin- ning of the second century, the presbyters were accustomed to exercise a definite method of healing through prayer and anointing with oil, with probably the laying on of hands. This is quite in accord with what we are told in the earliest of the Gospels (St. Mark 6:13; 16:18).
This brief survey is sufficient for our pres- ent purpose, and if we believe that Christ is actually with His Church today, in the fulness of His power, the question naturally occurs, Why has the Church not taken full advantage of this power? Healing the sick was a nor- mal expression of our Lord's ministry,, and was accepted as a normal and ordered func-
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tion of the early Church. Whatever Christ Himself did on earth should surely be pos- sible of accomplishment, through all time, by His Church in which He still lives, "the same yesterday, today and for ever." If He was the source of life and health in the first cen- tury, why not in the twentieth ? Of course He would be if the Church had retained her active faith in His power, and if the whole of med- ical practice were based on the belief in it. But so long as the Church regards the work of an accredited, devout and successful agent of Christ in the ministry of healing as an ex- traordinary and "pentecostal" thing, rather than as the normal action of Christ through His Church, just so long will our Lord be able to do no mighty work, save healing a few sick folk; and this, because of our unbelief at which He marvels (St. Mark 6:5, 6).
But let it be noted here that while the heal- ing power of God may evidently be transmitted through any devout and faithful person (for who would dare limit the grace of God?), yet in the early Church God's power to heal was manifested through ordained men and in sac- ramental form — that is, the "inward and spir- itual grace" (faith and healing) was signified by an "outward and visible form" (the touch of presbyters and the oil of anointing). We thank God for his rich gifts through any and every agency, but if we would experience His power to the full, should we not permit Him to
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The Church's Life
use His appointed means, rather than oblige Him to resort to extraordinary ones?
If, again, God in Christ is the source of life and health, it would seem apparent that med- ical science and attention to the laws of hy- giene, though they may indirectly supplement the work of God and further serve as a warn- ing against disregard of His laws, can never supplant His direct action. God has always taught His people that He works among men only by man's cooperation, as witness the mi- nute instructions regarding hygiene given, through Moses, to the Jews, and resulting in an extraordinarily high standard of physical well-being in that race. Who can doubt, also, that the modern advance in medical science and surgical skill is the gift of God whose de- sire is the development of man's mental pow- ers? But, granting all this, it is a serious question whether, in view of our Lord's exam- ple as a healer, the Church today is not disre- garding a very important part of her ministry, and whether she is not making a grave mistake in entrusting the health of her people to those who tacitly or deliberately eliminate God in their practice. As a matter of fact the aver- age medical practitioner of today is a materi- alist, and is inclined to regard faith in the power of God to heal as unworthy of serious consideration in practice. Happily, this whole matter is now beginning to receive the atten- tion which it deserves, and it is worthy of
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note that the communion which has, in the highest degree, retained the faith and order of the early Church, is also the one which is most prominently taking the lead in a possi- ble return to the practice of the early Church regarding the healing of the sick. \
The Church and Education
The American type of democracy rightly demands that there be a sharp boundary be- tween the function of the Church and of the State, which neither may pass. Thus public education is a function of the State, and the Church, as such, must not interfere. Public worship is a function of the Church, and with it the State has no concern.* This is quite as it should be. Most of us would be absolutely opposed to intrusting our children to the State for instruction in matters of religion and faith. Yet, as Christians, we are agreed that religious instruction, concerned as it is with ultimate truth and the soul's well-being, is of far more importance than so-called secular instruction. How are American children to acquire it? Of course one obvious answer is, In the home. Unfortunately, however, the home as a center
* It may be noted, in passing, that of late years, in times of epidemic or through a strict interpretation of extreme regulations regarding the use of alcohol, the State has shown a tendency to overstep the boundary and to interfere un- warrantably with the Church in matters of custom and even of faith.
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of religious life, is not what it used to be. Family prayer, grace before meals, united reading and study of the Bible — these are be- coming more and more of a rarity even in nominally Christian homes. Indeed, the aver- age Christian parents are too ignorant them- selves of the fundamentals of religion to give their children any proper instruction — a fact which is, in itself, an arraignment of the Church as a teacher. Hence the Church, in this dilemma, started Sunday schools, or Church schools as they are being called today, to supplement the religious teaching, or lack of it, in the home. Such as they are, these schools have served a valuable purpose, but no one could possibly claim that they have fully met the need. A present indifferent and ig- norant laity is the sufficient indictment of the Sunday school as it has been conducted in the past. The manner of it is sufficiently famil- iar. For an hour or less, once a week, those children who could be induced to come volun- tarily or who were forced by their parents to attend, received more or less desultory and fragmentary instruction from volunteer teach- ers who were themselves, in many cases, so ill-instructed that they had to cram up each lesson in advance or be coached by the rector. The sessions of the school lacked enforced dis- cipline; often they presented the confusion of a menagerie; they rarely afforded the slight- est opportunity for serious study; their pro-
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gramme was a picture-puzzle with no time to put it together. In some great institutional parish, or through the unaided genius of some one superintendent, a partially effective Sun- day school has been developed here and there — that is, effective as compared with the aver- age Sunday school, not as compared with any real educational institution. But on the whole we are safe in saying that the Sunday school, for years, has been such an exhibition of in- competency and haphazard methods that com- petent people have looked upon the teaching of a Sunday school class as an activity unworthy of their energies. Worse still, the children themselves unconsciously note a contrast. They see the day school with its obligatory and universal attendance, its four or five hours of study daily, its well-trained teachers, its prac- tical bearing upon the activities of life. The contrast between this and the conditions pre- vailing in the average Sunday school is too glaring to escape the sharp minds of children. No wonder that to the mind of the average child, as to that of his parents, religion and the fundamentals of religious faith and experi- ence are Sunday affairs only, and that religious education bears no comparison in importance with secular education.
This deplorable state of things was per- mitted to continue, partly because people seemed to have become dulled to the practical and every-day importance of a knowledge of
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God, especially when imparted to children at their most impressionable age; and partly to the fact that while the principles of modern psychology and pedagogy were rapidly modi- fying the methods of secular education, there were very few apparently to whom the possi- bility ever occurred that these principles might be equally applicable to religious education. Perhaps an excuse is to be found in the fact that, in the main features of the average Sun- day school, it was difficult to recognize any re- semblance to an educational institution.
Within the past few years, however, within the Episcopal Church and largely owing to the efforts of the General Board of Religious Ed- ucation, the Church school is developing into something really worth while. The demand is becoming insistent that teachers be thoroughly trained for their task; definite system, care- fully planned on approved modern lines, is tak- ing the place of the lack of any system what- ever; and to the regular instruction in the school are being added week-day activities as the logical outcome and expression of the les- sons taught.
Those who are interested in the religious education of children should, of course, inform themselves regarding the so-called Gary Plan, whereby children in the public schools are per- mitted, during certain school hours, to receive religious instruction under the auspices of their various communions, such instruction being ac-
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cepted for credit by the school authorities. But I am interested here primarily with the Church school as an increasingly attractive and valuable means of religious education, and one which is supremely worthy of active coopera- tion on the part of men and women who are capable of directing their missionary efforts along the lines of a more abundant mental life for children. Naturally, however, such ef- forts must not be limited to children. For adults, there is the Bible Class, and all forms of Mission Study Classes. Possibly the time may arrive when the Church school shall be- come so complete an answer to the need for re- ligious education, and shall so thoroughly com- mend itself to the common-sense of all Church people, that attendance will no longer be con- sidered derogatory at any age, and that the curriculum will include instruction in the Church's mission and cognate topics, such as will be deemed essential to every Churchman's education. When that time comes we shall see a development of religious intelligence and activity undreamed of at present; but, mean- time, the obvious duty of every Churchman, if he be, or can be made, capable of it, is to fulfil one phase of his missionary obligation through leadership in the Church school or in connection with Bible or Mission Study for adults.
I have taken Hospitals and Schools as illus- trations of Social Service and Religious Edu-
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cation — of Christian ministry to the bodies and minds of men. But this one illustration of Social Service is manifestly only one. In a Christian land, unlike a pagan, there are count- less philanthropic agencies giving an opportu- nity for definitely Christian cooperation on the part of every one. But, no more than in the case of hospitals, does this fact lessen the de- gree of personal Christian opportunity and ob- ligation. Not only hospitals, but homes for the aged and infirm, asylums, orphanages, agencies for the protection of womanhood, to say nothing of reformatories, jails and pris- ons— these, and countless other institutions are within the field of missionary activity on the part of Christians. The same reasoning applies to them in general as we have applied specifically in the case of the hospital. They too, tend to become merely "institutional" and therefore secular and Christless. They too, need the constant interest and the active co- operation of sanely Christian people who bring with them the presence of our gracious Lord. For we can not too frequently remind our- selves that He gave Himself to the work of philanthropy ; He did not turn it over, nor did He recommend turning it over to an "insti- tution." And I repeat again that mere philan- thropy, apart from personal contact with Christ, always fails of the highest objective — the ministry to the soul.
Happily in these days, social service of all 76
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kinds is so well organized that the necessity for individual initiative in good works, with its inevitable mistakes and discouragements, is not as great as it once was. In practically every community the individual who desires to serve along these lines will have no diffi- culty in finding other like-minded people who are already organized for a similar purpose. The Associated Charities; the various organ- izations for Service, patriotic and otherwise; Immigration Bureaus; Juvenile Courts, and countless other organizations, national and local, afford abundant opportunity for Chris- tian ministry, in association with others, to the physical and moral needs of the people about us.
Finally, it should go without saying that citizenship in a Christian democracy requires that every citizen be familiar with general so- cial conditions in his own community. The housing of the people, the public schools, the charitable and penal institutions of the town should be matters of concern, of active interest, and constructive criticism. To find fault with existing conditions, purely on the basis of hear- say, and to blame the city or the State or the Church for abuses which could be minimized if individual citizens would first find out the actual facts and then seek to remedy the con- dition by intelligent and united action — these are faults peculiar to a democracy where the temptation is to regard State and Church more
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or less like two locomotives running on sepa- rate clear and level tracks, well supplied with fuel, and with expert train-crews requiring no watching. It is sometimes forgotten that en- gines require the best fuel and plenty of it; that even expert engineers occasionally make mistakes, that signals are not always set at "safety," that the destination of the two trains is the same and that if they were on the same well-laid track, one pushing and the other pull- ing up the steep up-grade, they might bring the train to its objective point on schedule time.
The term "general social conditions" surely includes also all questions pertaining to the re- lation between labor and capital. Nowadays no one can claim to be well-educated in a so- cial sense who allows himself to remain ig- norant of the theories underlying social jus- tice, and of the conditions which make for the opposite ; nor can any one be called truly Chris- tian who is not striving according to his abil- ity to help the one and defeat the other through proper legislation, and, more effectively still, by personal investigation, active example and individual sympathy. Nor should it be for- gotten that the evils connected with present social conditions are not confined to the slums of our great cities or to the centers of indus- trial life. The lack of the simplest rules of morality and decency in many rural parts of these "Christian" United States is appalling.
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The bulk of the population in vast areas of our country is as truly pagan as if America were China. Everywhere there is the need of put- ting into effect the social teaching of Christ. The wonder of the principles which He taught and practiced is that after the lapse of two thousand years and under conditions so pro- foundly changed, they yet remain absolutely practicable. Wherever they have been ap- plied in even the smallest degree they have, to that extent, proved to be the best, and in- deed the only practical solution, of every so- cial problem — the remedy for every social ill. It is therefore supremely incumbent upon us, as Christians, to make these principles our chief study, and then to apply them with all diligence and confidence, knowing that only as we follow in His steps shall we find the dim and arduous track leading to the City of God.
To sum up our conclusions then: The Church, as the living Body of Christ, has a three-fold mission on earth. Her privilege and her duty are to provide every man, woman and child with an opportunity to become a sharer in a more abundant form of life, inci- dentally for the body and the mind, but pri- marily and supremely for the soul, wrhereby man is raised above the plane of mere human- ity into membership in the Family of God, and eternal life is imparted and maintained here and now. This three-fold mission of the Church is expressed in the terms Social Serv-
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ice, Religious Education and Evangelism or Church Extension. Since Christ Himself is today — as always — the Way, the Truth and the Life, no form of philanthropy or of edu- cation which fails to claim and utilize His ac- tive and personal cooperation can be com- pletely effective. It follows that the Church must see to it that social service is fundamen- tally and distinctly Christian ; that the impart- ing of a knowledge of God as revealed in Christ is one of her chief functions; and that it is her main privilege to bear the message of eternal life, through Christ, into every corner of the earth, especially where the need of His abun- dant life is greatest. Finally, since the Church is composed of individual members, each sharing in the life of the whole, each hav- ing his special function in the whole Body, each sharing in a common responsibility toward the whole, and to all mankind apart from the Body but capable of union with it, it is manifestly the duty of every member to become a mis- sionary through active participation in one or more features of the Church's three-fold mis- sion in his own community, and to the world at large.* Only as every member realizes this ideal will the Kingdom of God come and His will be done, on earth as in heaven.
* In this connection, two definitions may be found of value. Bishop Gore defines "the world" (as that term is used in the New Testament) as "Society organized apart from God." The word "Religion" may be defined as "A knowledge of God influencing the conduct of man."
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CHAPTER IV
THE MODEL MISSIONARY
We have seen thus far that the message which Jesus Christ proclaimed to men was a message of possible life, richer and fuller than any before known — a life dependent upon union with Him, the source of life; attained normally through Baptism; maintained by the Holy Communion and other means of grace (literally, channels of gifts) ; powerfully af- fecting every manifestation of life — physical, mental and spiritual; and transmissible, pri- marily and directly from, the Source itself, but secondarily and indirectly through every new- born child of God to those about him.
It is important now to consider rather more in detail the earthly ministry of Christ, in or- der to see, for our own guidance as mission- aries, just how He, the supremely successful missionary, conducted His mission.
First, let us note that while we know little of the first thirty years — the passive years, as we may call them of His ministry — what we do know reveals a character which must have had a profound influence upon those about Him.. Obedience to those in immediate au-
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thority over Him as a child is a characteristic of His early years (St. Luke 2:51). Such implicit filial loyalty and obedience as is im- plied in the phrase, "He was subject unto them,,, cannot have failed to impress His play- mates in the village of Nazareth where every one knew every one else. He proclaimed, not in words probably, but in the more persuasive language of example, the laws which should govern the lives of children.
Beneath this characteristic, however, and di- recting it, was a sense of a higher relation- ship. When, at the age of twelve, He was taken to Jerusalem for His Confirmation, as we would say, He had already reached the con- viction that, for Him, there was a law of obedi- ence higher than that implied in any human relationship — an authority divine and supreme. However we read the words, "Knew ye not that I must be in my Father's house'' — or, "about my Father's business" — or, "in the things of my Father," the meaning is equally clear. Of course He is speaking not of Joseph but of God. To God He owes the obedience of a son. The Temple, where He delights to remain searching into God's law, is His heavenly Father's house. It is God's business that calls for His active cooperation. As a child is owned by his parents, so He is owned by God. We may readily grant that so high a degree of spiritual insight and self- dedication is rare in boys of twelve; it is not
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St. Luke sums up the character of the boy- Jesus in a few striking phrases: "The child grew, and waxed strong (in spirit), filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him.,, "And Jesus advanced (increased) in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man" (St. Luke 2:40 and 52). If I had a son whom I had not seen for many years and from whom I had not heard ; and a friend, having seen him recently, should bring me news of him simply in the terms quoted above, I would desire no more. I would be assured that, wherever he was, whatever doing, he was exemplifying to all about him the normal life of a son of God — not needing "conversion" but growing nat- urally and healthfully, increasing in all that makes men wise, vigorous in character, popu- lar among his fellows and influencing them for good, and manifestly directed by the presence of God. Such a life, however quietly lived, is the perfect fulfilment of a man's mission. First, then, let it be noted that even as a child, our Lord performed a missionary service — He was a Home missionary. I wonder whether our Lord's constant attendance upon the synagogue worship and instruction, not only as a child but as a grown man, was not an important factor in His development. He certainly showed, throughout His life, a mas-
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terly and practical knowledge of the Scriptures such as few of us possess. If this be so, why is membership in a Sunday-school class sup- posed to be rather derogatory in the case of young men and women today?
The record of His life between the ages of twelve and thirty is still more meagre. In- deed, nothing is known regarding those eight- een years, except that after Joseph's unre- corded death, He succeeded him as the village carpenter (St. Mark 6:3). This is enough, however, to have stamped forever with divine approval and with dignity the simplest man- ual labor. And who can doubt but that the young laborer put into His commonest work all the skill of which He was capable? No skimping of a job, with Him; no parsimonious counting of the hours of work; no mere eye- service — alert before His employer, indifferent when not watched; no merely superficial ex- cellence in His work; no trying to make bad workmanship or material pass for good! Of all this we may be sure, knowing His character as a boy and the integrity of His later life. Knowing it, we may justly conclude that, through watching Him, His fellow-townsmen heard the high call to a more honest perform- ance of all daily labor, as in the sight of God. Secondly then, our Lord, even in the seclusion of a country village, proved Himself an In- dustrial missionary. Again, Jesus of Naz- areth was well-known as a regular church-
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goer, sometimes taking the leadership in cer- tain parts of the Service (St. Luke 4:16). I wonder if this constant practice was without its effect on His neighbors; and whether a similar custom on our part, rigidly adhered to, rain or shine, hot or cold, at home or on vaca- tion, convenient or otherwise, isn't about as telling and effective a form of missionary work as the average Churchman can perform. At any rate, our Lord was preeminently a mis- sionary through Church loyalty.
At the age of about thirty, He left the quiet of His home; the passive ministry of His early years was closed ; urged by the insistent needs of the world, and obedient to His Father's sum- mons, He entered upon a ministry of extraor- dinary activity. As we have seen, the idea of activity is inherent in the word "mission," and our Lord found Himself burdened with a message demanding the most unresting toil for its delivery.
The Roman province of Palestine was a small area measured in terms of our own facil- ities for getting about rapidly and conven- iently. But in the first century, it was no light task for a traveller without money and obliged to do practically all of his travel on foot, to cover an area measuring 65 miles by 35, or about the size of the State of Delaware. Such was our Lord's own home-district of Galilee, and He made no less than eight circuits of this district during the three years of His active
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ministry. Besides this, He visited Samaria; Judaea, at least three times; and the two half- Gentile regions in the extreme north — Caesarea Philippi and Phcenice. Truly an Itinerant missionary, tireless under the spur of His mis- sion. In this He was in striking contrast with His immediate predecessor, John the Baptizer, as well as with that other famous teacher — Gautama the Buddha — five centuries earlier. The Buddha and John allowed themselves to be sought out by men ; Christ sought men out. The opening chapter of St. Mark's Gospel will always be one of the most important bits of writing in existence; for in it is given an account of a single and complete day in our Lord's life, from one morning until the next. Here are given not only His methods of work, but the principles which underlay His mission- ary activity. One of these latter is evidently the covering of as much ground as possible. He taught briefly in the morning, and allowed Himself to be interrupted in order to cure a man apparently insane. The teaching over, He goes home and, finding His host's mother-in- law in bed with a fever, He heals her. After dinner, the news having gone about, He is be- sieged by sick and insane people until night- fall. He snatches a few hours' sleep and then, long before morning, He is off to the hills for the re-creation of prayer. The crowds follow. Never was there such need on people's part, such opportunity for helpfulness on His. Ca-
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pernaum is a place of great importance; the stage is set for an overwhelming impression; let Him win that city, and Galilee is His; and not the Galileans only but possibly more than one of the official family of Herod himself. He is immensely popular — His excited follow- ers call out to Him, "All are seeking thee." Yet He isn't in the least excited Himself. "Let us go elsewhere into the next towns," He says, "that I may preach there also." It was not that he had definitely accomplished any- thing in Capernaum, or that He saw no fur- ther opportunity there, or that the people there had no further need of Him. No, He worked by method, and that method was to touch for good as many people as possible in the brief time at His disposal. From this very begin- ning to the bitter end He was an Itinerant mis- sionary; as was afterwards said of Him — and an enviable testimony it is — He was the man who "went about doing good" (Acts 10:38). We may or may not think that this method of missionary work is equally adaptable to mod- ern needs and conditions. That question is not of immediate concern. All that we are endeavoring at present to discover is what kind of a missionary Jesus Christ was and on what principles He conducted His mission. Cer- tainly itinerancy was one of them.
It is almost needless to point out that our Lord was a medical missionary, and that He thereby put his stamp of approval for all time
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upon Christian medical missions. The chap- ter from St. Mark's Gospel just referred to is a record of purely healing work. Indeed, if the scenes depicted in that record were taken by themselves, we would conclude that Jesus of Nazareth was purely a healer with no spe- cial aim other than mere philanthropy ; yet even St. Mark does not dwell as does St. Luke upon this striking feature of our Lord's ministry. And when He commissions His recently se- lected Apostles, it is to heal all manner of dis- ease and sickness (St. Matt. 10:1).
Again it is of value to note that He was a missionary to all classes of people alike and without discrimination. Not only was this a matter of principle with Him — a fundamental way of accomplishing results — but it seems to have been His choice as well. St. Luke gives His statement of the principle, followed at once by an example of His practice (St. Luke 7:31- 50). We know how constantly He repudiated the ascetic practice of John the Baptizer, by accepting social courtesies from the rich ; and, on the other hand, how gladly and eagerly He seized every opportunity to meet intimately those from whom no social return could be ex- pected. It is well to note, in both cases, that it evidently gave Him, the keenest pleasure to meet people of all sorts; that He was quite as fearless of contamination from social and spir- itual sources as from physical; he no more shrank from intimate contact with a despised
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The Model Missionary- tax-gatherer or a woman of notorious ill-re- pute than with a person full of leprosy ; He was quite as much at His ease with a purse-proud, ill-mannered Pharisee as with a blind beggar. No follower of His, eager to carry on His mission, can be either a snob, or one who pur- posely holds himself aloof from the rich. But in saying this, one should add that the utmost emphasis should be placed on our Lord's ob- jective in all of His social relationships ; it was never what He could get, always what He could give. It was this that made all com- panionships so safe for Him and so valuable to others.
In considering how easily and naturally our Lord carried His message to all sorts and con- ditions of people, and with the same simple definiteness, it is well to remember that there wras about Him, notwithstanding His broad so- cial sympathy and appeal, a very remarkable aloofness. No one but His enemies ever took any liberties with Jesus Christ, and then usu- ally to their discomfiture. His personal dig- nity was at times overwhelming. None of His intimates (no one except strangers and the in- sane) ever, so far as we know, called Him to His face by the sacred name "Jesus." Even in prayer He never identified Himself with His most intimate friends. He taught them to address God in the words "Our Father,,, but He never used that prayer with them, nor did He ever associate Himself with them in
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prayer as one in similar need. People have a tendency to forget this sometimes, and to imagine that familiarity in addressing our Lord is an indication of their intimacy with Him. In the Gospels, quite the reverse is true. Another very marked feature of Christ's missionary activity was His teaching and train- ing of native workers. Of course it may have been merely the physical impossibility of cov- ering the ground Himself which made Him se- lect helpers, but I am quite sure that there was a deeper motive than that underlying that ac- tion. If the future Church was to be a living organism — the projection, in the world, of Christ Himself — a living witness to Him, car- rying on His message of life to the world — then there was need of men and women, not only to bear the message, but to transmit the life. In other words, provision had to be made then, provision must be made now, for the building up of a native Church instinct with the vitality of Christ Himself. It is not enough for even God Himself merely to be present in the world; His presence must be manifested and He Himself made known by and through His visible Body. Therefore our Lord trained these workers, and breathed into them the breath of life in order that, after the withdrawal of His visible presence, a visible Body might yet remain to perpetuate His life and to bear His message. Hence, too, the Church in these days and through her trained
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members goes to heathen lands; there trains native workers; there establishes a native Church — missionary because living; and thence, having accomplished her end, moves on to other lands, that she may preach there also, for to this end came she forth.
Finally, and above all, our Lord was a Pray- ing missionary. Prayer was at the root of all His work; He planned nothing, He accom- plished nothing, without it. It was the need of this that He was continually trying to im- press upon His disciples. It was quite to be expected, therefore, that He should give them a prayer in which to express their fundamen- tal needs, and that those needs, when formu- lated in prayer, should be found to be those of a body of believers whose two-fold desire was the transformation of the world into the King- dom of God, and their own increasing fitness to further that transformation.
It will be useful, therefore, to consider this great prayer if we are really to be missionaries in any true sense. It is found in its completest form in St. Matthew 6:9-13.*
It will be noticed that the prayer consists of an address to God by name, followed by six petitions arranged in two groups. A mar- ginal note in the revised version of our Bible states that "many authorities, some ancient,
* The following analysis of the Prayer is almost wholly that of Bishop Gore as given in his book, The Sermon on the Mount.
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but with variations add" the closing ascription now in universal use except under certain liturgical conditions. The prayer may be ar- ranged graphically in a condensed form as fol- lows:
Our Father in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name-) as fa heayen Thy kingdom come V sQ Qn earth_
Thy will be done J
Give us daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses. Deliver us from the evil one: For thine is the Kingdom.
But before taking up the different phrases of the prayer, let us consider certain general features.
First, this prayer is not one among many; rather is it the model of all prayer, and the touchstone of efficacious prayer. "After this manner pray ye," says our Lord, and then He gives a perfect illustration of what all praying should be like. It is the model prayer because it is the great prayer "in the Name of Christ." We are prone to assume that a prayer "in Christ's Name" is made by appending those or similar words to one or more petitions. This is not so. Everywhere in the Bible "name" stands for "character." A prayer in Christ's name is a prayer in His character — that is, a prayer characteristic of Him and His desires.
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Since this is His own prayer, it is evidently the one most characteristic of Him; therefore it is the prayer in His Name and consequently its petitions are surely to be granted. This is not true of all our prayers. Often they are not at all such as our blessed Lord would have of- fered or for things which He would have de- sired. The disciples had always been accus- tomed to pray, yet the Master told them that they had never learned to pray in a manner characteristic of Him, that. is, in His Name; therefore their praying had never reached great heights of power. But as they grew into His likeness so they would learn to pray in His character and then they should receive the completeness of their joy (St. John 17:24).
A simple illustration may serve to make more plain the meaning of "in Christ's Name" as applied to Prayer. A very rich friend of mine goes abroad, leaving me in charge of his affairs. He gives me unlimited power of at- torney, authorizing me to manage his affairs as, in my judgment, he would have managed them himself had he been here. Presently a request is made of my friend through me, in- volving a large draft on his funds. I decide that the request would have had his approval, I draw a cheque to my own or another's order, sign it with my friend's name, and present it at the bank to be cashed. The cashier asks by what authority I make this large draft and sign my friend's name to it. I show him my
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power of attorney; he is satisfied that I am making the demand rightfully and the cash is handed over to me. The bank can do no other- wise. I have demanded the money in my friend's name, and I show the authority en- titling me to do so. So with prayer "in the Name of Christ." If we draw upon the re- sources of God in the Name of His Son, and can prove our authority to do so, our petition must be granted. "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you" (St. John 16:23). There is our power of attor- ney, and it is prefaced by the solemn assevera- tion of our Lord, "Verily, verily, I say unto you." But just as my friend's trust in me to the extent of giving me such authority in his name makes it incumbent on me to consider with the utmost care how I exercise that au- thority, lest I use it in a way or for a purpose not wholly in accord with his desires as known to me, so in the case of prayer. It is taking a tremendous responsibility to attach to any pe- tition the significant words "in the Name of Christ." I can only do so if I am absolutely assured that that particular prayer is charac- teristic of Him, that it expresses a desire of which He would fully approve. The very as- surance that it will be granted makes the form and matter of the petition an affair requiring most careful thought. It is for this reason, doubtless, that our Lord, on another occasion, suggests the advisability of consulting with
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some other Christian before deciding so impor- tant a question (St. Matt. 18:19). In the Lord's Prayer, however, this need not trouble us. It is supremely the prayer in His Name, the petitions are characteristic of Him, they all express what He ardently desires; there- fore we can offer them in the certainty that they will be granted. This, then, is the first thing to be noted about the Lord's Prayer: It is the prayer supremely characteristic of the Lord Himself, therefore it is the prayer of ef- ficacy— the test and model of all acceptable prayer. Our petitions bring power only in so far as they are evidently consistent with the petitions of this prayer. "The climax of Christian growth is to have thoroughly learned to say the Lord's Prayer in the spirit of Him who first spoke it."*
The second general point to note regarding the prayer is the order of its petitions. The things of God come first; those pertaining to ourselves, second. This is the reflection of Christ's mind and desires. Ours are usually the reverse. Too often really earnest prayer is, with us, a last resort, to be used only when driven to it by critical personal need. Then the personal desire looms large and takes first place. Not so with the prayer put on our lips by Christ. Prayer in His Name and, for that reason, issuing with power and bringing peace
* Gore. Loc. cit., page 130. 95
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and joy, is prayer which puts first things first. [That is the rule and order for all our praying.
Thirdly, we are to note the social character of the prayer. Nowhere are we permitted to say "my" or "me." Everywhere it is "our," "us." It is the prayer of all Christians for all' Christians. Only as we realize ourselves in need, but one with all of God's family in that need, can we really use the Lord's Prayer. It will be found of great value to use this prayer from time to time as a meditation, repeating each phrase in order, slowly and thoughtfully, pausing after each phrase to let God make its meaning clear to us.
Think now of the address. "Our Father." It is to the Father of the family on the part of the children of the family. It is not intended for the use of all men indiscriminately, but was given to God's own children as a special privilege, and for their peculiar use. This seems apparent from St. Matthew's account of the circumstances under which it was given. It occurs in the "Sermon on the Mount" — an address made primarily to the disciples though in the presence of a multitude of other people (St. Matt. 5:1, 2). In the happy phrase of Bishop Gore, the Sermon "was preached in the ear of the Church and was overheard by the world." This explains much.
The members of the family are taught to call God their Father. This is a right which they alone have, and they are given it only by virtue
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of their relation to and union with the only- begotten Son, Jesus Christ (St. John 1:12). To them, the Holy Spirit reveals God as their Father (Rom. 8:14-16). It is only to those who desire and claim sonship that the "Father- hood of God" becomes a practical reality.
In passing, it might be noted that the word "brother" throughout the New Testament ap- pears to be limited to members of the Christian community. Our Lord's practice seems to have been in conformity with this principle. "All ye are brethren," Jle says to His disci- ples ; but when He inculcates the duties of the Christian toward one who has not yet accepted the privileges of sonship in God's family, He applies to such the word "neighbor." His an- swer to the question of the lawyer, "Who is my neighbor?" is a good illustration (St. Luke 10:29-37). Had one of His disciples asked him, "Who is my brother?" the answer would doubtless have been different.
"Father" is a name of great significance in human relationships; to be permitted to apply it to God Almighty is an inexpressible priv- ilege. A child seeks in its father wisdom, power and love. Any one of the three alone — wisdom unmitigated by love and power; power exerted apart from wisdom and love; love unguided by wisdom and power — these present only a hideous nightmare of possibili- ties. The three qualities are essential to pro- duce confidence. The most perfect of earthly
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parents presents but the barest approximation to these true qualities of fatherhood. God exhibits them in infinite perfectness. The members of God's family are in the hands and under the care of a Father all-wise, all-power- ful and all-loving. He can make no mistakes in the treatment of His children through ig- norance, weakness or carelessness.
"Who art in Heaven" It is childish to think of heaven as a place up in the sky where God lives. There is no route to heaven through space. One does not have to die to gtt there.
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy;
At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day."
Only as we grow up and lose our childlike- ness, only as we lose our faith in the unseen, do we become conscious of a thickening veil between earth and heaven. Really they are two interpenetrating realms, and it is not dif- ficult for the child of God to dwell much in his "Father's house." Heaven is where God is, and God is very close to any one desiring Him so to be.
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"Speak to Him, thou, for He heareth, And spirit with spirit can meet, Closer is He than breathing, Nearer than hands and feet."
Just on the other side of the veil God dwells. His realm is there — the realm of power and calm. To some of God's children, whose senses have become attuned through long practice to catch the echoes and images of things un- seen, the veil is always semi-transparent ; to all of us it is so at times.
There stands upon the altar a bit of bread, a drop of wine; a power from God's realm touches these material elements; their value is changed; and what we receive is not merely material food fit for our bodies, but spiritual food to nourish our souls. Indeed, in this great Sacrament, our Lord comes to us and we to Him ; we are actually in His presence ; here the veil is so thin that through it His power works almost without obstruction and "to our great and endless comfort."
This is but one assurance of the close pres- ence of God. Where God is manifest, there is heaven, — the realm of peace and light and power. Through the gate of worship we can enter heaven at any time by realizing the pres- ence of God; by the practice of His presence we come to dwell there.
"Hallowed be Thy Name." In heaven the object of all reverence and adoration is the Name — the character — of God. It is a proper
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instinct by which the devout Jew never pre- sumes to pronounce the great Name of God — Jehovah — the Ever-Existent. Our Lord teaches us to pray that we may ourselves real- ize the adorable qualities of God — His holiness, His justice, His love ; that reverence for Him, because of these qualities, may become the con- trolling feature of our religion; that we may strive to reproduce those qualities in our- selves ; and that more and more the reverence which is paid to God and to His essential char- acter in heaven may be duplicated on earth. For scholars tell us that the phrase "as in heaven so on earth" is to be taken as qualify- ing all three of the preceding clauses. Every act or word, therefore, indeed every thought of ours which adds to the reverence in which God's name and character are held among our associates here on earth, helps on the fulfil- ment of this prayer, "Hallowed be Thy Name."
"Thy Kingdom come — on earth as in heaven." Reverence is expressed in adora- tion, but not only so. It is no passive quality. The most profound reverence is expressed in active strivings to pattern ourselves after the person reverenced, or to reproduce his charac- teristic qualities. (One recalls the familiar saying, "Imitation is the sincerest flattery.") Therefore when we have prayed that God's character may be revered on earth as it is in heaven, we are led immediately to pray that
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His righteousness (a word which, better than any other, seems to sum up His character) may appear to all men everywhere so wholly beautiful and adorable that they may desire ardently to show their admiration and rever- ence not only by emulating it, but also by plac- ing themselves under God's rule and author- ity, and by giving to Him their utter obedi- ence. And note here that righteousness and morality are not the same thing at all. As a recent writer has said, "Morality may be the long story of human behavior; but righteous- ness is divine. The hope of righteousness in the world is that the Creator is the Judge" (C. S. Baldwin, in The Living Church, April 3, 1920. Cf. Acts 17:31; Rom. 3:5, 6). This recognition of the supreme claim of God to universal loyalty is the coming of God's King- dom on earth; and every act of ours, however slight, which tends to make others realize the attractiveness of God's character, and which therefore stirs a desire to imitate it and makes goodness easier and sin more difficult and life richer for some one else, helps forward the coming of the Kingdom of heaven on earth ; for it is quite as true that where God reigns there is heaven as that where heaven is there God reigns. When, through the sum of such slight individual efforts, mankind as a whole comes so to reverence God's righteousness as to imi- tate it in all their inter-relationships, the reign of God, now established in the heavenly sphere,
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will be manifestly extended to include the whole earthly sphere as well.
"Thy will be done — as in heaven, so on earth." In heaven — in the realm on the other side of the veil, God's holy will is perfectly ful- filled and joyously accepted. There is no other desire, for His will is seen to be the high- est good both in itself and in the ways in which it is fulfilled. Here, in the earthly realm, these ways can not but be equally inspired and directed by the pure love of our Father; but, too often the fulfilment of God's will is ac- companied by such painful circumstances that the splendid prayer, "Thy will be done," has come to be a common expression of more or less pious resignation. Of course this is due to our own short-sightedness. If we could see the ultimate results attained by God in completely working out His will in and through us, we would be astounded that ever for a mo- ment we should have desired otherwise. So far from being reserved for moments of pain and sorrow, whispered in a minor key, and made expressive of resignation to the inev- itable, the words should be shouted aloud as the C major of our lives — the highest conceiv- able good, glorifying and illuminating every event. For nothing that comes to us by the will of God can be evil, and nothing evil can come to us by the will of God. "We know that to them that love God, all things work together for good" (Rom. 8:28). Those four mono-
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syllables — "Thy will be done" — are perhaps the most complete expression of man's longing for happiness and contentment that has ever been put into human speech. Their perfect fulfil- ment on earth as in heaven would leave noth- ing more to be desired in the whole universe. Every joyous acceptance of what comes to us through the love and power and wisdom of our Father makes His will more completely done on earth as in heaven.
This then is the mission to which we new- born people — members of God's family — are devoted: to increase everywhere and by every means the reverence in which God and His at- tributes of majesty, righteousness, wisdom, justice, power and love are held; that all men may loyally acknowledge His authority and strive to emulate His character, in order that His kingdom of righteousness may be estab- lished throughout the world, His will recog- nized as man's highest good, and earth become like heaven.
For the accomplishment of this great mis- sion we need certain things, and our Lord bids us pray for them. They are personal needs but they are to be interpreted in relation to the united work of the Family and of the world's needs.
"Give us tli is day our daily bread." First, we need physical strength for our work, and therefore need bodily food. But note the re- strained desire expressed in the petition. No
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doubt our Lord uses the word "bread" in a typical sense, meaning all things necessary to our physical life; but He certainly means only necessary things; in other words, only such things as are essential to the doing of our work effectively. Moreover, the form of the peti- tion is in the original, very striking. The pre- cise meaning is obscure, but the more literal translation seems to be, "Give us today the bread for the coming day." Not only is the request limited to the simplest food and other necessities of life, but it is limited also to our immediate need. While, on the one hand, we are thus limited, in our asking, to bare neces- sities, we may be quite sure, on the other, that these will never be lacking, or our Lord would not have told us to ask unconditionally for them. David was a person of very wide ex- perience among people of all sorts, yet he tes- tifies that in all his varied career, from be- ginning to end, he had never come across a case of absolute destitution in the family of a righteous man who took God at His word. Doubtless he was perfectly right. Absolute and unwavering trust in God can never be dis- regarded by Him. Furthermore we pray, "Give us" not "Give me" In praying for bod- ily needs we are to have in mind the whole of God's Family — all of our fellow-Christians; and we shall not expect to be provided for in- dividually unless we are doing our best to see that all other members of God's Family are
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equally provided for, and protected from want.
"And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors." We have prayed for physical strength through the supply of ma- terial food. But something more is required if we are to do God's work and fulfil our mis- sion acceptably. For this we need spiritual food to give strength to our souls. Those souls are lamentably weak. They have never been strong enough to bring our bodies com- pletely under control; we have constantly of- fended God in His purity, His love, His jus- tice ; wre have not tried hard enough to be like Him; measured by the rule of Christ's life, ours are manifestly crooked. Therefore for- giveness for past offenses is absolutely essen- tial to any access of spiritual strength. That is the reason why forms of confession and ab- solution are found at the very opening of all liturgies. We have defrauded God of the obedience which was His due and have thereby become His debtors ; we have broken His laws and thereby become trespassers against Him; whether as debtors or trespassers we have done Him a wrong and can only throw ourselves on His mercy.
Note also the extent to which we may ex- pect mercy. It is measured by the degree of our forgiveness toward others — "forgive us . . . as we forgive" (t. e. in the same propor- tion) (Cf. St. Matt. 6:15). If we would know how forgivingly God feels toward us,
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all that is necessary is to see how forgivingly we feel — not spasmodically or upon some spe- cial occasion, but habitually — toward people who have done us wrong. It is a very solemn petition, involving great issues.
"And bring us not into temptation, but de- liver us from the evil one" Of all the clauses of the Lord's Prayer, the meaning of this one is the easiest to understand and the most dif- ficult to express. St. James, using the same word for "temptation," tells us to rejoice in it as a test of faith (Jas. 1:2), and indeed it is only by subjecting strength to a strain that it is increased. Evidently, however, no one desires strength or resistance to be tested to the breaking point unless the material is re- garded as worth wasting in order to determine that point. Of course that is not so in this case. What our Lord means us to feel and ex- press is our well-known and deplorable weak- ness in the face of temptation. We daren't pray to be put to the test ; in fact we may even pray not to be tested, at least not beyond our strength or unless at the same time the spirit of watchfulness and prayer be increased in us so that we are "delivered from evil" (liter- ally, "from the evil one") (Cf. St. Matt. 26:41). As Bishop Gore has explained (The Sermon on the Mount, p. 128), "The prayer may be interpreted by expansion thus: make us watchful and prayerful, so that we may never be suffered to fall into temptation as into
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a snare." For deliverance under such cir- cumstances we may always pray with confi- dence (Cf. i Cor. 10:13).
The second portion of this clause is for de- liverance from the devil — not temporarily but permanently. We are reminded of the clause in the Litany so often misread by our clergy: "And finally to beat down Satan under our feet," where "finally" doesn't have the mean- ing of "eventually" or "at last," but rather of "definitively," "now, once for all." So, strengthened in body and soul, forgiven for all past offences, at one with God, knowing our desperate susceptibility to evil suggestions but knowing also that by watchfulness and prayer Satan can be resisted, we go forth on our mis- sion.
And here again it is necessary to notice that these petitions have no merely individual ap- plication. Intercession — the praying for oth- ers, those not yet re-born, as well as our fellow- members in God's family — this should form, a large part of all our prayers.
There can be no question about the result. St. John, on the Island of Patmos, looking for- ward into the dim future, saw the end with such absolute certitude that to his eyes it seemed already present. "There followed great voices in heaven," he writes, "and they said, The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ" (Rev. 11:15). So, some time after the Lord's
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Prayer was written down, the mind of the Church attached to the prayer a doxology which was commonly used in connection with many prayers, but has a peculiarly fine sig- nificance here. For not only does it give the reason for our worship of God, but, with su- perb assurance, it sees the ultimate purpose of God as already definitely realized. "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen!' Here is the source of all our confidence. In weakness and inef- ficiency the Church struggles forward; but around her is God Almighty ; unseen, unknown by the world but infinite in power and glory and determined to establish on earth His king- dom of righteousness, yet dependent on man for the accomplishment of His purpose. To this high purpose He calls us, and He pledges His honor that, with our cooperation, mankind shall be brought in adoration to His throne. Surely if the messages implied in this great Prayer fail to stir in us a passionate eagerness to make them known, something is fatally wrong with us. God has become our Father; we have entered upon a relationship toward Him possible for every son of man. In close fellowship with Him, we have found heaven where He dwells as others may find it here and now. In striving to reproduce His holy char- acter in ourselves and in others, righteousness appears on earth. In the perfect fulfilment of His most glorious will on earth, we find satis-
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faction for ourselves and all mankind. We have learned that only as a world divided, dis- tressed, and misled comes to recognize Him as King can the law of right and justice be finally established on earth. We have found our- selves to be the objects of His daily loving care. Conscious of the debt we owe Him, we are assured of His forgiveness; more than that, we are made confident of deliverance from the powers of evil. For He is the King, all-powerful, and glorious beyond imagining.
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CHAPTER V
THE GREAT CHARTER OF THE CHURCH
So long as Jesus Christ was Himself phys- ically present in the world it was not difficult for Him to show men that He came with a message of life from God to man. We have seen how, with untiring activity, He carried that message, applying it to the bodies, the minds and the souls of all whom He could reach. Even as a child He was plainly con- scious of a mission. Unconsciously, too, He ministered through those passive early years. We have studied the methods which He adopted during His active missionary career; and, because all His strength seems to have been derived from God through prayer, and also because every clause of the great prayer which He gave to His Church is instinct with the missionary message and has but little sig- nificance apart from it, we have tried to see what the prayer means.
As the time approached when Christ was to withdraw His physical presence, it became in- creasingly necessary to make some provision for the carrying on of His mission.
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our Lord ascended to heaven after His earthly ministry was over, He was met by an angel who asked Him where He had been. "I have been to earth," He replied. "What hast Thou done there?" asked the angel. "I have set up my Kingdom," was the reply. "What dost Thou hope for it?" the angel asked. "That all the world shall be brought into it through its present citizens," said Christ. "And how many citizens hast Thou made?" pursued the angel. "About six score," was the reply. The angel paused a moment, wondering. Then — "And with this paltry number, how canst Thou hope to conquer the world? Suppose they prove false or disobedient; what other provi- sion hast Thou made?" "I have made no other provision," was the calm reply; "I am de- pending on them."
How our Lord's dependence upon the citi- zens of His Kingdom in those early days was justified, we can read in the whole history of the early Church for two centuries. How far His reliance upon His Church today is justi- fied, depends on how you and I interpret His final command, and on the zeal with which you and I are trying to obey it. He has made no other provision to have a work done which you and I alone can accomplish, and to secure re- sults dependent upon your message and mine. For this He is depending solely on us.
It was enough to cause the keenest anxiety to a mind less faithful and well-poised. He
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trusted in two things; the gradual fruition of His own teaching, and the coming of the Holy Spirit into the Church to abide with it as teacher and director. We shall see later what absolute reliance He placed on the work of God the Holy Ghost, and how fully He was justi- fied; but during the closing months of our Lord's earthly life, the teaching and strength- ening power of God had not yet come in full- ness on the disciples, and until it should come they were weak, inefficient, timid and igno- rant. They were, however, the only instru- ments at hand and they had at least one essen- tial quality of the missionary — intense love for their Master, and hence the spirit to do His will and obey His last commands, however weak the flesh.
But before proceeding to discuss what these provisions were, let us see whether our Lord really considered His mission as world-wide in possible scope, and His message as applica- ble to all men everywhere.
We have already seen how God regarded His revelation of Himself to the Jewish Church. There can be no question but that He intended the Jews to carry even that incom- plete revelation as good news to all the world, that so all nations might be brought into obedi- ence to His righteous rule; and mere logic would lead us to conclude that, with the giving of a complete revelation to the Christian Church, God equally intended that Church to
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be His final messenger to the whole known world. But let us see briefly what Jesus Christ Himself and His immediate followers thought about it. It is certainly true that, at first, our Lord did place limitations upon the scope of His own mission and that of His disciples. This is apparent in the explicit directions which He gave to the Twelve (St. Matt. 10:5-6); it is implied in the later mission of the Sev- enty (St. Luke 10:1). He states, at least on one occasion, that His own mission is simi- larly restricted (St. Matt. 15:24). In view, however, of the whole trend of our Lord's teaching, such a restriction must have been only temporary, and must be otherwise ex- plainable than on the theory that the final rev- elation of God was intended for the Jew only. It may have been that the desire to see the Jew- ish people fulfilling their mission was still so ardent in the heart of Christ, that He deter- mined to disregard their age-long indifference to it, to start afresh, and to give them one more opportunity. He knew that, in the plan of God, salvation was of the Jews; it was, indeed, His own to whom He came; by His own that He was rejected ( St. John 1 : 1 1 ) ; the Kingdom of God was theirs by right of priority, if only they would be faithful to it (St. Matt. 21 :43). Not until every effort had been made, and all in vain, to open their blind eyes and arouse their sluggish hearts, did that bitter cry of disappointed hope burst from our Lord's lips,
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"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her ! Behold, your house is left unto you deso- late'' (St. Matt. 23:37, 38). A similar hope stirred His Apostles ; a like disappointment met them. St. Peter is convinced that the prom- ises of God are primarily to the Jews (Acts 3 125, 26) ; and even the great Apostle to the Gentiles never fails to address his message first to Jewish gatherings in synagogues, on the ground that it is necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to them for it is to them first that the Gospel is to be exhibited as "the power of God unto salvation" \Rom. 1:16). Only as the Jew rejects the revela- tion and scorns the message and its obliga- tions does God divert His messengers from the Jew to the Gentile, and select the latter as His agent (St. Matt. 21:43; Acts 13:46; and 18:6). Is not this the reason why our Lord at first restricted the scope of His own mission ? His object may not at all have been to confine the message within bounds, but rather to present to God's proper messengers, once more and for the last time, an opportu- nity to fulfil their destiny. That the disciples were at first similarly restricted in the scope of their mission may be explained on the same grounds. I like to think also, however, that our blessed Lord, having due regard to their unprepared condition, knew that it would be easier for them to be sent to their own kind
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of people; especially since He intended to fol- low them up in order to correct any mistakes they might make either through ignorance or excessive zeal. Moreover, their mental limita- tions were such that they could not safely be entrusted with a message to the keener Gen- tile mind. That had to wait for the appear- ance of a Saul.
Such, I think, are the reasons for our Lord's apparent restrictions of His mission. That He was not Himself bound by them, however, is quite plain. The woman of Samaria, the Syro-Phcenician mother, the Roman centurion whose favorite slave was sick, the Greek prose- lytes at the last great Passover whose request to Philip, "Sir, we wrould see Jesus," evoked the triumphant exclamation, "The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified/' — all of these were, racially at least, Gentiles, and to all of them our Lord ministered of His abundant grace. Indeed, to the Samaritan womai., a Gentile and a sinner, he revealed the higher truths of God even as He did to Nico- demus, the devout Pharisee. When we come to His explicit statements regarding the scope of His mission, and the appeal of His message, there is no hint of any limitation whatever. "God loved the world," is His conviction; "Whosoever believeth" receives life (St. John 3:16). "The bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world" (St. John 6: 51). "I am the light of the world" (St. John
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8:12). "Other sheep I have — them also I must bring" (St. John 10:16). "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto myself" (St. John 12 132). "I came to save the world" (St. John 12:47).
Redemption of the whole creation and sal- vation made possible for all men are the objec- tives of the incarnation of the Son of God, and when He prays for the unity of all the new- born children of God, then and throughout all time, it is in order that, through their mani- fest unity, one with another and all in the Father and the Son together, the world may be convinced that in Jesus Christ is seen the Revealer of God (St. John 17:21).
By His command, His messengers are sent forth to make disciples ofy and to baptize all nations (St. Matt. 28:19). The Gospels are the records of a great Missionary; they were written by missionaries. The book following the Gospels in the canon records the acts of living men engaged in turning the world up- side down ; bringing in a new social order, not, as in the case of man's blind and misguided attempts, by hatred and destruction, but by the divine method of love and freedom and life for all the world. The very center and kernel of the book is found in its opening chap- ter : "Ye shall receive power" (Acts 1 :8). The remainder is the record of this power as ap- plied to the known world of the day. St. Peter has a narrow range of activities — Judaea,
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Samaria, Galilee — all Jewish or part Jewish — though he is given proof that the Spirit shall yet be poured out on all flesh. St. Philip's mission opens the gateway to a Gentile people far beyond his ken. But it is to the missionary activities of St. Paul — ambassador plenipo- tentiary of God to the whole Gentile world, East and West — that two-thirds of this mar- velous book is devoted. Unable thoroughly to cover the vast field of their activities, the great missionaries of the early Church have recourse to letters; the note of every one of the Epistles is personal responsibility toward keeping and extending the Faith. The canon of Scripture closes with the lifting of the veil which hides the future. Strange visions appear, confused images succeed one another, voices and thun- derings are heard, colossal shapes of doom, and destruction appear and disappear through the mists; the mind strives in vain to grasp and hold the meaning of it all. Yet out of the confusion of image and allegory, like the sun bursting through clouds, emerge from time to time distinct visions of what shall be, promises revealing the consummation of the determinate counsel of God. Around the throne of the Almighty stand the elect of Israel; and with them a countless host of the redeemed from all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, joining with the hosts of heaven in united fealty to God (Rev. 7:9-12). Great voices announce the transformation of all earthly rule
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into the everlasting Kingdom of Christ (Rev. ii 115). Through the arches of heaven rever- berate, like the roar of mighty waters in flood, the praises of Jehovah — the Almighty King (Rev. 19:6). And at the last, we see the river of living water springing from the throne of God; and, on either side, that tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22 :2). Here is the perfect fulfillment of God's eternal purpose for man; expressed in the be- ginning, awaiting man's own consent through the ages, and now at last completed through the perfect obedience of the Son of Man. For in another garden once stood the tree of life, mercifully guarded from access by a flaming sword lest man, condemned to mortality through his sin of disobedience, should eat of it and live for ever in his guilty state (Gen. 3:22-24). Now, through the obedience of the perfect Son of Man, the tree of life stands free to all who are made one with Him; its leaves spread abroad for the healing of the nations. "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22 : 17) . This is the news for which the nations wait. Not believe in the world-wide mission of the Church? Alas, poor blinded Christian! God's eternal plan can never miscarry; but how will it be with you at the last, if you have declined all part in its accomplishment — if you
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have said to no single thirsty soul, "Come"?
* * *
The last words of a departing teacher and leader of men are, I suppose, always of peculiar significance to his followers. At any rate they were so in this case. Years afterwards, four of His followers — two of them His own or- dained Apostles, and the other two relying upon information received from an Apostle or a member of His earthly family — put into writ- ing all that the Holy Spirit (according to His promise) called to their remembrance concern- ing His acts and sayings (Cf. St. John 14:26). Of the first thirty years of Christ's earthly life they had but little to record. St. Luke, deriv- ing his information probably from the Blessed Virgin, narrates the events leading up to and accompanying our Lord's birth, and His visit to Jerusalem at the age of twelve. St. Mat- thew gives, in addition, the visit of the eastern seers, the attempt on the Child's life, and the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. St. Mark, the earliest of the recorders, depending much, doubtless, upon what was told him by his old friend, Simon Peter, is silent regarding the whole of our Lord's life up to the time of His baptism. St. John is not concerned with historical or biographical detail, but records and interprets the Master's sayings with ex- traordinarily sympathetic accuracy and under- standing.
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One other period of our Lord's life is left almost equally unrecorded — that is, the period of the forty days succeeding the Resurrection. Much instruction must have been crowded into this period, countless sayings must have been uttered (Cf. St. John 21 125). They were His final instructions — His last words; and one would have expected to find them very fully recorded. It is not so, however. St. Matthew and St. Mark have little to say regarding this period. St. Luke and St. John give only the briefest records of certain appearances of our Lord during those forty days and of the say- ings associated with them. It is as if, with one notable exception, the last sayings had been forgotten or had made little impression. That one exception must have been emphasized in some extraordinary way, and it evidently left a profound impression on their minds; for, years afterwards, when the evangelists attempt to recall the events of those forty days, only this one saying remains so vividly in their minds that all four of them, writing indepen- dently, record it — one of them twice over.
This is the Great Commission of the Church — our Lord's provision for the continuance of His own mission. The form given by St. Mat- thew is probably the most familiar: "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I com-
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nianded yon" (St. Matt. 28:19, 20). This is an expansion of the command as recorded by St. Mark: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation'' (St. Mark 16:15). But all four evangelists record it: St. Matthew 28:18-20; St. Mark 16:15; St. Luke 24:46-49; St. John 20:21. St. Luke records it a second time in Acts 1 :8.
Now this universal recording is very re- markable, for it is not found in the case of any of the great events of our Lord's life, even those which have become enshrined for all time in the dogmatic utterances of the Church. We find no such unanimous record of the Birth, the Baptism, the Temptation, the Transfiguration, or the Ascension. The Resurrection alone ap- pears to be regarded as of parallel significance and to receive similar recognition; and this is surely noteworthy, since without our Lord's permanent and decisive triumph over death, as proved by His Resurrection, there would have been no assurance of life to form the substance of the Church's message. The two are intimately bound up together — without the Resurrection there would have been no mes- sage worth delivering; without the message there would have been for us no assurance of immortality. No wonder, therefore, that from the tantalizing silence of the forty days, there sounds the four- fold trumpet-call — "Go ye"! It is the supreme thing — the message of life proven and assured — the commission to the
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Church always and everywhere. She may for- get all else, even her Creeds ; but this she may not forget except at peril of her own life.
Note another emphasis on the Great Com- mission. One man destined to be an Apostle was not present when the commission was given ; in fact, so far as we know, he had never even seen our Lord. When this man is called, it is deemed necessary that he, too, receive the commission from the same source as did the original messengers. It will be to him at once the assurance of his membership in the Church and of his responsibility toward the world. So on the burning road to Damascus he sees the Lord Christ, and from those lips he receives the commission : "To this end have I appeared unto thee, to appoint thee a minister and a witness; . . . delivering thee . . . from the Gentiles, unto whom I send thee" (Acts 26: 16, 17). Now whether we conceive of the Church as a human organization — inspired by God, it may be, both in its inception and con- tinuance, but still analogous to a guild or a club or a society; or whether we regard it as a divine organism — a living body — composed of members united together by an indestruc- tible bond of common life from a common source — in a word, as the Body of Christ — whichever of these two views we accept, one thing is perfectly certain. An organization having an officially recognized standing and purpose must comply with the terms of its
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charter. The charter is issued by authority, and it sets forth the conditions under which the organization is licensed to do business and the object for which it is incorporated. The organization is formed to fulfill some purpose which the State or other authority acknowl- edges to be a useful one, and the moment the organization forgets this obligation and fails to fulfill the purpose for which it was incor- porated, as set forth in its charter, that moment it becomes liable to the withdrawal of its char- ter, and to consequent dissolution. That this result is possible in the case of the Church is abundantly evident. The Jewish Church for- feited its charter because it was blind to its mission as a messenger of God to all the world; a similar fate has always threatened the Chris- tian Church (see St. Matt. 21:43 and Rev. 2:5). And what is true of the whole organiza- tion is true of any member of it. A member who deliberately disregards the purpose for which his society was organized and chartered thereby becomes, at the least, a useless and negligible member and may even be cut off from the privileges of membership altogether. If one tries to discover the Church's charter or act of incorporation, it would obviously be looked for in some outstanding statement on the part of its supreme Head, addressed to the whole society immediately before its organiza- tion. Such a statement we actually do find in, and only in, the Great Commission. Even if,
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then, we think of the Church as merely a divinely inspired human organization, disre- gard of Jesus Christ's final command, whether by the Church as a whole or by any individual member of it, involves very serious conse- quences. This is not a remarkably high mo- tive, I grant — fear of consequences never is; but it is a motive. To risk forfeiting a share in the mercies of God, covenanted or uncov- enanted, is a very hazardous proceeding; to minimize or misinterpret our Lord's last com- mand is a very disloyal one. If we conceive of the Church as an organism — the Body of Christ — representing Him here on earth, carrying on His life and work; and we our- selves as "very members incorporate" in that Body, surely the function of every Christian is perfectly evident. The supreme objective of every living organism is to propagate its spe- cies by the handing on of its own life. Every- thing is adapted to that end; nature exhibits the most astonishing ingenuity in attaining that end. An organism unfitted to reproduce is an abnormal thing; one unwilling to repro- duce falls short, as a rule, of its highest pur- pose. Self-preservation and reproduction are the two dominant factors in the organic world ; and, of the two, the latter is possibly the more deep-seated and inherent. That is, the instinct to hand on the collective life, rather than the mere fear of losing individual life, is probably at the root of the instinct of self-preservation.
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Apply this to the spiritual organism — the Church. The Church was born and put into the world to act as Christ did; to serve as He served; to proclaim, by life and word, a mes- sage from God as He proclaimed it ; but, above all, to transmit the more abundant life which she has received from the living God in Christ. So you and I were made members of Christ in Baptism for one main purpose only — to hand on to others the life which we have received so abundantly, whether it be physical, mental, or spiritual. For this reason we pray, as pre- viously noted, "God be merciful unto us and bless us, (in order) that Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations." Whenever we ignore our mis- sionary, life-giving calling, and to the extent that we ignore it, we cut ourselves off from the living Body of Christ, or, if not cut off, we become useless and possibly a menace to its health.
Of course if we regard ourselves as purely individual Christians, and our relation to God as a purely personal matter, the case may be different; but if we recognize definite relation- ships either to an organization or to a living organism, we must, in the one case, help ful- fill the aim for which our organization was chartered; or, in the other, reproduce the life entrusted to us for that purpose. In either case, we must do it with all our might and
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with settled determination, or face the risk of losing either our fellowship or our life.
I have applied this reasoning to every fol- lower and member of Christ. But you will find many persons (possibly a mirror will show you one) who tacitly assume or actually state that our Lord's command was given only to His Apostles and therefore that, by implication, He intended to limit the Great Commission to a body of men set apart for the purpose. I re- member once hearing a deaconess whose life- work lay in a busy down-town parish, say that she had never worked in the mission-field — an astounding statement from one who passed every day of her life in just such a field. But she was only voicing the very common and pernicious idea that to be a "missionary" in- volves going away somewhere. Suggest to an average Church boy that he become a mis- sionary, and he immediately shows you that, in his opinion, you have proposed to him an extraordinary and abnormal career; and this because he has imbibed, from all that he has seen and heard, the strange misconception that ministers always have to be ordained men, and that our Lord entrusted His mission to them alone in the person of the Apostles. Presently the average boy becomes the average layman, still imbued with the deep-rooted idea that he has united with others in hiring an ordained man to act for him as parish priest, preacher and pastor — in other words, to do all the "re-
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ligious work" in the community — and that oc- casionally God calls one of these men, or per- haps even a layman like himself, to become a "missionary," and to be regarded henceforth by him with a sort of wondering aloofness as an extremely peculiar person dedicated to the task of "converting the heathen." It never seems to occur to this average layman that he himself is a missionary by the very terms of his membership in the Church; that his mis- sion is to the bodies and minds and souls of every one in need right where he is ; and that, unless he has spent his life in solitary confine- ment, he has been brought up all his life in' a mission-field, and in the very midst of the heathen. This is simply because he has never really read the Book of the Acts.
If we turn to that record of the life of the early Church, we find that it was some time before the members of the Church began to realize that the Lord's command was intended for every one of them and that "all the world" meant something more than Jerusalem or even Judaea. Small blame to them perhaps; cer- tainly less than to us nowadays ! For they had been told to wait in Jerusalem until the Day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Ghost with power ; then they had immediately found abundant opportunity to exercise their new- found powers right where they were. The Church in Jerusalem grew with astonishing rapidity, and was held in awed repute by the
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city crowds; the Supreme Court and other rulers threatened, it is true, but the members of the Church had abundant evidence that the powers of God were on their side; money poured into their common treasury, enabling every Church-member to be comfortably pro- vided for; and everything was favorable in Jerusalem.
But evidently the Church was too much "at ease in Zion" to suit the plans of God. If she declined to follow the missionary Christ of her own free will, she must be driven to. To ac- complish this result God sacrificed one of His ablest servants — a man who apparently had a great Christian career before him and who could be ill spared from any work contemplat- ing missions to the Gentiles, even though he was not an Apostle. Stephen — a "Grecian" Jew, a deacon, and a man "full of grace and power" — fell a victim to the mob and was stoned to death. So God worked His will for the Church, for "there arose on that day a great persecution against the church which was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad . . . except the Apostles" And they "that were scattered abroad went about preach- ing the word" (Acts 8:1, 4). Who were these peopfe who went about preaching? Only a single ordained man is mentioned by name; the vast majority of them must have been lay people, and the only members of the Church not thus forced to exercise their "missionary"
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calling were those very Apostles to whom alone, according to our average layman, Christ had committed His mission and who were therefore properly to be called "missionaries." This was undoubtedly a stern method by which to arouse the members of the infant Church to their duty, but apparently none other was adequate at the moment. At any rate it suffices to show us today that our Lord's command was intended to apply to every mem- ber of His Church, clerical and lay, ordained and not ordained ; and that every Christian is bound to take a personal and active part in fulfilling that command. Indeed, the same two- fold obligation rests upon every member of the Church today, as in those early times : "They continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2:42); and they so con- tinued in order that they might "go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation" (St. Mark 16:15). These two say- ings present a very fair definition of what it means to be a Christian. The first represents Christians as those who are something, that is, steadfast in accepting the doctrine which the Apostles taught and transforming it into daily practice; steadfast in maintaining, to- gether with the Apostles, their fellowship and unity in the Body; steadfast in recalling and confirming that unity by the constant receiv- ing of the Holy Communion; and steadfast in
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joining in a form of common worship peculiar to the Christian Church. There was nothing else to distinguish those early Christians from their fellow-Jews. They lived like Jews, they held to Jewish customs and observances, they maintained their relations with synagogue and temple, there was no sharp break with Juda- ism; but in the mass of Judaism they formed a little nucleus, and, by noting their loyalty to one another, their meetings together for spe- cial forms of worship, and, above all, their con- sciousness of a new life thrilling and trans- forming them, it was easy to tell who were Christians.
The second saying represents Christians as those who are doing something. Not only were they living a different life, with new motives, new courage, new understanding, new ideals; but they were going everywhere, "preaching the word" — not orally always, but by example, by evidences of power; and, fur- thermore, in expressed obedience to a command from God. They had witnessed a stupendous event ; they had shared in a resurrection ; they knew a power capable of turning the world upside down and transforming it into a King- dom where the righteousness of God should inspire and control every act of man ; and this good news each one of them felt bound to announce, this transformation each one felt bound to promote. "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard" — this
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was the real compulsion which persecution merely made effective. For this, no ordina- tion was essential. The layman, whatever business or occupation he might pursue, felt the demands of one great profession — that of the missionary, and he would have been beyond measure puzzled if he had found among "the prayers" such an one as that with which many modern Church people are familiar, containing the petition, "We commend to thy fatherly care all whom thou hast called to take part in the missionary work of thy Church. " For, in the only Christian community which he knew any- thing about, every one was a missionary, keen to tell what he himself had seen and heard and experienced; and the kind of prayer with which he was becoming most familiar was, "Now, Lord, grant unto thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, while thou stretchi- est forth thy hand to heal" (Acts 4:29, 30).
It was by these marks, then, that an observer in the first century could readily distinguish a Christian from other people: the Christian was seen to withdraw himself frequently into the fellowship of his beloved community, there to meet his Lord in prayer and in the blessed Sacrament; and hence he was seen to issue eagerly to apply to the needs of all men every- where the principles of the Life which he had received, the Truth which had been revealed to him, and the Way which led to the Father.
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of the twentieth ? Where shall we find a tetter or simpler definition of the much-defined noun "Christian" than this: one who continues "steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fel- lowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers"; and who "goes into all the world, preaching the gospel to the whole creation"? No matter what his avocation, this surely is the profession of every Christian, for "Bap- tism doth represent unto us our profession; which is, to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto him" (Book of Common Prayer, p. 251).
And what is true of the individual Christian, is equally and even more evidently true of the whole Church. For she is the bodily Presence of Christ on earth and therefore must, in the very nature of things, have aims and do works identical in every respect with His. She is a life-saver to bring life to dying souls. She is a militant body, to fight everywhere, in Christ's name and as He did, against disease and ig- norance and sin.
Apply this, if you like, to your own parish! What reason for existence has your parish church with its body of believers? Of course the building is there for the use of all who desire to unite in the common worship of God; it is warmed and lighted and otherwise made as comfortable as is thought necessary; it is en- riched and beautified as is fitting for a place set apart as a temple consecrated to God's
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presence and use ; everything is done to insure that His true and living Word may be effec- tively set forth and His holy Sacraments be rightly and duly administered, that so the body of believers may be nurtured in the Faith and their souls continually strengthened. But surely this is not all. Is it, indeed, more than a means to an end? A life-saving station has its comfortable quarters for its men where they can be drilled and exercised in order to keep fit; its well-appointed life-boat scrubbed and neat, brass-work polished, everything in place. But what for? No sensible person would dream of saying that the men were cared for in order that they might become types of phys- ical perfection, or that the boat was kept in perfect condition in order to be looked at. No, all this is in order that boat and crew may at every moment be ready for the service of peo- ple in desperate need. Everything must be made subservient to this ; nothing must be per- mitted which will in any degree detract from the most instant and perfect service. During the winter, in many of our life-saving stations along the coast, the crews are exhausted, the boats worn and battered. All honor to them ! These are the evidences that they have nobly served their purpose. There is, on the other hand, many a parish so neat and well-ordered and self-satisfied and forgetful of the reason for its existence, that it avoids any active serv- ice for fear lest, in aiding stricken humanity,
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it might spring a leak itself or get its paint scratched. Better founder in service than rot in disuse!
So the function of any militant body is to fight the common enemy. I recall the case of a family who for years had housed and cared for a self-centered relative, hipped on himself and generally useless, but still an object of solicit- ous care. The children had been taught that "Uncle George'' must be deferred to, spared all unnecessary steps and saved in every way. Finally one of the youngsters of the family, on being told for the hundredth time to run an errand for Uncle George because his uncle "must be saved as much as possible," blurted out the natural question, "Mother, what in the world is Uncle George being saved for?"
It might be well for the parish which re- joices in its financial safety and well-being, or the individual who believes himself to be "saved," occasionally to ask, "What am I saved for?" Happy the church, the parish or the individual so conscious of unity with Jesus Christ that the one aim and object of existence is felt to be the daily meeting with Him in His inner sanctuary in order to go out with Him to all the world even at the cost of being scarred and bruised and worn as He was, and bearing the honorable marks of His service. "He saved others, Himself he cannot save," must always be the mark of the Christian.
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CHAPTER VI
THE CALL TO INTELLIGENCE
I spoke, in a previous chapter, of obedience to our Lord's last command as one of the in- centives to Christian activity. We can not with impunity evade or minimize the obliga- tion of those solemn words, "Go ye into all the world," even though our "going" may, by the circumstances in which God Himself has placed us, be restricted in area or confined to the activity of intelligent praying, intelligent giving, etc.
We have seen how the Lord's Prayer — the prayer so perfectly characteristic of Him and therefore so truly "in His Name" — is a prayer the central and dominant note of which is missionary activity on the part of the mem- bers of God's family toward every human being as yet outside that family. I hope, too, that whether we regard the Church as a mere organization to be split up and re-formed at man's will, or whether we regard it as a liv- ing organism not to be torn in pieces except with agony and loss of power, we have also seen that the final command of Jesus Christ is in the nature of a charter which can not be'
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ignored if the organization is to continue, and that obedience to it is an evidence of life which no member can surrender and yet remain as other than a useless or harmful portion of the Body.
To the loyal soldier and servant, disobedi- ence is a cardinal sin; to the living member of a body amputation spells death. There can be no question but that God can not abide either an inactive Church or an inactive member of His Church. Perhaps the most striking exam- ple of this was the violence with which, as we have seen, He drove the early Christians away from Jerusalem.
The objection will at once be raised that the disciples could not have felt very strongly — no more strongly in fact than most of us do — the mandatory quality of their Master's last command, if a catastrophe was needed to im- press it upon them. To this it may be replied that many circumstances combined to make them temporarily forgetful of it. There was evidence of the desperate need of the good news where they were ; they were meeting with phenomenal success; the new spirit of brother- hood had produced in the Church a condition of ease and well-being hard to relinquish; parochialism had seized upon them. No won- der that they postponed literal obedience to the Lord's command and forgot the way in which He once turned His back on the bitter need of His fellow-townsmen of Capernaum
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in order to carry His message to the "next towns" as well! One must remember also that it was not many, even of the original disciples, who had heard His imperious missionary com- mand. It had doubtless been repeated to others by those who had heard it, but it had not yet become part of a written gospel, the common property of all, read and known by every one. The moment, however, that they were forced out of Jerusalem, they showed the same eager spirit, as bearers of a good message, which they had shown within the walls of Jerusalem. What they had been doing intensively, they now did extensively. They had found the way of life — nay, they had found Life itself, and they couldn't keep it to themselves. No mere command to carry the good news was neces- sary; they felt what a modern writer has ex- pressed— "He who has what the world lacks is a debtor to the world/' It was not obedience to an outward command so much as the inner compulsion of a joyous assurance which made these early Christians "go everywhere, preach- ing the word/' when once they had been forced to look beyond the bounds of their own neigh- borhood. They unconsciously imitated the Christ without consciously obeying His com- mand; and the more they saw of the world's need, the farther they went bearing the answer to it. Obedience to the Lord's command, then, is not for us, any more than it was for them, a primary incentive to missionary interest and
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activity. His commands, however, are neces- sary in order to stimulate some of us to such activity, and it may be well therefore to ex- amine what He said further by way of com- mand along this line.
I wonder if any one ever became really in- terested in any great cause without knowing something about it? A certain author has, I believe, recently written a book or an article with the title, On the Ad oral Obligation of Being Intelligent, It is a striking phrase be- cause it is true. The more a project or a cause involves distinctly moral issues, the more a man is morally bound to learn all he can about it in order to give or withhold his support on intelligent grounds. It was surely so in the case of the recent war. If the American Government had been content merely to an- nounce casually that there was a war going on somewhere in Europe; that people at all interested could read something about it in the Congressional Record; that it had some ill- defined relation to this country; and that if any one cared to take an active part in it, there was a recruiting station somewhere — if such had been the course followed, the German Kaiser would today represent the only power in the world. Fortunately, things were not done that way. Our public men were deter- mined, from the outset, that, however we might individually regard war in itself, we should not be allowed to remain unintelligent re-
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garding this war. The press got busy; dis- tinguished authors wrote books; the cables brought news which was at once published; every single man of us, when he came down to breakfast, instantly seized the paper to scan the war-news; to every nook and corner of the land went information as to what the war was about, which side had temporarily the upper hand, and what dangers threatened in case Germany should win out. The consequence was that interest in the war and in our share in it was aroused in every quarter ; and though, in the opinion of many, the United States might have gone in earlier, it is certain that when we did go in, we did so intelligently, knowing perfectly well why we were doing it. To have been unintelligent in the matter would have been immoral, since the issues at stake were moral issues. Having become intelligent, we bent our backs to the huge task, and we did it thoroughly. We sent our sons to undergo rigorous training preparatory to facing hor- rors and death; every pair of hands debarred from fighting was busy in one or more of in- numerable ways, all with a view to winning the war ; we prayed and studied and read ; we were elated by news of victories and depressed by news of defeats; all this and more we did because we were intelligently interested.
Perhaps it is needless to draw a comparison between this attitude of mind toward the European War and the attitude of the average
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Churchman toward the far greater war, in- volving vaster issues, in which the Church is engaged. Regarding this, the ordinary run of Church people are absolutely unintelligent. They read little about it and study less; they know nothing about where it is being waged or what are the strategic points; they are ig- norant of the great leaders, even their names; they have only the vaguest idea of what it is about; victory and defeat alike leave them cold. Of course, under these circumstances, the sug- gestion from one of their sons that he is con- sidering, as his career, the hard life of an active fighter, whether in the ranks or as an officer, is usually met with the barest tolerance, if not with all possible discouragement. "There's nothing in the ministry, my boy, for a man who really wants to get on." How familiar it sounds! And when it comes to giving to his central board of strategy the money necessary in order that the war may be prosecuted to a successful end, no wonder that, for years past, the average communicant of the Episcopal Church has been content with a gift of less than three cents a week! He has no conception of the magnitude of the cause he is asked to give to, or of the tremendous issues involved. The trouble is that he is guilty of the sin of willing stupidity; he is im- moral because unintelligent toward the su- preme objective for which the Church is work- ing and fighting.
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Long ago, our Lord put to His disciples a most searching question: "What do ye more than others?" (St. Matt. 5:47). The varied activities mentioned above, in connection with the war, had no distinctively Christian charac- ter ; every one — Christians and non-Christians alike — joined in them. What distinctively Christian efforts toward victory were made by us; what did we Christians do more than others? If the war was really fought to bring in peace and righteousness on earth, is not this the very objective of the Church's warfare always ? What are we doing more than others, to attain this object? We rejoice that we are members of a Catholic and Apostolic Church; what do we more than others ? We occupy a certain position in the Church; what do we more than others? It is no general average of intelligence or interest or activity that is im- plied in our Lord's question, for He follows it at once with the statement, "Ye therefore shall be perfect." Whatever others may do or leave undone, "What is that to thee? Follow thou Me."
Now our Lord's first command regarding missionary activity is in the line of acquired intelligence. He never approved of an unin- telligent ordained or unordained ministry ; still less of a ministry based on anything other than a knowledge of the world's need, so far as it could be seen. His first command, therefore, is "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields"
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( St. John 4:35). The circumstances which gave rise to this command were rather interesting. He had just succeeded in piercing the hardened conscience of a despised Samaritan woman. His disciples, who had left Him outside of the town in order to get some food, were not a little scandalized, on rejoining Him, at finding what He had been about — actually conversing familiarly and at some length with a woman with whom they, for many reasons, would have had no dealings whatever. The woman had returned to town somewhat hastily, and now, there she was coming back again along the dusty road, and with her a train of white-clacf townspeople. Here are foreign missions ap- proaching, led by rumors of good news brought by a woman. "Lift up your eyes and look/' says our Lord. "See the need — the oppor- tunity." And the result? The need is made evident even to those Jewish men; prejudice and indifference vanish before it, and for two days they actually take up their quarters with the hateful Samaritans — working among them? Perhaps — but at least watching their Master as He shows them His saving power. More than this. When, months afterwards, Philip goes to that same city proclaiming what these Samaritans had before only dimly seen, the results are simply marvelous, and all be- cause other disciples had followed their Mas- ter's first missionary command in taking the
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trouble to lift up their eyes and look on one small fraction of the world's need.
It was quite the same in Christ's own home- mission field. Throughout the neighborhood of Capernaum He sees the pitiable needs of the multitude, physical and spiritual (St. Matt. 9:36, 37)- It stirs Him profoundly, and He just begs the disciples to note it, too — the desperate need — so little to meet it with.
This, then, is the command which precedes all others, on which in fact depends the effec- tiveness of the others ; and it was this command which, of late, the American Church obeyed for the first time in all her history. General Convention, in 1919, gave its sanction to a Survey which had been previously undertaken. That survey was hardly more than a glance at the opportunities at home; it covered overseas only those limited areas in which the American Church is in some measure attempting to ful- fill her mission; it naturally could not even mention the activities of other Christian com- munions much larger than her own. But it did afford a glimpse, and through it every Church- man had an opportunity to lift up his eyes and look on the fields in order to judge intelligently of the opportunity and to act accordingly.
If he took this means of becoming intelligent, which the Church provided, it is difficult to see how he could have been other than driven to fulfill our Lord's second missionary command. The need is staggering; so much he must have
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realized. No human being can look at it with- out feeling his impotence in face of it. "There- fore," says the Master, "pray ye the Lord of the harvest that He send forth labourers into his harvest" (St. Matt. 19:38). More and better Christians — that is what is needed ; more intelligent zeal; a deeper sense of the joy of giving money wisely and seeing it work; a more manifest giving of personal service to meet a definite need.
It is odd how instinctively I apply the prayer for laborers to almost any one but myself. As pne of our bishops wittily said, "The average Christian answers God's call to service much as Isaiah did, only with the change of one pronoun, 'And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us ? Then I said, Here am I, send him! " It is quite time that we realized that when a man prays God to send forth laborers, one of those laborers must assuredly be the man himself. It is a prayer for increased activity in personal service, and it makes little difference where or how that service is given, whether in New York or Shanghai, so long as it is deliberately intended to meet a specific need, and is most liberally given where the need is seen to be greatest.
It might be added that in these days the sending of laborers to fields where the need is greatest involves a considerable expenditure of money. Many a man keeps a laborer in his
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pocket-book ; all that is needed is to let him out. So our Lord adds to "looking" and "praying" a third missionary command, "Freely ye have received, freely give" (St. Matt. 10:8). He was referring, of course, to power — the power to heal, to exorcise, to give life; but, after all, is not money a form, of power? Of this the disciples had none, and naturally they couldn't give what they didn't have; but always they did as they had been told to do. "Such as I have give I thee." What they gave was much more valuable than "silver and gold" of which they had none ; but, equally with them, we have power and the means of setting power free to act. Offer this power to God and all of it will be used; keep it yourself and much of it will be abused. Again, the command to give is closely connected with the command to pray. It is a poor prayer which counts on God's activity and not at all on our own. What of good a man desires for himself or others, he can never be content merely to pray for; he must also give whatever he has to give. To pray for the Church's mission and at the same time to give to it only a minute proportion of our money is a form of mocking God. Prayer, too, is an essential means of increasing our desire to give. Indeed, St. Paul considers liberality as a grace — as a gift from God — like love and faith and hope and other Christian graces. Those who find it hard to give freely (usually the rich) should read the eighth and ninth
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chapters of the Second Epistle to the Corin- thians, and see how St. Paul, in urging- liber- ality, refers to it not as an inherent quality or as one easily acquired, but as a direct gift from God, to be prayed for and earnestly culti- vated. Possibly the trouble with the average Christian is that while he has prayed for mercy and forgiveness and holiness, he has never asked God to give him willingness to part with his money freely, gladly, and intelligently. It is a grace which comes with praying and in- creases with use. Only after the disciples had obeyed the commands to "Look," to "Pray," and to "Give," were they fully prepared to re- ceive the final command to "Go." Evidently much preparation is required for intelligent activity in the Church's mission. We have already discussed sufficiently the meaning and the mandatory character of the Great Com- mission. Llere, therefore, let me merely point out that in attempting to fulfill the command to get busy, without any definite knowledge of the needs which call for our activity and with- out any prayer for increased willingness to offer ourselves with whatever we may have besides, the chances are that we shall merely make a botch of it and get in the way of those who are really working intelligently. God has joined together zeal and discretion; let no man put them asunder.
So much for the incentive of our Lord's commands to us concerning the mission of His
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Church to all the world. That obedience is a primary motive in the mind of a soldier and servant, no one, I suppose, would deny. But it is difficult to believe that mere obedience to a "Thou shalt," is ever the highest motive for a soldier of Christ; it is doubtful if the early Christians would ever have given this as the incentive to ,their activity. No ! What drove them out was a remarkable experience which they had had — an experience which had made new men of them, and regarding which they simply couldn't keep still.
A few pages back, I tried to picture the un- intelligent, unsympathetic attitude of the aver- age Churchman toward the Church's war, and I contrasted it with his well-informed, alert, indomitable activity in the European war. I think the picture was a fair one — the analogy measurably warrantable. There can be no question but that the prevailing attitude of mind, on the part of Christians, toward the cause of Christ and the coming of God's King- dom on earth ; and, above all, toward their own personal experience of the saving power of Christ, of the new life born in them, and of their glorious destiny as sons of God, is one of haziness and half-hearted acquiescence, and a sort of formal, matter-of-course acceptance. What it lacks is reality and dynamic. How vastly different was the attitude of every mem- ber of the early Church toward the Church's mission. They knew for themselves what
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Jesus Christ — the Captain of their Salvation — had done for them ; they felt in themselves the surging pulsation of a new life; they saw only forces of destruction in a world ignorant of their Lord ; and every fibre in their being was stirred with the determination to bear Him and His message to a world for which they knezv, out of their own experience, that there could be no other possible redemption. This, I take it, is the highest motive of missionary activity and its most powerful incentive. "We cannot but speak the things which we saw and heard," was the answer by which the Apostles justified themselves for continuing their work even in the face of legal restrictions. So, later, St. Paul refused any credit for preaching the Gospel, since his whole personal experience of it forbade silence regarding it (i Cor. 9:16). It must be the same today. It is inconceivable that any man who has really had the full per- sonal experience of Jesus Christ can keep it to himself. He has become a son of God — a member of Christ; through union with Christ he has entered the Kingdom of Heaven in which unending life and joy and peace have become his rightful possessions; he is min- istered to and fed by Christ Himself; all un- certainty and fear regarding the future are removed; in the peace of God he walks in the way of Christ. Even if this full experience has, as yet, been denied him, surely his mem- bership in the family of God must mean some- US
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thing to him ; he must find in it some advantage which the man next him needs. Take a simple illustration. You have come across a medicine which claims to be a sure cure for every physical ailment. You try it for a headache and experience its virtue ; it has done you good. You meet a friend, suffering as you did, and the first thing you do is to tell him of the new medicine. The chances are that you put your- self to some trouble to search out people who are in similar need ; you may conceivably make rather a bore of yourself through your enthu- siasm. It is an unworthy illustration, but the case is the same with everything which benefits you. Instinctively you recommend it to others — you advertise it. And this you do, not neces- sarily by talking — indeed you often gain more by not continually talking. Merely your con- stant use of a certain cereal at breakfast, or a special kind of physical exercise, is your best advertisement of that particular thing among your friends. They see that you enjoy and are benefited by it, and they are easily led to try it for themselves. So with a man's Christian- ity. If it means anything to him personally, he instinctively shows it to his neighbors. He is not always "talking religion'' — God forbid! — but he is, at least to some extent, an illustra- tion of what Christianity does. We have spoken before of a Christian as a "witness." It must be remembered that witnessing is not necessarily done in words, or the giving of
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testimony by talk. Indeed, "Actions speak louder than words" — a saying peculiarly appli- cable to the Christian. One's life and example at home, in church, at school or in one's office is stronger evidence for or against what one professes to believe than any amount of talk. I remember being present on one occasion at the session of a certain Church School. When the time came to repeat the Creed, the children sprang to their feet and stood at "attention" — heels together, arms straight at their sides, chests out, heads up ; then with one voice they made that splendid statement of the faith. It was enormously impressive. One felt that the Creed was the one thing that mattered — the one statement of absolute truth, and that those children would have said it equally boldly if they had been lined up in front of a firing- squad, and told that if they dared to repeat it to the end they would instantly be shot. Every child was, at that moment, a potential mis- sionary, for I am quite sure that had an un- believer listened to the Creed as they said it, he would have been convinced that here was something worth inquiring into.
There is, however, another side to this need of bearing witness to a personal experience. Unless the experience has been a personal one, it hasn't the smallest value as convincing testi- mony. You can talk till doomsday about the virtues of a certain medicine, but the inevitable question will be, "Have you tried it yourself
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and found it good?" It is not so much a matter of the quantity of one's experience as of its quality. A man may be able to say with assur- ance no more than the opening sentence of the Creed. Very well ; then let him try to make the one fact of the Fatherhood of God mean some- thing of worth to himself first, then let him make it in some way influence his visible actions, and then let him tell another man what the belief has meant to him. Or perhaps the benefits of church-going are, for you, summed up in the pleasure of hearing good music or a thoughtful sermon; even this is worth something to you, an invitation to a friend to go with you and share what pleases you might conceivably result in his getting more than you have. But for heaven's sake and your own soul's sake avoid recommending anything which you haven't tried, and beware of even giving the impression that you know anything of belief and spiritual life beyond what you have personally experienced. On the other hand, and equally for your soul's sake, never hesitate, when opportunity offers, to recommend what you have experienced.
Obedience, Personal Experience — these are two compelling incentives to missionary activ- ity. A third is to be found in a realization of the world's need. It is difficult to see how any one can look abroad on the world today and be satisfied that all is as it should be because all is as God wishes it to be. The tragedy of war
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is in its aftermath. If people could but realize what misery follows in the track of war, no justifying cause for it would be allowed as sufficient. Truly a "Pentecost of Calamity" swept the world for four years. Death robbed the nations of millions of their bread-winners, and of thousands of their leaders in all the high adventures of the human mind; the rav- aged fields were left unsown, and children cried for bread in vain ; famine and disease ran riot, and no means were at hand to check them ; the wheels of industry moved slowly, if at all, for lack of material; oppression arose in new and unprecedented forms; Christians had been killed by Christians and non-Christians alike until there were actually fewer men and women to carry on the Church's mission than there had been before the war broke out. It is true that the torture of the world aroused the spirit of Christian sympathy and generosity to a de- gree far in excess of anything that the world had ever before experienced; but, in so vast a mass of agony and despair, all that could be done in alleviation was but a drop in the ocean of human need. Yet, after all, the war merely concentrated, in time and space, conditions which had before escaped notice because so widely spread. I suppose that the poverty, and consequent suffering, of the common peo- ple in every non-Christian land is absolutely inconceivable in this rich land of ours where day-labor receives thirty times what it does in
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China. To bitter poverty must be added the pangs of constant hunger verging on starva- tion. When five millions of people in one country starve to death in a single year in India, the fact hardly attracts our notice. This, it is true, was the result of an exceptional famine-year in India; but it is a menace from which the people of Asia and Africa are never free. It has been stated that in those lands, two hundred million people go to bed every night hungry, and half that number absolutely shelterless. Such conditions breed disease, es- pecially when accentuated by ignorance and disregard of the simplest laws of sanitation and hygiene. Epidemics take their toll of mil- lions every year. Many portions of Asia are veritable plague-spots, and it is only by taking the utmost precautions that Europe and Amer- ica are kept, to a certain degree, immune. One recalls the experience of a certain traveler who, visiting the docks at San Francisco, noted sev- eral tramp steamers from the Orient moored to the dock by hempen hawsers on each of which was strung a tin disc. On inquiring the object of the latter, he was horrified to learn that they were placed there to prevent the rats, possible carriers of the germs of bubonic plague, from crawling to the shore and infect- ing the people of San Francisco.
The death-rate in every pagan land is simply appalling ; not merely the death-rate from dis- ease, but that due to the passive neglect of
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childhood, and the active perils to which it is subjected. "In most Oriental towns the death- rate is estimated at over 45 per 1,000. In Bombay, the infant death-rate was 593 per 1, 000." (Quoted by Murray, from Paget's "The Claim of Suffering") Closely asso- ciated with this is the degradation of woman- hood which is everywhere a characteristic of paganism.
The picture is a dark one. That I grant. But its colors are dark because we Christians do not will to have them changed. The colors which have produced the somber picture are ignorance, immorality, hopelessness, fear, su- perstition, the exploitation of the many by the few. And these colors are the very antithesis of those which Jesus Christ uses; hence the profound difference between this picture and the one presented by every land where His Gospel has been applied in any degree effec- tively. Not for one single day need that pic- ture of the Orient remain as dark as it is; only our own indifference keeps it so. Nor is there any other reason for the hunger, the misery, the want which still mar the beauty of our own land. The smallest effort on our part — even so slight a one as the merciful Lord illustrates by "a cup of cold water only" — will serve to that extent to change existing con- ditions.
But it is not only physical need which cries aloud for alleviation the world over. We have
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been accustomed to think of our own land as one in which illiteracy was almost unknown; but the war served to shock us into the discon- certing realization that four and a half mil- lions of Americans over twenty years old are unable to read or write any language what- ever; ten per cent of the men drafted into the war were similarly handicapped. Startling as these facts are, the conditions in the world at large are still more so. The vast majority of the world's population is sunk in densest ignorance. No less than eighty per cent of all human beings can neither read nor write. This means stagnation; for it is a fact proved by experience that only in those lands where the written or printed page is intelligible to the majority of the people have enlightenment and progress been made possible. Inability to read on the part of the very people to whom the Church needs most to minister hampers her in the discharge of her mission ; for where her representatives reach hundreds with the spoken word, they might reach millions were these able to read the written word. Illiteracy in a democracy is an intolerable menace ; in the world at large it is an offense to the God of all wisdom and power. As literacy increases and education advances, it becomes more and more essential that the latter be used to reveal God; otherwise all that is acquired is merely knowledge; wisdom remains as far off as ever. This is the task of the Church at home and
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overseas, for it expresses one great need of the human race, which the Church alone is able adequately to supply. Again we must be warned that world-wide ignorance exists and brings with it its train of misery, only because we Christians are not determined to have it otherwise. More than this: We must make up our minds that wherever secular education has advanced, there it is our business to see that Christian education makes similar prog- ress. If Christians are content to watch im- passively a pagan land in the process of devel- oping a system of education which ignores God, then they must be prepared to face the inev- itable menace. One illustration may suffice. There can be no question but that Japan, by sheer force of energy and by extraordinary adaptability, has come to occupy a position of dominance in the Far East. Her ideals are bound to impress themselves on her neighbors. Can she be safely trusted with so vast a respon- sibility? Certain facts and figures recently published indicate a negative answer. Thus, for example, a recent Japanese writer is authority for the following: "It is not any exaggeration to state that, as regards the labor condition of women, Japan maintains the worst record known to the civilized world." (The Japan Review, Vol. IV, p. 87, 1920.) Has this any connection with the fact that, while Japan has developed a remarkable system of educa- tion, it is a system having no place for God and
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His righteousness? I think that the connec- tion is a close one. If so, the following figures are significant. There are, in the Imperial University of Tokyo, about live thousand students — men who ten years hence will be guiding the destinies of the Empire and her neighbors. Of these 5000 young men, 8 en- rolled themselves as Shintoists, 50 as Bud- dhists, 60 as Christians, 1500 as atheists, and 3000 as agnostics. In so far as these facts and figures reflect the spirit of modern Japan, they indicate the desperate straits in which she finds herself. Happily, signs are not wanting to show that she is beginning to realize her need. She is groping for a religion which can keep her straight. There was never a time when the Church had a greater opportunity to meet an educational need than at the present moment, and with these eager, virile neighbors of ours.
But in thinking of the need of pagan lands for education, and Christian education, let us not forget our own portentous lack of the lat- ter. The teaching of Christianity is rightly placed in the hands of the Church rather than in those of the State; that is not a debatable question. But it is a very serious question how the Church is meeting this responsibility. We have discussed this in a previous chapter and need only emphasize here that, while the proportion of Christians to the whole popula- tion of the United States is deplorably small,
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the proportion of Christians who can give any intelligent reason why they are Christians is smaller still; while almost infinitesimal is the proportion of Episcopalians who are prepared to give any adequate, or even self -satis lying, answer to the question, "Why are you an Episcopalian rather than a Baptist or a Roman Catholic ?" And this, be it noted, not because there are no adequate answers or that the necessary information is not readily accessible. No ! The truth is that most Christians must be classed as religious illiterates, and the blame lies with those of us who are indifferent to the world's intellectual needs and who have not enabled the Church to fulfill her mission to the minds of men.
Nor, again, are the needs of the world ex- pressed merely in physical or mental terms. Indeed, these are the least of all. What the world needs in order to be satisfied is Jesus Christ. Nothing less will serve. It is incon- ceivable that any Christian man can face with equanimity the fact that out of a world- population of nearly seventeen hundred mil- lion human souls, hardly more than one-third have even received the news of the blessings of God's complete revelation of Himself in Christ, or of their redemption by Him, After twenty centuries, during which God has been calling upon the Christian Church to fulfill her mission, more than one thousand million souls are still awaiting the life-bringing news.
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I am not unaware that there are those, usually of the kind that delight to speak of themselves as "hard-headed business men" (too often "bone-heads," indeed, regarding the Church's mission) who, while they profess to be Christians, and even Churchmen, are yet so callous to all that Jesus Christ has brought to them that they have even succeeded in per- suading themselves that a partial revelation is "quite good enough for the heathen." "The dim light brought to the world through Buddha or Confucius is," they say, "all that the Oriental needs. He is accustomed to it ; it has produced saints; why disturb him with longings for anything higher?" Oh, the ig- norant selfishness of such Christians! They have simply never had their eyes opened to the fact that Christianity is not one religion among many, but rather the climax of all re- ligion. We are on dangerous ground when we allow ourselves to think of Judaism, Moham- medanism, Confucianism, etc., as separate "religions" ; for we are thus led to regard one "religion" as inherently suitable for one nation, another for another; and thereby we not only fall into error, but we minimize one of the great incentives to the spread of Christianity.
Revelation is always a progressive and de- veloping work of God. "The path of the righteous is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Prov. 4:18). Always there have been devout souls
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who, earnestly seeking righteousness, have discovered God. "In every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:35).
But while God has thus been revealed dimly to men of rare capacity in all ages and lands, it is as true of pagan lands now as it was in the days of Isaiah, that "darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the peoples. " What- ever of high ideal and moral excellence has in the past attached to the great ethnic religions in their purest forms, their appeal has never been to other than the few; while, even to them, they have proved merely pointers of the way, with no divine power to enable man to reach the goal destined for him of God. For the perfect light is Christ. In Him is the com- plete revelation of God, embracing all that man in his present state can possibly conceive of God, and capable of answering every need of every man and of all human relationships the world over. "The gospel/' writes Dr. Jowett, "covers the whole bleak field of human need. There is no single human necessity which cowers and shivers outside the priv- ileged pale." It is true that a more complete revelation still is possible. It may be that there is yet to be developed on earth a race of men with greater capacity to receive and to apprehend God; it is certainly true that a far more perfect revealing of God awaits us when at last we are relieved of the blinding burden
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of the flesh (i St. John 3:2; Rom. 8:18-23; 1 Cor. 2:9, 10). But, for us here, and for all men now, Christ is the one true light which, coming into the world, lighteth every man. For Him wait the nations now sitting in dark- ness and the shadow of death. By their own confession, none else can satisfy them. Their partial light is failing, and now God relies upon His Church to rekindle whatever of brightness there was in that light, and to use it as a means of revealing to all, "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ/' We dare not wait; for though God may have provided some way of approach to Him other than through Christ the Way; some other source of life other than incor- poration in His living Church through Bap- tism; some other means of union with Him other than through the gift of the Spirit in Confirmation and the constant power of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ — though God may, by His infinite grace, have provided a means of salvation for those who seek righteousness by the light they have; yet of all this we have no absolute assurance ex- cept as we trust in the uncovenanted mercies of God. Nor need these matters greatly con- cern us. Not the perils of ignorance and un- belief, but rather the unmeasurable blessings of faith — these form the message of God to man. The need of the world is desperate; we have the means of relieving it, in its every as-
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pect. No partial revelation has proved able to stand the stress of complex modern life; the complete revelation is ours to give if we will. For us, and therefore for all, there is but One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We are assured that nothing less than His Presence can satisfy the insistent needs of men, because that alone has satisfied ours. To see the need is to be stirred to activity, unless indeed we be "dead to the world." With pitying eyes, Jesus Christ looked upon the multitudes about Him. He saw them as sheep distressed and scattered, having no shepherd (St. Matt. 9:36). But mark! What He felt was not mere pity. "He was moved with compassion for them." There is a vast difference between pity and compas- sion. The former is a natural human emotion which we delight to gratify. We go to the theatre and see a play depicting the pathos of a young girl betrayed. Tears spring to our eyes for very pity, but that is all; we rarely leave the theatre determined to see the reality, to meet the need and to remove the causes. So with the Greeks of old. The people of Athens thronged to the great tragedies of /Eschylus and Sophocles; they gave free rein to their excited emotions, they were moved to tears; but history fails to tell us of any case where their emotionalism stirred any profound deter- mination to remove the causes of such deeds as had just excited their pity. Pity is a more or less pleasurable emotion; only when the
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emotion is translated into terms of remedial action can it be termed mercy or compassion. Nowhere, in the New Testament, are we told that God feels pity for us; it is God's mercy that we are taught to pray for, and by which we benefit practically.
When, therefore, we become intelligently alive to the appalling needs of our neighbor- hood, of our fellow-citizens far or near, of the world groping for God in the shadows, we dare not be content with pitying. In such a case mere pity is worse than useless ; by every means in our power we must, in mercy, try to relieve the need. I wonder if it is necessary to repeat that, in these days, no man has any excuse to remain in ignorance of the needs of the world as they are related to the Church. They are everywhere apparent to any man who will think or read. "Lift up your eyes and look!" "When He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them." Here, then, are three mighty incentives to activity on the part of every loval Christian : The Lord commands us; experience constrains us; Human need compels us. These motives should be sufficient, yet there are other incentives which should stir the modern man. For example, there is the fact that the world is contracting with startling rapidity; God is compressing all the nations of the earth into a neighborhood. In our contacts with nations once far distant, time and space are being almost eliminated. China is today
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nearer to New York, even in terms of travel, than was New Orleans a hundred years ago; communication with China is a matter of minutes only. Every modern invention seems aimed at making the world smaller, and con- tacts between nation and nation more inevi- table. The very words "far" and "near" are ceasing to have much practical significance for us. The Orient is perilously close when, as we have seen, the proximity of its diseases can be measured in terms of a tin disc eight inches in diameter and a thirty-second of an inch thick strung on a ship's hawser to prevent the swarm- ing of infected rats.
With equal ease our commodities, good and bad together, pass to the Orient; with equal difficulty — nay, with more, because ignorant of the menace — can the Orient protect itself against our evils. It is idle to say, as so many do, that the natives of other lands should be left to their own customs and "religions." Commerce will not have it so; trade demands an entry. And where commerce goes, bearing evil things as well as good, there the Church is bound to follow if only to counteract the one and to reenforce the other. It is not the Church in her mission overseas which is dis- turbing the placid calm of the Orient and arousing a spirit of unrest; commerce, with her myriad hands, is touching and awakening oriental life to countless new desires, and among these is the demand for western learn-
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ing which, to the observing Oriental, has given to the occidental nations their dominion in world affairs. The Church can not, with safety to herself or in justice to the Orient, fail to take advantage of the doors which com- merce is flinging wide open. The rapid spread of knowledge in this narrowing world is an- other powerful incentive to missionary activ- ity. We know more of central Africa today than our forebears in New England knew of Colorado. We read at our breakfast-table events which occurred in the Balkans or in New Zealand a few hours previously. Infor- mation regarding world needs from the Chris- tian standpoint is the easiest possible thing to acquire in these days.
This knowledge is disarming racial preju- dices and destroying illusions. It is utterly impossible today to regard the Chinese or the Japanese as inferior races. If our illusions with respect to them are disappearing, so are theirs with respect to us. On both sides is a growing recognition of common virtues as well as of common defects. One of the tragic results of mutual intercourse between East and West has been the utter disillusionment which has come over young students from China and Japan when they have seen the conditions actually permitted to exist in this so-called Christian land and have experienced the care- less discourtesy with which Christian people have met them. We, for our part, have been
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led by our growing knowledge of oriental peo- ples to the conviction that in certain spiritual qualities they far surpass us. Indeed it seems certain that Christianity, given first to an oriental people, later transmitted to Europe and interpreted in forms of occidental thought, now needs to be given back again to the Orient for reinterpretation by enlightened oriental thought. However that may be, the increas- ingly close physical contact between East and West is something to be carefully noted in con- sidering the incentives to missionary activity overseas. No one, for example, can measure the effect upon the heathen mind of having seen the great Christian nations of the world engaged in bitter war. The employment of thousands of Chinese laborers in France dur- ing the war can not fail to have produced, even on their dull minds, entirely new and extraor- dinary impressions — impressions which they will have carried back with them, for better or worse, on their return. They said little — these ignorant coolies — but doubtless they did a lot of thinking which may yet — who knows? — have a vast influence in China's future.
Very dreadful will be the day when that nation of four hundred millions of people — a Republic embracing one-quarter of the world's population — fully arouses herself under the goad of international contacts, if she be al- lowed to note in those relationships, as they affect her, only the threat of diminishing boun-
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daries, and resources exploited for the benefit of foreigners! Very glorious for the world will be that day if the Church is able then to show America to China, not merely as a shrewd purveyor of material goods, but as a Christian people lifting up on high the Christ, that so, according to His most sure promise, all men may be drawn to Him for the building up of His Body.
"To seek missing members for the perfect- ing of Christ's Body" — is not this the aim of the Church's mission; can we not find in this objective our sufficient incentive?
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CHAPTER VII
THE POWER IN THE CHURCH
We considered in previous chapters the in- centives which should stir Christians to mis- sionary activity. Obedience to our Lord's commands — obedience based on an intelligent view of the whole field and every aspect of it — this is a somewhat stern incentive, but in a measure fundamental.
Careful thought upon, and deep appreciation of, the innumerable benefits which we our- selves have received as members of God's Family through Christ — this should be a supreme and compelling incentive. "We can- not but speak the things which we saw and heard" must ever be in the mind of the Chris- tian. The Methodists used to speak freely of experiencing religion. This is, perhaps, what we Churchmen need.
Then there is the incentive which always comes from an intelligent outlook upon con- ditions in the world — the realization of peo- ple's desperate need of Jesus Christ to make them children of God, to give them abundant life, to move them to righteousness, to turn their chaos into order, to establish among them His joyous rule. There is no conceivable
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reason for the world's remaining in its present state a single year longer, except the cruel and faithless indifference of us Christians. Pity for those deprived of our blessings, mercy in enabling them to share, this is what is needed. These are the people for whom our Lord longed — other sheep, not yet of His fold, but neces- sary to complete His flock. Yes, necessary for the completing of His Church. Let us again define to ourselves the Church's mission: "To seek missing members of Christ's Body."
We have considered, too, certain lesser in- centives— the decreasing size of the world when measured in terms of communication; the closeness of international relationships ; the often menacing proximity of less advanced peoples; mutual disillusionment, and mutual understandings as well, due to our close con- tacts ; the opening of new opportunities through trade; the protection of the less powerful against the strong — all these considerations must inevitably stir us to activity if only as a means of self-protection.
But in order to be active something more than incentive is necessary. A paralytic may have every incentive in the world to get up and walk, and yet be hopelessly inactive. What he needs is power. This is the tragedy of every partial revelation of God — of all religions short of Christianity. They may provide every in- centive to righteousness but they leave their votaries powerless to attain it.
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Now this is precisely what the early Church had and what the modern Church appears to lack. The power behind the missionary activ- ity of the Apostles was so enormous that what they did by means'of it seems miraculous. It was not miraculous in the least. Given the same source of power, we could accomplish precisely the same results. It is a rather start- ling thought and worth investigating. What, then, was the power behind the early Church when she began her mission?
So long as our Lord was physically present with His disciples, His word, His example, He Himself, was the power. He appoints the Twelve and later the Seventy; He sends them off to do things, and somehow He and they become identified, and they find themselves working with a degree of power surprising even to themselves (St. Matt. 10; St. Luke io;i, 16-20). I suppose that it is quite im- possible for us to put ourselves in their place and realize what they must have felt. They had never dreamed of anything like it in their lives. They had seen Him — their Master — heal sick people; but it is doubtful if, as yet, they had seen any signs of His greater power; and, anyhow, He was the Lord and Master, they merely the humble friends and admirers; what reason had they to suppose that they, poor stupid disciples, could ever be able to exercise the smallest fraction of His power! But they started off at His command, and they
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tried what He told them to try; and, to their astounded joy, they found that His power had actually become theirs, and that they could duplicate what, with curious awe, they had seen Him do. Peculiarly vicious or stubborn cases did baffle them at times. We recall one such case especially (St. Mark 9 114-20). They had been left alone for a time, even Peter and James and John had gone up into the hills with their Master, and a very gruesome case of deaf and dumb epilepsy had been brought to them. Moreover, the disease was of long standing, and, at the moment, was in terrifying activity. The very sight of the boy in convulsions, wal- lowing in the dirt and foaming at the mouth, unnerved them. They felt that here was a horror which no power could reach, certainly not theirs. Then the Master came, and, after deliberately inquiring into the matter, calmly gave the needed relief, and went home followed by the crestfallen disciples. ''Why could not we cast it out?" they ask; and He assures them that the failure is entirely in themselves. More earnest prayer, more undoubting faith — that was all they lacked. One can imagine them, after that, clinging to Him more eagerly than ever, unwilling to be separated for a moment from the source of their power. How abso- lutely inconceivable to them, then, must have been the strange statement with which He an- nounced His approaching departure (St. John 16:7). He was preparing to leave them ; never
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again would they look into His face, or hear His words, or feel His hands in blessing, or see His power working through them — all this was intolerable even to think of. Expedient — better — for them? Preposterous! Yet He had just said it. Why? What comfort could be theirs if He were to leave them ; what power could they possibly find except in His presence? Well, He tells them. "If I go not away, the Comforter — the Helper — will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you" (St John 16:7). It is doubtful if they had any idea what He meant, or if they recalled another of His sayings, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works shall he do; because I go unto the Father" (St. John 14:12). But to us His meaning is plain. Abundant compensation for the withdrawal of our Lord's physical presence from His disci- ples was to be found in the coming of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and Strengthener. He was to be their new source of strength ; it was through His power that they were to do even greater things than their Master had done. Our Lord could not, in His physical body, be with His disciples always in all places ; but He would send to them a spiritual Presence, no less real and personal than He had been, but able to be with them for ever (St. John 14:16). It was indeed expedient for them that the Holy Spirit should come to carry on and bring to its
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final goal the work which Christ had begun in His disciples during His earthly life. It would be well worth our while to read again carefully the fourteenth and sixteenth chap- ters of St. John's Gospel in order to realize just what our Lord guarantees that the blessed Spirit shall do in and through those who re- ceive Him and allow Him to dwell in them. The urgent need of His presence will thus become evident, for He alone can bring home to the world a sense of its sinfulness apart from Christ, of its redemption through Christ, and of the defeat of evil by Christ (St. John 16 :8-io) . It is only through His teaching that we learn the truth about Christ and become able to interpret His teaching aright (St. John 16:13).
But just here a word of caution is necessary. We must remember that truth is too big for any one man to grasp wholly. There is no promise that the Holy Spirit will reveal all truth to men singly. It was to the whole body of the disciples united that our Lord gave the promise, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (St. John 8:32). The whole round of truth is for the whole body of the Church. Paul had received a measure of truth, so had Apollos, so had Cephas; but if their respective followers imagined that to each had been revealed the whole truth, or if others fancied that they alone had the truth as Christ embodied it, the result could be only
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endless contentions and divisions (i Cor. 1:11, 12). It is in the whole united body of baptized believers that the Spirit of Truth dwells; in His communion and fellowship the truth is made known.
It is in the person of the blessed Spirit that God abides in us with power. He it is who teaches us and bears witness to Christ in us and through us (St. John 15:26). He is the Spirit of Life — "the Giver of Life" as we assert in the Creed — by Whom we are made free from the law of sin and of death (Rom. 8:2) — free to serve God. On His assurance alone we hold fast to the fact that God can make men His children — adopting them into His Family (Rom. 8:15, 16). Above all, He comes to give us power in God's service. "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you," said our Lord, "and ye shall be my witnesses . . . unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). As has been said before, the remainder of the book is no more than a record of how that power was applied.
No sooner had the Holy Ghost given sign of His presence with the Church on the Day of Pentecost than the Apostles began to show evi- dence of a vital transformation. Less than two months ago, in that same city of Jerusalem, they had seen their Master done to death with- out venturing a word of protest; two only had dared to be present at His trial, and one of these had denied Him openly through sheer
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cowardice; even after His Resurrection, they were found trembling in an upper room for fear of the Jews. But look at them now ! It is Peter himself — the faint-hearted denier of his Lord — who takes the lead in publicly de- nouncing the members of the dreaded San- hedrin as "men without the law," in that they had crucified a man approved of God. A few days later Peter and John face the same mob which had before demanded the death of the Righteous One, and plead the power of His Name; and the next day, standing trial before the very judges who had condemned the Christ, it is Peter who tells them with biting scorn that it was their Messiah whom they had cruci- fied; adding that in Him alone are salvation and power. What has happened to Peter? Simply this, that the Holy Ghost has come upon him, and has transformed Simon the trembler into Peter the rock.
But in the great sweep of the Church's progress, one dominant figure stands out — the greatest miracle of all. Note him — Saul, the cultivated gentleman of Tarsus, aristo- cratic, learned, intolerant, bigoted, implacable — as his cold eyes watch the brutal murder of Stephen, the Christian witness. See him as he pursues his relentless way to Damascus to crush out the hated sect. Then listen to Paul, the slave of Jesus Christ, counting all his past as worthless if he can only gain Christ; fast- ening eager eyes on the prize of the high
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calling of God in Christ Jesus ; glorying in his very infirmities that the grace of God may be more evident in him; suffering all things for the Gospel's sake, and, in utter humility, seeing himself at last as the chief of sinners in the growing light of the vision of God (Phil. 3: 7-11 ; 13, 14; 11 Cor. 12:9, 10; 1 Tim. 1 115).
Again, recall how blind to their Lord's real nature and mission these first Apostles had been a few weeks previously; how ambitious and self-assertive; how regardless and forget- ful of His teaching; how slow to understand and to believe His promises. Now, on the other hand, they see with perfect clearness that Jesus of Nazareth was the very Christ of God; that death could never, in the very nature of things, have had dominion over Him ; that He is the ever-living Saviour of the world.
And then these astonishing men proceed to form a brotherhood among themselves on lines unknown to the world before — a brotherhood in which each offers what he can for the good of all, and in whose membership there are none who strive which should be the greatest (Acts 4:32-35). Whence came the sudden enlight- enment, this new spirit of love? Surely from none other than the Holy Ghost, bringing to their remembrance all that their Master had said to them, and taught them.
Note, too, how simply these men who, not so many months before, had been puzzled to know how really to pray, now turn to God in
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their specific need and draw down power from on high (Acts 4:24-31). Boldness, enlight- enment, the power of prayer — these were the gifts of Him who had now come to take the Christ's place on earth, to abide forever with the Church, and to enable her to fulfill her mission.
It will be noted that this power was mani- fested in extraordinary ways; the birthday of the Church was celebrated strikingly. By the grace of the blessed Spirit — though just how, we can not be sure — people of various tongues were enabled to receive the initial message ; the Apostles were able to deliver their message with results never attained even by our Lord Himself; thousands responded to the message; the sick were cured; the lame were made to walk; even the dead were raised. Threatened, the Church prays; and again the Spirit is poured out upon her in power and a sense of unity and brotherhood. Falseness within the blessed community is recognized as a sin against the Spirit and is punished accordingly (Acts 5: 3 and 9). He is the joint-witness, with the Apostles, to the saving power of Christ, the Messiah (Acts 5:32). He it is who fills St. Stephen with wisdom and power so that none can withstand him. "Ye stiff- necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears," he thunders, when all his pleading eloquence has proved unavailing, "ye do always resist the Holy Ghost" ; and then He whom they had
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resisted gives to His servant the supreme re- ward of steadfastness — the vision of his Lord in glory (Acts 7:55).
Now take the Book of Acts and follow the rushing course of the Spirit.*
The disciples are driven out of Jerusalem and the Church is scattered; but the presence of God the Holy Ghost remains with her. Philip, the deacon, goes down to Samaria — the Lord's own foreign mission field — and there he preaches and baptizes and heals. Word goes back to the Apostles that the Samaritans are now baptized and prepared to receive the Holy Ghost; and the leaders hasten down to fulfill their office, laying their hands upon them in Confirmation. So in every phase of Church extension, the Spirit demands His share. Philip is further made His instrument for planting the Church in Africa. He drives Peter, the ultra-conservative Jew, to see the needs of Gentiles and to respond to them. (No "foreign mission" of modern times demands a more utter laying aside of prejudice than did this.) He orders the Church of Antioch to select Saul and to send him, accompanied by Barnabas, on a great adventure all planned by Him beforehand.
No less interested is He in the practice of the Church than in its extension. The mes- sage from the council of the Church in Jeru-
*Acts VIII: 5-8, 14-17, 27-39; X; XIII: 1-3; XV: 28; XVI: 6-10; XIX: 5, 6; XX: 22, 23; XXI: 11.
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salem regarding the great rite of circumcision in its application to converts bears the impri- matur of the Holy Ghost; the matter has been decided by Him in council with the Church.
From Antioch, St. Paul, this time with Silas as his companion, starts on his second journey intending to cover central Asia Minor. No thought of Europe has apparently entered his mind. He plans to go as far north as the Euxine Sea, passing through the Roman prov- ince of Asia; but the Holy Ghost forbids him to preach there. Bithynia — the most northerly province — perhaps that is the goal ! No ! The Spirit forbids that. Where then? What is the meaning of this constant upsetting of plans? Hastening westward, the Apostle fin- ally comes to the narrow sea separating Asia from Europe. There at Troas — close to mem- orable Troy — the objective of the Holy Ghost is at last made plain in the vision of the man of Macedonia, the cry of Europe — "Come over and help us." Here, too, it seems that the Holy Ghost had provided for St. Paul the much-needed friend and physician in the per- son of St. Luke.
On his third journey, St. Paul comes to Ephesus, and here, upon a few uninstructed disciples, the Holy Ghost comes with power through the laying on of Apostolic hands, and the new-born Church of Ephesus is estab- lished. On his journey home, it is the Holy Ghost who warns him of what he yet has to
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suffer in order that the Church may reach farther and farther still. And, finally, it is the plan of the Holy Ghost that His servant shall be delivered over to his enemies in Jerusalem, that so at last the Gospel shall reach Rome — the center of the civilized world.
Such was the irresistible course of the Church under the mighty driving power of the Holy Ghost. Very fittingly are the recorded sayings of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity during His ministry on earth imme- diately followed by the recorded doings of the Third Person of the Trinity who now abides with and in His Church — the Body of Christ.
Now let us go back for a moment and see how and where the impetus to missionary activ- ity started. Turning to St. Luke 24:47, we find that it was our Lord's will that the Church should begin to fulfill her mission in Jerusalem, and that the disciples, instead of returning to their homes to begin work, should stay where they were and await further events. There were doubtless many reasons why the work was to begin in Jerusalem. It was always God's will that His message should be delivered to the Jews first of all. Jerusalem was the center of Judaism, and the present opportunity was quite unique. During Llis annual — pos- sibly more frequent — visits there, the Prophet of Nazareth had become a familiar figure in the city ; His teaching and His claims had been such as to arouse popular interest ; during the
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week preceding the last Passover of His life, He was probably the most-talked-of man in town. When the Apostles later addressed great crowds and spoke of "Jesus °f Naz- areth," every one in the crowd knew whom they were talking about, and was familiar with the tragedy of the past few days. Being Jews, they were also able to understand the interpre- tation of those events as set forth by such men as St. Peter and, later, St. Stephen. Moreover, the Passover and the Feast of Pentecost had brought to Jerusalem a great concourse of Jews from many regions. It was an extraor- dinarily cosmopolitan crowd that faced St. Peter when he made his first announcement on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2 :g-i 1 ) . Rep- resentatives of no less than fifteen countries distributed over three continents received 'the first message of the Christian Church. The opportunity was unprecedented, for most of those visitors to Jerusalem were returning home presently and could not fail to talk of those things which had so deeply impressed them.
Again it was in Jerusalem, or its immediate neighborhood, that the events upon which St. Peter based his message had recently occurred, and, as has been said, every one present was familiar with them.
Then, too, it was the severest possible test of their new-found courage, for the Apostles to be required to testify to Christ before the
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very people who had rejected Him a couple of months before, and had condemned Him to the shame and horror of crucifixion as a common malefactor. It would have been far easier for them to have returned quietly to Galilee, and there, among those who still cherished the memory of His gracious Presence, spread the good news of life in His name; but God would not have it so.
Was there no further reason for beginning at Jerusalem? I remember putting this ques- tion once to a group of students, who there- upon proceeded to search for some abstruse reason. Having at last dug up and announced those given above, profound silence ensued until one youngster remarked quietly, "Wasn't it, perhaps, because it was where they hap- pened to be at the time?" Of course; but, as so often is the case in Bible study, it was the obvious which had escaped notice.
This reason always holds good. It is seldom advisable, and more rarely is it necessary, for a man to look far afield for his opportunity to bear witness to Christ and the new life by example and word. God put him where he is, and the chances are that just where he is is the place where God means him to begin his activ- ities. This applies to the man not only when he is at home, but wherever he happens to be at the moment. As a matter of fact, not one of the Apostles lived at Jerusalem; they were there only temporarily. So with Saul and
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Barnabas. One of them lived at Tarsus, the other on the island of Cyprus; but they were both at Antioch when they began their joint work. In Saul's case, he had gone to Damas- cus at first with no intention whatever of preaching Christ — far from it. But when he got there, "straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God."
Now turn back once more to our Lord's command as recorded by St. Luke. The King James version gives the wording, "beginning at Jerusalem" ; but it is worthy of note that the Revised Version alters it to, "beginning from Jerusalem." The change of a preposition seems a slight matter ; but the propulsive force of the command is thereby immensely in- creased. The Church had no excuse for re- maining indefinitely in Jerusalem, whatever the need or however great the success. She had her source at Jerusalem, but she could no more be wholesomely and usefully confined there than can a stream be dammed up at its source without becoming a stagnant and force- less pool. So the Church, impelled and guided by the Holy Ghost, and bursting all barriers, flowed forth on her world-wide mission.
The result is astounding. At the period when the Book of Acts opens, the Roman Em- pire embraced an area of two million square miles (two-thirds the size of the United States) ; it contained upwards of four thou- sand cities; it included a population of one
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hundred million, of all peoples and tongues. The Church was composed of about five hun- dred persons (Cf. i Cor. 15:5-6), most of them ignorant and poor ; their means of travel were limited; their message had to be delivered al- most entirely by word of mouth; the revela- tion of God which they had received and which they endeavored to pass on to others had been given in terms which were offensive to the religious Jew, a scorn and derision to the cul- tured Greek, and intolerable to the governing Roman. Yet in two centuries and a half Christ, through His Church, had conquered the Roman Empire. The conversion of Con- stantine in A. D. 312 made Christianity the accepted religion of the civilized world. Of all miracles, this is the greatest. How was it accomplished ? Simply enough. Every Chris- tian was a missionary; the whole Church was full of the Holy Ghost and of power. The blessed Spirit eagerly desired that the message from the Father through the Son should be proclaimed in every corner of the earth and to every child of man. The holy, blessed and glorious Trinity is interested in missions.
What stupor has come over the Church to- day? Since that great Pentecost which sig- nalizes her birth, nearly twenty centuries have passed; yet two-thirds of the whole earth's population are today without Christ, millions of them never having even heard His name. How many in your own neighborhood are in a
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like pitiable case? I have no doubt but that every one, if he so desires, can find a multitude of plausible reasons for the striking contrast between the first three centuries and the fol- lowing seventeen; but the fact remains that, during the former period, the Church con- ducted successfully a campaign of enormous proportions, and this, with comparatively no facilities within her reach; while, during the latter period, with every facility increasingly at hand, the Church militant wins only local victories, and in many parts of the field, barely holds her own.
To my mind, there are two fundamental causes of this state of things: First, the dele- gation to certain chosen individuals among us, of the glorious opportunity provided for every one of us ; secondly, the disregard of God, the Holy Ghost, as the sole motive power in our- selves and in the Church at large. Unless these two defects can be remedied, and until they are, the Church will remain sluggish and ineffectual, requiring to be prodded and goaded along the path of her high calling by "drives" and "campaigns" and devices of all sorts, which can do little more than galvanize her into a fleeting semblance of life. The Holy Spirit comes as a guest where He is invited ; He stays so long as the need of Him is recognized; He abides forever where He is forever welcomed; He leaves the dwelling where His presence is politely ignored. It may be mere coincidence,
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it may be a hint of a profound truth, but in any case, it is worthy of note that the two Christian bodies which have been the greatest missionary influences in the world, before and since the Reformation — the Roman Catholics and the Methodists — are also those which lay most stress upon the presence and office of the Holy Ghost. One would almost conclude that God is willing to overlook aberrations in mat- ters of faith and order within His Church, if only her members recognize the one Source of Power and draw upon Him eagerly for the accomplishment of His purpose in the world. For in things pertaining to faith and order, supremely important though they be, He can overrule man's errors; but in matters which involve man's will to see and to obey, He can do little so long as He leaves man the free agent which He has made Him.
It is interesting to us Churchmen to recall that in the whole Book of Common Prayer there are but three prayers addressed directly to God the Holy Ghost: The Veni Creator Spiritus in the Ordinal; the prayer beginning, "O God, Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the faith- ful," in the rarely-heard Office of Institution of Ministers, and the brief address at the open- ing of the Litany. It is true that three days in the Church's year are devoted to the Holy Spirit, but how little is made of them! It is surely a hopeful sign that the proposal has recently been made to change the name of
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Whitsunday to Pentecost, and of Trinity Sun- day to "The First Sunday after Pentecost, commonly called Trinity Sunday," and to num- ber the succeeding Sundays, not after Trinity, as at present, but after Pentecost. Should this change be effected, the mind of the Church will be directed, for half of the year, to the presence and work of God the Holy Ghost.
A book which deservedly excited wide- spread interest a few years ago was Allen's Missionary Methods, St. Paul's or Ours. We are often so at our wits' ends to devise methods of stirring up the Church, and are, withal, so obsessed with the idea that modern methods are the only practical ones, that we are apt to forget that the things of God are governed by different laws than those of man, and are not amenable to the same treatment. It is possible that the methods by which the Church was extended during the first century were better than those pursued in the twentieth. Anyhow, the results were so far superior, that both are worth considering as a possible case of cause and effect. Let us therefore compare the Church of the first century with that of the twentieth, in these respects.
(i) In the first place, as we have already seen, most Christians were, in those early days, tremendously conscious of the new life into which they had been born, and they were cor- respondingly eager to transmit it without de- lay. They went far and fast. Much of their
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most important work is unknown and unre- corded. There were Christians in Damascus before Saul of Tarsus arrived there; he was the first of the Apostles to reach Rome, yet he found the Church already there ; in Britain and Gaul there were Churches long before we have any record of a mission to those countries. Who founded these Churches ? No one knows with certainty; we can only conjecture that the zeal of some humble disciples knew no limits. No religious activity in modern times is com- parable with this, except that of the Moham- medan. He prays without ceasing; he is a propagandist everywhere and always.
(2) Then there was the constant telling of the good news by those to whom it meant everything. Today we hire certain people to preach to us, and occasionally send some one on our behalf to preach to others at a distance; but among ourselves Jesus Christ is a person to be spoken of only with bated breath, and our experiences of Him only in the strictest moderation and privacy. A dumb spirit seems to possess us — the kind of spirit which our Lord drove out of people. The "Gift of tongues" was, at the outset, a powerful help and witness, but surely less so than the in- numerable translations of the Bible into nearly every tongue known to man today, and the increasing preponderance of certain languages the world over. The difficulties of a confusion of tongues, such as rendered extraordinary
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measures necessary, are almost done away with today. An American can preach to a Chinese through the proxy of the printed page.
(3) Undoubtedly absolute unity of purpose and organization within the early Church helped her incalculably. At least, this unity gave to the Holy Spirit an opportunity to be heard. The Body of Christ today is torn into innumerable fragments; unity of aim is prac- tically lacking, unity of organization largely so. Not since the ninth century has the voice of the Spirit been heard in a united Church; amid the babel of modern sects it is hopeless to expect Him to be heard intelligibly. With all its good results, the Reformation opened the way for further division. Congregation- alism arose in 1568 as a schism from the Church of England; the Presbyterians became a separate body a generation later; then fol- lowed the Baptists in 1633, and the Methodists in 1784. Since then, the divisions have sub- divided and the process has been fast and furious. Even the three great divisions which have retained the Faith and Order of the prim- itive Church are at odds between themselves. Not until the whole Church is once more at unity within herself will the authoritative voice of the Holy Spirit be again heard in full measure and unmistakably.
(4) The great bond of union in the early Church was the Holy Communion, duly ad- ministered and rightly received at least once
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a week. By this, the members of the Church were made one body in Christ, and acted as one body with manifold functions. They were baptized into life, endued with the Holy Ghost through the laying on of apostolic hands, fed by Christ with His body and blood. How could they have been other than a mighty body ? With good reason has the Church always asso- ciated Baptism and Confirmation and the Holy Communion as steps in a continuous process; for the life received in Baptism is empowered by the Holy Ghost in Confirmation and main- tained by ever-renewed union with the living Christ in His blessed Sacrament.
To speak of a baptized person's "joining the Church" in later life is to misunderstand the meaning and effect of Baptism. It is true that at Confirmation the baptismal vows are personally reaffirmed, but the essence of the rite is the gift of the Holy Ghost through the laying on of hands by the Bishop, that so the confirmed person may have grace and power to keep his vows. Then follows the Holy Com- munion through which he is kept in union with Jesus Christ. All three are steps in the normal development of the child of God, from his birth into the Family, until he attains "unto a full- grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). In- deed, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Bap- tism is immediately followed by the rite which corresponds to Confirmation, the latter being
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properly regarded as the completion of the former.
As yet no lesser forms of common worship had developed. For many years the Jewish Christians maintained their connection with the synagogue, and joined in the Sabbath ob- servances; and it was only very much later, when the Christian Church had finally parted with Judaism and had established its own dis- tinctive places for Christian worship, that there developed also distinctive forms of Chris- tian worship other than the Eucharist. These originated as informal meetings for prayer, largely composed of devout women, held either in private houses or in the churches. The leadership of these meetings gradually passed into the hands of the clergy, and with the rise of monasticism, the prayers and reading of psalms, etc., became crystallized into the form of definite offices which, with certain variations in different localities and with general conden- sation, were used daily in the monastic estab- lishments at certain fixed hours : Matins (mid- night), Lands (sunrise), Prime (6 a. m.), Terce (9 a. m.), Sext (noon), None (3 p. m.), Vespers (sunset), and Compline (9 p. m.). This was the basis of the Roman Breviary, and it was selected portions of the latter which were used in compiling the Daily Offices (Morning and Evening Prayer) in the Book of Common Prayer.
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exclusively with the Holy Communion, also became crystallized into definite form, and was known as the Liturgy. The precise form which the Liturgy took varied somewhat in different localities, so that scholars today rec- ognize six main groups of ancient liturgies, four Eastern in origin and use, two Western. The latter (the Roman and the Gallican), re- vised and combined in the eleventh century by the Bishop of Salisbury, was known as the Saram (Salisbury) Use, and is practically the Liturgy as contained in the Book of Common Prayer. The origin of the other portions of the Prayer-book is a less important matter. The interesting point is that not only have the Daily Offices of the monks come to be regarded by us as the proper Services for Sundays, but, rather generally, they have been allowed to supplant the Service which, in the early Church, was regarded as the special glory of the Lord's Day; with the indirect result that many lay people prepare themselves and are content to receive the Holy Communion only once a month, or possibly only once a year. I am not arguing either one way or the other; but it is surely important for us to note that, on the one hand, the early Church — which was, in all her members, a mighty missionary witness and force — did lay great stress upon the Holy Com- munion as the Sacrament of the union of her members in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit; and, on the other hand, that the modern Church
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tends to substitute other forms of Sunday wor- ship and fellowship, and is a disrupted and in- effective missionary witness and power, espe- cially when working under conditions which demand primarily the welding, teaching and witnessing power of the Holy Ghost, i. e., in the foreign field.
(5) That "miracles" of healing were a con- stant witness to the power of Christ in the early Church, and that they played an impor- tant part in her missionary effectiveness can not be questioned. That they occupy no such position in the Church at large today is equally evident. Either Jesus Christ is dead, or He has lost His power, or men have lost their faith in Him, or God has substituted some other healing agency. We have discussed this matter in a previous chapter; it is only neces- sary, therefore, to add that while the great advance in knowledge regarding the human body, and in medical and surgical skill, is un- questionably according to the purpose of God, yet the practice of healing based on this can be regarded only as a supplementary means. It is foolish to argue that God has delegated His healing powrer to agents who generally dis- regard lis cooperation. This w^ould be most unlike Him. When the medical profession comes universally to believe in and to seek the action of God, through His chosen agents, and when it recognizes all material means of heal- ing as merely supplementary to that action and
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in their nature sacramental, it will then be time to argue that "miracles" of healing are no longer necessary as a testimony to our Lord's power. But when that time comes, such works will no longer appear "miraculous," since they will be recognized as the normal action of our blessed Lord in and through His Church. This is a missionary method in respect to which the modern Church has deviated enormously from primitive practice.
Such seem to me the principal methods ap- plied of old by the Church in the fulfillment of her mission in the world. It may be that we shall find, in our own deviation from, or abandonment of, them, a cause of the Church's present comparative lack of success.
There are features of the early Church which have a further bearing on this matter, but which may be reviewed more hurriedly, either because they are duplicated today, or because they were evidently consequent upon more important features.
(6) The association with the Apostles of other duly ordained men, thus forming a three- fold ministry of a sacramental nature for the transmission of sacramental grace, was a prominent mark of the early undivided Church, and continues today to distinguish those com- munions which, together, embrace by far the largest proportion of Christians. These are the Roman, the Greek and the Anglican Churches. The case is somewhat analogous
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to a national army which consists of regular troops with officers trained and commissioned under the auspices of the Government, but which may be supplemented by irregular troops of various degrees of training and under dis- cipline variously administered. These irregu- lar troops may do admirable service; under certain conditions they may be more effective than the regulars; and they certainly fight in the same cause and under the same oath of allegiance. They are parts of the army, but not of the regular army, that is, of an army permanently organized according to duly au- thorized and established usage and discipline. (7) In the early Church, efficiency was also obtained by apportioning among the members various kinds of work to be done according to the ability of each (see Acts 2:42; 1 Cor. 12:8-11, 28-29; Eph. 4:11-12). We have de- parted far from this ideal. The third order of the ministry has, in the Anglican communion, become practically limited to those few who find in it merely a necessary stepping-stone to the priesthood ; the perpetual diaconate is tend- ing to become a grace descending in the female line only. The rector of a parish is supposed to be at once a priest, a preacher, a pastor, a parish visitor, a teacher, and a financial man- ager ; while, meantime, there lies at hand inert, unaroused and unused, a vast accumulation of lay energy which the few existing organiza- tions barely touch.
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(8) As rapidly as the Gospel entered new fields and won adherents, the latter were at once organized into autonomous Churches (not "denominations"), each in active union with the Church at large through their local Bishops, and bound together by sacramental ties. Pres- ently these Churches became themselves cen- ters of missionary activity, and so the Church grew in orderly fashion, and the voice of the Holy Spirit could be heard in her councils. It would seem that only as the whole Church Catholic — "the blessed company of all faithful people" — wills to return to the Faith and Order of primitive times, can she recover her mis- sionary zeal and duplicate her early victories.
(9) Among the Churches so organized, the Apostles and their companions made frequent visitations; often letters had to take the place of visits, but into these letters the Apostles poured their souls, directing, admonishing, praising, warning, encouraging, threatening. Surely much more might be made today of epistles addressed by our Bishops to groups of Churches of whom God has made them over- seers.
(10) Finally, the method of the early Church was for every member to contribute money liberally and gladly in order that the Word of God might be free to spread through- out the world. They prayed for and cultivated this grace; therefore they gave to the utmost limit of their ability and beyond it, placing no
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petty obligation of tithing as their bounds. They gave spontaneously, cheerfully deliber- ately. They rivalled one another in their giv- ing; money given appeared a safe investment; it was an expression of their unbounded grati- tude as the redeemed of the Lord — sacramental indeed — the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. And they thus gave because they first gave their own selves unto the Lord" (see n Cor. 8 and 9). A com- parison between early and modern practice in this regard is tragic.
So we bring to a close our study of the great- est cause on earth — the mission of God's Church. We have tried to see in it the pas- sionate longing of God's heart for the sons of men. We have considered the appealing mes- sage, and the all-sufficient power of it. We have seen the Christ stand watching in pity the desperate needs of mankind, and in active mercy satisfying those needs through the power of His own abundant life. We have followed His beloved community as it set forth, in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, to fulfill its divine mission of embodying the Blessed One, perpetuating His life on earth, bearing: His sacramental grace to every hungry and thirsty soul, and baptizing the nations into the Family of God. We have seen the results attending that mission; and we have noted
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carefully the methods pursued, in order that we might see wherein our own are defective. It will be of the utmost value if we have come to see clearly that the objective of the Church's Mission is to give to every man, woman and child in this fair land of ours an opportunity to share in a more abundant life for body, mind and soul; and, further, to establish in every land and among all peoples an organized, autonomous, self-supporting and missionary branch of God's One Holy, Catholic and Apos- tolic Church. To this end God calls us "to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service; . . . that we may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God" (Rom. 12:1, 2).
[the end]
1 Ed. 10-20. 5M. L.&I. PL
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