Part 6 (2/2)
Groping in the Dark.
That is a bare suggestion of the need of the world in bulk. But we want to get a much closer look than that. These are men that we are talking about; our brothers, not merely hard, unfeeling, statistical totals of millions. Each man of them contains the whole pitiable picture of the sore need of the world vividly portrayed in himself.
The very heathen religions themselves are the crying out, in the night, of men's hearts, after something they haven't, and yet need so much. Strange things these heathen superst.i.tions and monstrous practices and beliefs called religions! It has been rather the thing of late to speak somewhat respectfully of them, and rather apologetically. They have even been praised, so strangely do things get mixed up in this world of ours. It has been supposed that G.o.d was revealing Himself in these religions; and that in them men were reaching up to G.o.d, and could reach up to Him through them.
They really are the twilight remnants of the clear direct light of G.o.d that once lightened all men; but so mixed through, and covered up with error and superst.i.tion and unnatural devilish l.u.s.t, that they are wholly inadequate to lead any man back home to G.o.d. In almost all of them there is indeed some distinct kernel of truth. But that kernel has been invariably shut up in a sh.e.l.l and bur that are hard beyond any power of cracking, to get at the kernel of truth for practical help, even if the people knew enough to try.
They tell pathetically of the groping of man's heart after G.o.d. But the groping is in the pitch dark, and amid a ma.s.s of foul, filthy cobwebs that blind the eyes with their dust, and grime all the life. I have no doubt that untold numbers of true hearts in heathen lands are feeling after G.o.d, and in some dim way coming into touch with Him. He is not far from any one of them; but they find Him chiefly in spite of these religions, rather than through any help found in them.
The story is told of a Chinese tailor who had struggled hopelessly for light, and had finally found it in finding Jesus. He put his idea of the heathen religions that he knew, and had tried, in this simple vivid way:
”A man had fallen into a deep, dark pit, and lay in its miry bottom, groaning and utterly unable to move. He heard a man walking by close enough to see his plight. But with stately tread he walked on without volunteering to help. That is Mohammedanism.
”Confucius walking by approached the edge of the pit, and said, 'Poor fellow! I am sorry for you. Why were you such a fool as to get in there?
Let me give you a piece of advice: If ever you get out, don't get in again.' 'I can't get out,' said the man. That is Confucianism.
”A Buddhist priest next came by and said: 'Poor fellow! I am very much pained to see you there. I think if you could scramble up two-thirds of the way, or even half, I could reach you and lift you up the rest.' But the man in the pit was entirely helpless and unable to rise. That is Buddhism.
”Next the Saviour came by, and, hearing his cries, went to the very brink of the pit, stretched down and laid hold of the poor man, brought him up, and said, 'Go, sin no more.' This is Christianity.”
The awful moral or immoral conditions prevalent throughout the heathen world are the most graphic comment on the influence of these religions. It can be said thoughtfully that, instead of ever helping up to G.o.d and the light, they drag down to the devil and to black darkness. There is not only an utter lack of any moral uplift in them, but a deadly downward pull. The very things called religions point out piteously the terrible need of these peoples.
Living Messages of Jesus.
Now, what is it that these people need, and that we can give to them? May I first remind you what they don't need? Well, let it be said as plainly as it can be that they don't need the transferring to heathen soil of our Western church systems, nor our schemes of organizations. It is not our Western creeds and theology that they stand in need of.
Of course, there need to be both churches and organizations. Only so will the work be done, and what is gotten held together. But these are in themselves temporary. They are immensely important and indispensable, but not the chief thing. The great need is of the story of Jesus. That is, plain teaching about sin--the hardest task of all for the missionary, whether in Asia or America--and the d.a.m.nable results locked up in sin.
Then the winsome telling, the tirelessly patient and persistently gentle telling of the story of love, G.o.d's love as revealed in Jesus. The telling them that Jesus will put a new moral power inside a man that will make him over new.
But they need even more than this, aye, far more. They need men--human beings like themselves, living among them in closest touch--whose clean, strong, sweet lives spell out the Jesus-story as no human lips can ever tell it.
To live side by side with men who like themselves are tempted sorely, but who show plainly in their lives a power that downs the temptation--this is their great need. The good seed, after all, is not the message of truth merely, but the ”sons of the kingdom,”[9] men living the message of Jesus, and more, the power of Jesus, daily.
A kindergarten teacher opened a mission among the slum children of a very poor section of Chicago. She began her work by gathering a number of dirty, unkempt children of the street into the neat mission room. Then, instead of preaching or praying or something of the conventional sort at the first, she brought in and set on a table a large beautiful calla lily, bewitching in its simple white beauty.
The effect of the flower on one child, a little girl, was striking. No sooner had she looked at it than she looked down at her own dirty hands and clothes, with a flush creeping into her face. Then she quickly went out into the street. In a little while she was back again, but with her face washed, her hair combed, her dress tidied up, and a bit of colored ribbon added. She walked straight up to the lily again, and looked long, with deep wondering admiration in her eyes, at the beautiful white flower.
The flower's purity was a mirror in which she saw her own dirtiness. It was a magnet drawing her gently but strongly up to its own higher level.
It was an inspiration moving her irresistibly to respond to its own upward pull.
A simple, pure, human life is the greatest moral magnet. Jesus Himself down here was just such a magnet. Such a life is impossible for us without Jesus. It tells His power as no tongue can. It spells out loudly a standard of life and, far more, a power that can lift the life up to the standard. It doesn't simply tell what we should be. That may only tantalize and tease. But it tells what we actually can be.
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