Part 11 (1/2)
Where is the close, earnest, diligent looking after individual souls day by day? Very often it happens that the public teaching shoots completely over the head; it is the house to house teaching that is sure to come home to the heart. How frequently it happens that something uttered in public is entirely misunderstood and misapplied, until the loving pastoral visit during the week supplies the true meaning and just application.
Nor is this all. How much there is in a pastor's range that the public teacher never can compa.s.s! No doubt public teaching is most important; would that we had many times more of it than we have. The teacher's work is invaluable, and when mellowed by the deep and tender affection of a pastor's heart, can go a great way indeed in meeting the soul's manifold necessities. But the loving pastor who earnestly, prayerfully, and faithfully goes from house to house, can get at the deep exercises of the soul, the sorrows of the heart, the puzzling questions of the mind, the grave difficulties of the conscience. He can enter, in the profound sympathy of an affectionate heart, into the thousand little circ.u.mstances and sorrows of the path. He can kneel down with the tried, the tempted, the crushed, and the sorrowing one before the mercy-seat, and they can pour out their hearts together, and draw down sweet consolation from the G.o.d of all grace and the Father of mercies.
The public teacher cannot do this. No doubt, if, as we have said, he has something of the pastoral element in him, he can antic.i.p.ate in his public address a great deal of the soul's private exercises, sorrows, and difficulties. But he cannot fully meet the soul's individual need.
This is the pastor's holy work. It seems to us that a pastor is to the soul what a doctor is to the body. He must understand disease and medicine. He must be able to tell what is the matter. He must be able to discern the spiritual condition to apply the true remedy. Ah, how few are these pastors! It is one thing to take the t.i.tle, and another thing to do the work.
Christian reader, we earnestly entreat you to join us in fervent believing prayer to G.o.d to raise up true pastors amongst us. We are in sad need of them. The sheep of Christ are not fed and cared for. We are occupied so much with our own affairs, that we have not time to look after the beloved flock of Christ. And even on these occasions, when the Lord's people a.s.semble in public, how little there is for their precious souls! What long barren pauses and silence of poverty!
What aimless hymns and prayers we hear! How little leading of the flock through the green pastures of Holy Scripture, and by the still waters of divine love! And then, all through the week, few loving pastoral calls, few tender solicitous inquiries after soul or body.
There seems to be no time. Every moment is swallowed up in the business of providing for ourselves and our families. It is, alas! the old sad story; ”All seek their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ's.” How different it was with the blessed apostle. He found time to make tents, and also to ”teach publicly and from house to house.” He was not only the earnest evangelist, ranging over continents and planting churches, but he was also the loving pastor, the tender nurse, the skilful spiritual physician. He had a heart for Christ and for His body, the Church, and for every member of that body. Here lies the real secret of the matter. It is wonderful what a loving heart can accomplish. If I really love the Church, I shall desire its blessing and progress, and seek to promote these according to my ability.
May the Lord raise up in the midst of His people pastors and teachers after His own heart--men filled with His Spirit, and animated by a genuine love for His Church--men competent and ready to teach--”_publicly and from house to house_.”
ISRAEL AND THE NATIONS
Read Psalm lxvii
It would greatly tend to give clearness and definiteness to missionary effort to keep fully before our minds G.o.d's original purpose in sending the gospel to the Gentiles, or nations. This we have stated in the most distinct manner in Acts xv. ”Simeon hath declared,” says James, ”how G.o.d at the first did visit the Gentiles, _to take out of them_ a people for His name.”
It gives no warrant for the idea, so persistently held by the professing Church, that the whole world is to be converted by the preaching of the gospel. To convert the world is one thing; to take out of the nations a people is quite another.
The latter, and not the former, is G.o.d's present work. It is what He has been doing since the day that Simon Peter opened the kingdom of heaven to the Gentile in Acts x; and it is what He will continue to do until the moment so rapidly approaching, in which the last elect one is gathered out, and our Lord shall come to receive His people unto Himself.
Let all missionaries remember this. They may rest a.s.sured it will not clip their wings, or cripple their energies; it will only guide their movements, by giving them a divine aim and object. Of what possible use can it be for a man to propose as the end of his labors something wholly different from that which is before the mind of G.o.d? Ought not a servant to seek to do his master's will? Can he expect to please his master by pursuing other than his clearly expressed object?
It is blessedly true, that all the earth shall yet be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. There is no question as to this. All Scripture bears witness to it. To quote the pa.s.sages would literally fill a volume. All Christians are agreed on this point, and hence there is no need to adduce evidence.
But the question is, how is this grand and glorious result to be brought about? Is it the purpose of G.o.d to use the professing Church as His agent, or a preached gospel as His instrument, in the conversion of the world? Scripture says No; with a clearness which ought to sweep away every doubt.
And here let it be distinctly understood that we delight in all true missionary effort. We heartily wish G.o.d's speed to every true missionary--to every one who has left home, and kindred, and friends, and all the comforts and privileges of civilized life, in order to carry the glad tidings of salvation into the dark places of the earth.
We desire to render hearty thanks to G.o.d for all that has been accomplished in the fields of foreign missions; though we cannot approve some modes by which the work is carried on. We consider there is a lack of simple faith in G.o.d, and of subjection to the authority of Christ, and the guidance of the Holy Ghost. There is too much of human machinery, and looking to the world for aid.
But all this is not our present object. The point with which we are occupied in this brief paper is this--_will_ G.o.d make use of the professing Church to convert the nations? We ask not, _has_ He done so? for, were we to put the question thus, we could only receive an unqualified negative; for the professing Church has been at work for eighteen long centuries; and what is the result? Let the reader take a glance at a missionary map, and he will see in a moment. Look at those large patches of black, designed to set forth the dismal regions over which heathenism bears sway. Look at the red, the green, the yellow, setting forth popery, the Greek church, and Mohammedanism. And where is--we say not true Christianity, but even nominal Protestantism? That is indicated by those spots of blue which, if all put together, make but a small fraction indeed. And as to what even this Protestantism is we need not now stop to inquire.
What, then, say the Scriptures on the great question of the conversion of the nations? Take, for example, the lovely psalm that stands at the head of this paper. It is but one proof among a thousand, but, we need hardly say, perfectly harmonizes with the testimony of all Scripture.
We give it in full to the reader.
”_G.o.d be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause His face to s.h.i.+ne upon us; that Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations._ Let the people praise Thee, O G.o.d; let all the people praise Thee. O let the nations be glad, and sing for joy: for Thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth.
Let the people praise Thee, O G.o.d, let all the people praise Thee.
Then shall the earth yield her increase; and G.o.d, even our own G.o.d, shall bless us. _G.o.d shall bless us_; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.”
Here, then, the simple truth s.h.i.+nes before us. It is when G.o.d shall have mercy upon Israel--when He shall cause His light to s.h.i.+ne upon Zion--then will His way be known upon earth, His saving health among all nations. It is through _Israel_, not through the professing Church, that G.o.d will yet bless the nations.
That the ”us” of the foregoing psalm refers to Israel, no intelligent reader of Scripture needs to be told. Indeed, as we all know, the great burden of the Psalms, the Prophets, and the entire Old Testament, is Israel. There is not a syllable about the Church in the Old Testament. Types and shadows there are in which--now that we have the light of the New Testament--we can see the truth of the Church prefigured. But without that light no one could, by any possibility, find the truth of the Church in Old Testament Scripture. That great mystery was, as the inspired apostle tells us, ”_hid_”--not in the Scriptures (for whatever is contained in the Scriptures is no longer hid, but revealed) but it was ”hid in G.o.d;” and was not, and could not, be revealed until Christ, being rejected by Israel, was crucified and raised from the dead. So long as the testimony to Israel was pending, the doctrine of the Church could not be unfolded. Hence, although at the day of Pentecost we have the _beginning of the Church_, yet it was not until Israel had rejected the testimony of the Holy Ghost in Stephen that a special witness was called out in the person of Paul, to whom _the doctrine of the Church_ was committed. We must distinguish between the fact and the doctrine; indeed it is not until we reach the last chapter of the Acts that the curtain finally drops upon Israel; and Paul, the prisoner at Rome, fully unfolds the grand mystery of the Church which from ages and generations had been hid in G.o.d, but was now made manifest. Let the reader ponder Romans xvi. 25, 26; Ephesians iii. 1-11; Colossians i. 24-27.