Part 26 (1/2)
_Think_, and you will see. Then listen. It is G.o.d Who speaks. ”If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, 'Behold we knew it not,' doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it, and He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it? and shall not He render to every man according to his works?”
Oh, by the thought of the many who are drawn unto death, and the many that are ready to be slain, by the thought of the sorrow of Jesus Who loves them, consider these things!
But all are not called to come! We know it. We do not forget it. But is it a fact so forgotten at home that a missionary need press it? What is forgotten surely is that the field is the world.
You would not denude England! Would England be denuded? Would a single seat on the Bishop's bench, or a single parish or mission hall, be left permanently empty, if the man who fills it now moved out to the place which no one fills--that gap on the precipice edge?
But suppose it were left empty, would it be so dreadful after all? Would there not be one true Christian left to point the way to Christ? And if the worst came to the worst, would there not still be the Bible, and ability to read? Need anyone die unsaved, unless set upon self-destruction? If only Christians in England knew how to draw supplies direct from G.o.d, if only those who cannot come would take up the responsibility of the unconverted around them, why should not a parish here and there be left empty for awhile? Surely we should not deliberately leave so very many to starve to death, because those who have the Bread of Life have a strong desire for sweets. Oh, the spiritual confectionery consumed every year in England! G.o.d open our eyes to see if we are doing what He meant, and what He means should continue! But some men are too valuable to be thrown away on the mission field; they are such successful workers, pastors, evangelists, leaders of thought. They could not possibly be spared. Think of the waste of burying brain in unproductive sand! Apparently it is so, but is it really so? Does G.o.d view it like that? Where should we have been to-day if He had thought Jesus too valuable to be thrown away upon us? Was not each hour of those thirty-three years worth more than a lifetime of ours?
What is G.o.d's definition of that golden word ”success”? He looks at Roman Catholic Europe, and Roman and heathen South America, and Mohammedan and heathen Africa and Asia, and many a forgotten place in many a great land. And then He looks at us, and I wonder what He thinks.
Ragland, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, after years of brain-burying waste, wrote that He was teaching him that ”_of all plans for securing success the most certain is Christ's own, becoming a corn of wheat, falling into the ground and dying_.” If coming abroad means that for anyone, is it too much to ask? It was what our dear Lord did.
This brings us to another plea. I find it in the verse that carves out with two strokes the whole result of two lives. ”If any man's work abide. . . . If any man's work shall be burned.” The net result of one man's work is gold, silver, precious stones; the net result of another man's work is wood, hay, stubble. Which is worth the spending of a life?
An earnest worker in her special line of work is looking back at it from the place where things show truest, and she says, ”G.o.d help us all! What is the good done by any such work as mine? 'If any man build upon this foundation . . . wood, hay, stubble. . . . If any man's work shall be burned he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire!' An infinitude of pains and labour, and all to disappear like the stubble and the hay.”
Success--what is it worth?
”I was flushed with praise, But pausing just a moment to draw breath, I could not choose but murmur to myself, 'Is this all? All that's done? and all that's gained?
If this, then, be success, 'tis dismaller Than any failure.'”
So transparent a thing is the glamour of success to clear-seeing poet-eyes, and should it dazzle the Christian to whom nothing is of any worth but the thing that endures? Should arguments based upon comparisons between the apparent success of work at home as distinguished from work abroad influence us in any way? Is it not very solemn, this calm, clear setting forth of a truth which touches each of us? ”_Every man's work shall be made manifest, for the Day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is._” And as we realise the perishableness of all work, however apparently successful, except the one work done in the one way G.o.d means, oh, does it not stir us up to seek with an intensity of purpose which will not be denied, to find out what that one work is?
The same thought comes out in the verse which tells us that the very things we are to do are prepared before, and we are ”created in Christ Jesus” to do them. If this is so, then will the doing of anything else seem worth while, when we look back and see life as G.o.d sees it?
It may be that the things prepared are lying close at our hand at home, but it may be they are abroad. If they are at home there will be settled peace in the doing of them there; but if they are abroad, and we will not come and do them?--Oh, then our very prayers will fall as fall the withered leaves, when the wind that stirred them falls, yea more so, for the withered leaves have a work to do, but the prayers which are stirred up by some pa.s.sing breeze of emotion do nothing, _nothing_ for eternity.
G.o.d will not hear our prayers for the heathen if He means us to be out among them instead of at home praying for them, or if He means us to give up some son or daughter, and we prefer to pray.
Lord save us from hypocrisy and sham! ”Shrivel the falsehood” from us if we say we love Thee but obey Thee not! Are we staying at home, and praying for missions when Thou hast said to us ”Go”? Are we holding back something of which Thou hast said, ”Loose it, and let it go”? Lord, are we utterly through and through true? Lord G.o.d of truthfulness, save us from sham! Make us perfectly true!
I turn to you, brothers and sisters at home! Do you know that if G.o.d is calling you, and you refuse to obey you will hardly know how to bear what will happen afterwards? Sooner or later you will know, yea burn through every part of your being, with the knowledge that you disobeyed, and lost your chance, lost it for ever. For that is the awful part. It is rarely given to one to go back and pick up the chance he knowingly dropped. The express of one's life has shot past the points, and one cannot go back; the lines diverge.
”Some of us almost shudder now to think how nearly we stayed at home,” a missionary writes. ”Do not, I beseech you, let this great matter drift.
Do not walk in uncertainty. Do not be turned aside. You will be eternally the poorer if you do.”
It may be you are not clear as to what is G.o.d's will for you. You are in doubt, you are honest, but a thousand questions perplex you. Will you go to G.o.d about it, and get the answer direct?
If you are puzzled about things which a straightforward missionary can explain, will you buy a copy of _Do Not Say_, and read it alone with G.o.d? Let me emphasise that word ”alone.” ”Arise, go forth into the plain, and I will there talk with thee.” ”There was a Voice . . . when they stood and had let down their wings.”
Oh, by the thought of the Day that is coming, when the fire shall try all we are doing, and only the true shall stand, I plead for an honest facing of the question before it is too late!