With God in the World Part 5

The breadth of the Christian's vision is exceeded only by its height, and his influence is coterminous with nothing less than the human fabric of which he is a part. By faith man penetrates into the heaven of heavens and reaches the very presence of G.o.d himself, a privilege and duty which belong not to a favoured few but to the race.

_Too low they build, who build beneath the stars,_

is a truth of universal application. But just as the stars must not limit man's vision as he gazes up, neither must the horizon limit his vision as he looks abroad. Christian energy is not doing its full work unless it aims at touching the uttermost part of the earth. That which is recorded in Acts 1: 8[31] tells of an abiding principle and not merely of a historic fact. Our Lord is speaking through that group of representative men who witnessed His Ascension, to all who become his followers. Not the Apostles alone but all Christians are destined to be His witnesses "unto the uttermost part of the earth." It is only to be expected that those who have the power to explore the secrets of the divine Being, will also have this lesser power of world-wide influence, which after all, great as it is, is infinitely less aspiring than the former. The same faith that enables us to love and serve our Lord in heaven, equips us to love and serve the men of the remote parts of the earth. To have the former is to be heir to the latter.

Men who imbibe this principle and make it part of themselves are said to have missionary spirit. But it cannot be too strongly insisted that this spirit is not something over and above the common Christian character; for it is not a possession which we are to claim simply because we are bidden to do so, spurred to it by the "icy purity of the law of duty."

The missionary spirit is inherent in Christianity. Even though Christ had never said, "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations,"[32] even if He had not a.s.sured His followers that they were to be witnesses "unto the uttermost part of the earth," it would have made no practical difference in the final issue of Christian truth. The Church would have been missionary just the same--S. Paul, S. Augustine, S. Columba, S. Francis Xavier, would have striven for the Gospel's sake none the less boldly, none the less zealously. The missionary is not a missionary because of a few missionary texts in the Bible. He is a missionary because he is a Christian. All Christ's commands are invitations, which merely put into concise language what the heart already recognizes as its privilege and joy. The missionary commission[33] is the Church's charter, telling all men of her right to dare to make Christianity coterminous with humanity, arresting the attention of those to whom the missionary is sent rather than acting as the sole motive power of the missionary; from it we get definite authority, and so a measure of inspiration, but we do not rest upon it, as though it were by an arbitrary fiat of G.o.d that a Christian were converted into a missionary.[34] The latter term tells of one aspect of the Christian character, that is all. Whoever accepts Christ's Christianity--the redundancy is necessary--forthwith becomes a missionary.[35] Andrew needed no injunction to seek Peter; he did it because, being a follower of Christ, he could not help it. And if he had refrained, he would have ceased at that moment to be a disciple.

Christians, whether considered individually or corporately, who are not missionary in desire and intention, are Christians only in name, getting little from and contributing nothing to the religion of the Incarnation.

If the foregoing contention be true, the definition of "missionary"

stands sadly in need of revision. A missionary is an honourable t.i.tle not to be reserved only for those who work for G.o.d in the waste places of His vineyard, but the coveted possession of every Christian who strives to bear a wide witness, as well as deep, to Christ among men.

Missionary service is a _personal_ thing; it cannot be deputed to another any more than it can have something else as a subst.i.tute for it.

Contributing money in order that others may be maintained in their missionary undertakings, does not exempt the donor from personal service himself. Every Christian is bound to strive to deepen and widen, by the force of his personality in Christ, the Kingdom of G.o.d. Of course there is a narrower and a wider missionary spirit. The latter is reached by faithfulness to the former, here as well as elsewhere effective breadth beginning in depth. All missionary power begins (as well as ends) in that unconscious witness[36] which the Christian character bears to Christ. So infectious a thing is G.o.d's truth, that to receive it is to spread it.

_As one lamp lights another nor grows less, So n.o.bleness enkindleth n.o.bleness_.

"Ye _are_ the light of the world;" "Ye _are_ the salt of the earth." And it is that part of the character which easily, simply and naturally lays hold on Christ, that first sheds G.o.d's light abroad and becomes the preservative element of society.

It is further noticeable that the sphere of Christian influence as alluded to by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, corresponds with the sphere of witness-bearing marked out by Him in His parting words before the Ascension--"Ye are the light of _the world_;" "Ye are the salt of _the earth_;" "Ye shall be witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth." To recognize the fact that the Christian life is the most invincible and the most permeating influence that the world can ever know, is an enormous incentive to consistency and zealous devotion.

Christian character is the only force which a man can both leave behind him, and take with him when he comes to die. Nothing can withstand it, and nothing can check its career. It is bound to impress all that it touches, and it touches everything--"the world," "the earth." It is not too much to hold that unconscious influence always exceeds conscious influence, the latter reaching the zenith of its effectiveness only when it has been transformed, by constant use, into the former. It is in the home that the Christian begins that witness-bearing, which is destined to reach so far.

But the widest missionary spirit is inclusive. It is not a subst.i.tute for home work, any more than public life is a subst.i.tute for family life. The former is the extension of the latter. The disciples of the first days reached the uttermost part of the earth through Jerusalem and all Judaea and Samaria; while the disciples of these latter days must touch the bounds of the world through the parish, the diocese, the Church of the nation. Nothing, no matter how fine and striking it may be, can take the place of loyalty to the duties that are nearest at hand. Church life may be conceived of as a series of concentric circles, the innermost of which representing parochial relations, the next diocesan missions, then domestic, and the outermost circle foreign missions. Power to traverse the large circ.u.mference comes from faithfully treading the round of those that lie within, beginning with that next the centre. The only way to have power and to serve abroad is to live a deep full life at home, and, let it be added, the only way to have large power and to serve at home is to cast the eye far abroad and wind the interests of a whole world around the heart. And the spiritual force of the foreign mission field is no lying index of the spiritual condition of the home Church; it tells the tale as truly as the pulse reports for the heart. It may be perfectly true of every other society of men that mere concentration is the secret of power, but it is not so with the Church. Any ecclesiastical unit, be it parish, diocese, province, or national Church, which is content to feed itself on rich spiritual food, without regard for the rest of the world, will sooner or later be filled with disease and die. However specious a form self-contemplation may a.s.sume, it inevitably ends in ruin, for it leads to isolation; and what is isolation but the most awful and irretrievable of catastrophes? The only true independence is that which is the fruit of interdependence. A given Church may have all the appearance of life--there may be popularity, large property, handsome equipment and other signs of outward prosperity--but within there is nothing but death. It is just as wrong and just as fatal to hold aloof, on any plea soever, from the common life of the entire Church at home and abroad, as it is to cut ourselves off from the Church of the past by a denial of fundamental truth. The former, quite as much as the latter, is a departure from Apostolic Christianity, and so merits the opprobrious name of schism.

It is a strange but inflexible spiritual law, that those who aim at anything short of the best according to their conception, as G.o.d has given them light, will sooner or later come to grief. It is merely a matter of time. The hope of Christianity lies in its boldness. The Church is strong when she is daring, and only then; her strength rises and falls with her courage--victory is faith.[37] What an inspiration to every parish, the lowliest and poorest as well as the numerically strong and financially rich!--the uttermost part of the earth is within the reach of its influence: ay, more than that, is in need of its prayers and its labours. Work for foreign missions is the climax and crown of Christian life, not a sluggish tributary to it. And a parish will be in the vanguard of G.o.d's forces or far in the rear, according as it rises to its responsibility in this direction or not.

There is an immense amount of untutored missionary desire. That is to say, there are vast numbers of Christians whose hearts burn towards those who do not know Christ, but there is no man to teach them how to crystallize desire into prayer and action and let the stream of their desire run clear and full; there are many others, too, who have a narrow missionary spirit and who linger in Judaea and Samaria, only because they have never been shown how it is possible to reach unto the uttermost part of the earth. The fire is there, but it smoulders for want of fuel.

Men need direction for their missionary aspirations; they need to be instructed in the work that is being done. We cannot expect people to be interested in what they know nothing about. If the cause of missions is presented as an abstraction, and men are urged to give "on principle,"

the gifts that come will be such as cost the givers nothing. And as for prayers--well, there will be none, for prayers cannot live on abstractions. The clergy should be the leaders in making the missions of the Church a living thing; and it is nothing short of a scandal that so many pulpits are closed to those who wear the t.i.tle of "missionary." But whatever be the shortcomings of the clergy, there is no more reason why Christian laymen should be ignorant of the general features of Church work in the far West or in China and j.a.pan than that they should be ignorant of international politics; and there is more reason for shame on account of ignorance in the former than in the latter case. Once waken men's interest in the work abroad as a concrete reality, and there will be stronger prayer, more numerous offers for personal service in foreign work from the best and bravest, more liberal contributions in money.

It has already been hinted that not only does the uttermost part of the earth need Christianity, but that Christianity needs the uttermost part of the earth. We cannot fully know Christ until all the nations have seen and believed and told their vision. The Church of G.o.d is poor, in that it lacks the contribution which the un-Christianized nations alone can give by being evangelized. Just as the speculative East needed in the first days the practical West to balance its concept of the Gospel, and _vice versa_, so it is now. Before we can see the full glory of the Incarnation, representatives of all nations must blend their vision with that which has already been granted. Every separate stone must be set before the temple reaches its final splendour. Foreign missions are as much for the Church's sake as for the heathen's, as much for the eternal profit of those who are sent as for those to whom they go.

No attempt has been made in these pages to argue as with men who do not believe in the widest missionary enterprise, for missionary spirit is not created by argument. Indeed, many an objection is but the instrument by which persons convict themselves of being Christian only in name.

There is no answer to what they say excepting, "Of course you cannot believe in missions, because it is evident you do not believe in Christ.

To believe in Christ is to believe in missions, missions unto the uttermost part of the earth." It would be a shame to appear to apologize for what is of the essence of Christianity. So we turn away from all smaller reasoning, to the one great spring and impulse of mission work far and near. The Christian has to see those whom Christ sees, for the follower looks through his master's eyes; the Christian has to love and serve those whom Christ loves and serves, for the follower lives only in his master's spirit. Consequently, he must see, love and serve unto the uttermost part of the earth. Being a follower of Christ, he cannot help it; he does it for the same reason and with the same naturalness that the sun shines and the rose sheds its fragrance abroad.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] _Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth._

[32] _St. Matt. xxviii_: 19.

[33] _St. Matt. xxviii:_ 19, 20.

[34] _The following remarkable phrase occurs in Bp. Andrewes'

Devotions:--Who_ [i. e., _Christ_] _hath manifested in every place the savour of His knowledge ... by the incredible conversion of the world to the Faith, without a.s.sistance of authority, without intervention of persuasion._

[35] _The Brotherhood of S. Andrew is nothing more than an organized effort to fulfil a common Christian duty._

[36] _Cf. Emerson's verses on unconscious influence_:

_Little thinks, in the field, yon red cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The s.e.xton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbour's creed has lent._

[37] _1 John v: 4._

Chapter XII

_The Inspiration of Responsibility_

The responsibility of the sons of G.o.d has been the theme of this book, and the writer trusts that in dwelling upon the duties of the Christian life he has not failed to bring out something of its glory and inspiration. But the thing out of which we can gather the largest help to fulfil our responsibility is the responsibility itself. If G.o.d dwells high up on the hills of difficulty, He has a throne, too, in the heart of every claim made on human character.[38]

The presence in our life of a difficulty is a call to responsibility, and the acceptance of a responsibility is the admittance into personal experience of G.o.d in His triumphant march toward the great consummation; it is correspondence with victory. Just as the glory of duty consists, not in its immediate issue, but in its performance, so the main inspiration for responsibility comes not from external goads and spurs, but from the very thing which lies at our feet, looking at first sight like a task given to mock rather than inspire, to denude of what little power we have rather than to equip, to undo the would-be doer rather than to be done by him. Responsibility without doubt is a task, but much more is it an inspiration. Of course the measure of inspiration which it imparts is proportionate to the faith and courage with which it is approached. Responsibility handled with dilettante fingers will only cut and wound; grasped in firm embrace, it will bestow so much illumination and vigour that the pain which inaugurates the gift will be forgotten almost before the last ache has faded out. And again, it is not too much to say that the greater a responsibility is, the greater is its power to inspire. In other words, inspiration is always commensurate with responsibility. "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." In the common Christian duty, which has been outlined in the foregoing pages, so great is the responsibility imposed that nothing short of the highest conceivable incentive can carry a man through. And the inspiration lies within the task and will declare itself only in the doing of the task.

Even on the natural side man finds attraction and inspiration in problems, puzzles and difficulties.[39] No sooner is one problem solved or one difficulty surmounted than another is eagerly sought for and grappled with. The spice of life lies in its antagonisms.[40] It is not the prospect of some reward of wealth or honour that carries men to the crown of their task; it is the joy of the doing, a joy that is felt even in those preliminary experimentations which only pave the way to the real undertaking. Men--we are not thinking of b.u.t.terflies--cannot exist without difficulty. To be shorn of it means death, because inspiration is bound up with it, and inspiration is the breath of G.o.d, without the constant influx of which man ceases to be a living soul. Responsibility is the sacrament of inspiration. The miracles of Christ, whatever else they did, suggested new responsibility to the race, opened up a new field of daring and enlarged the scope of human operations. They encouraged men to attempt the impossible; and without question the hidden but no less effective cause of all scientific development has been and is Christian aspiration, roused to its highest pitch by the marvels performed by the Man Christ Jesus. Christian faith has educated us to a belief that the first promise of order lies in the discovery of chaos, and that every problem carries in its own pocket a key formed to fit the hand of man. Thus interest in the sorrows and perplexities of the mult.i.tudes rises from a nerveless compa.s.sion that of yore worked laboriously with its "law-stiffened fingers," to a wide-reaching ministration of power; the secrets of nature become invitations to knowledge; and effort that was once merely instinctive and random becomes rational and triumphant.

But Christ enabled men to achieve what before they had only sighed after, not by releasing from, but on the contrary by adding to human responsibility. He saw the inspiration of responsibility, so by making the latter great He made the former reach its height; He equipped man to do the smaller duties of life by giving larger ones. It will for ever hold true that to bring men up to their best, we must call them to the highest. They are to be won, not by the promise of a gift, but by a ringing call to duty, not by something to eat, but by something to do.

One reason at least why Christianity is bound to supersede all other religions is because of the supreme largeness of its demands on human character and the supreme inspiration that those demands contain. The fault of most modern prophets is not that they present too high an ideal, but an ideal that is sketched with a faltering hand; the appeal to self-sacrifice is too timid and imprecise, the challenge to courage is too low-voiced, with the result that the tide of inspiration ebbs low. The call to each soul to contribute its quota toward the realization of the most remote ideal so far from being depressing is stimulating, and a necessary goad to the promotion of individual as well as corporate development. Mr. Kipling's prophetic voice rings out above the Babel of a garrulous age and inspires men in the only way they can be inspired, by pointing out human responsibility and bidding men take up their burden.

_Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways, Baulking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise.

Stand to your work and be wise--certain of sword and pen, Who are neither children nor G.o.ds, but men in a world of men!_

Clothed with the conviction that true inspiration lies in responsibility, what better words of inspiration can this closing chapter bear than what will come from a final insistence upon the vastness of the ordinary man's spiritual responsibility and the grandeur of his opportunity? In these days a true man rises instinctively to a broad outlook. He does not labour for his own self-fulfillment and nothing more. Of course, every act of self-sacrifice for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake helps toward that end, for self-sacrifice for the promotion of whatever cause is always the negative aspect of self-fulfillment. But Christians strive toward the best not from selfish motives, not merely because what G.o.d commands must be done, but because He has opened up to our gaze a vision of His world-purposes and shown us that obedience means cooperation with Him in their fulfillment. Thus small actions become big with import. Personal purity means a contribution toward the solution of the divorce question which exceeds in its constructive influence the most wisely worded canon of marriage.

The commercial honour of the individual is the forging of a ward in the key that will some day unlock the closed door of the industrial problem.

Faithfulness in spiritual duties in the most circ.u.mscribed life is a voice that reaches the uttermost part of the earth and gives its undying witness to all who have ears to hear. Loyalty and charity working hand in hand in the Christian soul will do as much as the most carefully framed and comprehensive formula of agreement, to bring about that Christian unity for which our Lord prayed[41] when His time was short and His thoughts only upon that which was the objective point of the Incarnation.

Whether or not men recognize the extent of their influence, that influence tells. But what a source of inspiration and strength is lost when these things are hidden and one sees only the natural side of life, the prison-house of environment and the task without its incentive! The Architect of life would have His least workman know the full plan and not merely that of the small bit of it which is his special care. Once to discern our personal relation to G.o.d's world-purposes is to be for ever purged of dilettantism; is to be for ever emanc.i.p.ated from a certain religious littleness that shackles so many Christian feet, and to move out into a breadth which involves no loss of depth; is to shake non-essentials into the background, and bring fundamental truths to the fore, where they can burn themselves into our very being; is to receive a new motive for living and doing.

Fired by a sense of large responsibility, sustained spiritual effort on a high plane becomes possible for each in his own little corner. The demand upon men to pray well, to seek to make the moral life blameless, and to deepen and enlarge the sphere of service,--in a word, to aspire to the stars and reach out to the four corners of the world, suggests privilege rather than hardship to the rank and file of the Christian army. The layman may not look to the priest as a vicarious man of prayer and of righteousness. The priesthood is representative, not exclusive, in character and service. The priest is a man of prayer not because he is a priest, but because he is a Christian, his priesthood but determining the accidental features of his devotional life. He is a holy man not because he is a priest, but because he is a Christian, his priesthood but determining the sphere in which his holiness is to be expressed. The priest does spiritual work not because he is a priest, but because he is a Christian, his priesthood but making him a leader in service, _primus inter pares_. Faithfulness in prayer, righteousness in life, full spiritual service, are the responsibility as much of the layman as of the priest. Failure in any one of these departments of life is as culpable in the layman as in the priest. It is notable that of all the vows in the Ordinal, whether in the ordering of priest or deacon, or in the consecration of a bishop, the majority are but the expansion of common Christian duty and could be as well taken by layman as by cleric.

The functional peculiarities are as few as the representative duties are many. The priestly life is mainly, though not solely, the intensification of fundamental relations with G.o.d and man, as the Ordinal testifies, and the ideal priesthood, so far as it touches devotion, morals and common service, is but the perpetual and living reminder to the laity of what they should be and do. There are many ready to decry sacerdotalism; but few of these have sufficient logic to recognize that the more completely the ministry is denuded of all but its representative character, the more fully is the layman weighted with spiritual responsibility.[42]

And spiritual work is as wide as human activity. The tendency to make religion a department of life instead of the Christian synonym for the whole of life, has given rise to such a redundancy as "applied Christianity." The life of common activities, social and industrial, is as truly the sphere of religion as the sanctuary. The natural is not the ant.i.thesis but the foundation of the spiritual. First that which is natural and afterward that which is spiritual--by transformation, not by subst.i.tution. The Resurrection of Christ is a parable as well as a fact.

And it is for the layman, whether he be the thinker in his study or the labourer in his ditch, to exercise his priesthood in the sphere of his occupation, lifting to G.o.d for His transforming touch each transaction in which he is engaged, recognizing that all life is divine, and all business G.o.d's business. It is for the layman to enter into the bent of his age and train it to G.o.d, not holding aloof from popular movements and ambitions, but laying hold of them and labouring for their conversion and sanctification. Thus will the natural become the spiritual. The witness that the world of to-day is most in need of is that which will testify that if G.o.d is the G.o.d of the supernatural and extraordinary, just as really is He the G.o.d of the natural and ordinary, revealing Himself through and using common things as the general rule, turning to what is uncommon as the exception. Who can bear this witness so well as the layman in the home and in the market? Certain it is that until this is done and theology has become much more than now part of the web and woof of common life among common men, theological a.s.sent or ecclesiastical unity will accomplish but little toward unifying life in Christ in any worthy sense.

This, then, is the ordinary duty of a Christian layman. It is not something optional, to be a.s.sumed or not as we prefer. It is what we must accept as our responsibility, if we accept Christ and look for acceptance in Him. The Church of to-day is coming to recognize this more and more, and is settling down to the work before her with wisdom and zeal. Even beneath the reaction against "organized Christianity," which has appeared of late, and partially explanatory of it, is moral earnestness, an earnestness that deprecates that conventional religion which, narrow in both its vision and methods, fails to touch life with a hand of power. Men of action wish a Christianity which is weighted with responsibilities. Here and there one finds a nerveless Amiel who can speak fine phrases, but who shrinks from responsibility. And here and there, too, is a doctrinaire philosopher or an idle onlooker who croaks of degeneration and declares that life lacks inspiration. But all the while the workers, with eyes gleaming with hope, plunge into the most hopeless problems, and reap their inspiration from their toil.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] _See Appendix._

[39] _See Prof. William James in, Is Life Worth Living? "Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life."_ [The Will to Believe and other Essays.]

[40] _See Dr. John Fiske in his recently published, Through Nature to G.o.d, where in a study of the Mystery of Evil, he developes this thought most admirably, though making the unnecessary deduction that G.o.d is the creator of moral evil._

[41] _St. John xvii._