Individuality, and Its Opposite

Chapter 3
Individuality, and Its Opposite WHEN the late excellent Field-Marshal, Sir John Burgoyne, took the chair at the Tabernacle, at a lecture by Mr. Henry Vincent, he discharged his duty as chairman briefly, but admirably, by saying that, as chairman, he looked upon himself as merely called upon to ring the bell to announce the starting of the train. That is somewhat my position with regard to this Conference, only it rises to a higher degree of responsibility, because your President has not only to start the train of good thoughts and words for this week, but to a large measure he will give a tone for better or worse to all that shall follow. I am, therefore, more like the pitch-pipe of the olden times, which gave the key-note to the singers in the gallery, and through them to the whole congregation, and I feel inexpressibly anxious that the key-note should be a right one. Brethren, a measure of the sense of responsibility is helpful, and in many ways qualifies a man for saying the right thing; but it may be pushed too far, it may go beyond humbling the mind, and reach to the crushing of the spirit; it may so overwhelm you with the feeling of what is to be done as utterly to disqualify you for the doing of it. I am somewhat in that condition as to my part in this Conference to-day. I pine to inspire and not to repress your zeal, I long to lead you into the highest spiritual condition, and not to divert your attention to lower matters, and these strong desires master me; my heart conquers my head, and disturbs the equanimity so needful for the creation and utterance of thought. However, I shall do my best, and leave myself in the hands of our great Illuminator, the Holy Spirit, that He may speak through me as He wills.
Perhaps my one thought will come better if I give you a text from the 1st of Corinthians, the 15th chapter, and 10th verse, 1 Corinthians 15:10 : "I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I." "I, yet not I;"—I to the very full, every bit of me: Paul, once the Pharisee, the blasphemer, the persecutor, called now to be an apostle, who finds it cause of joy that this grace is given unto me to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; I, not a whit behind the very chief of the apostles: and yet not I, for I feel myself to be nothing, yea, and less than nothing, and Christ is all and in all. So it is I, yet not I.
Brethren, I hope that, however useful God may have made us in our several spheres, we do not conceive ourselves to be vastly important, for indeed we are no such thing. The cock was of opinion that the sun rose early every morning on purpose to hear him crow; but we know that Sol did nothing of the kind. The world does not revolve, the sun does not blaze, the moon does not wax and wane, the stars do not shine, entirely for the especial benefit of any one brother here, however admirable he may be in his own place; neither does Christendom exist for the purpose of finding us pulpits, nor our own particular church that it may furnish us with a congregation and an income; nay, nor does even so much as one believer exist that he may lay himself out for our sole comfort and honour. We are too insignificant to be of any great importance in God's vast universe; He can do either with us or without us, and our presence or absence will not disarrange His plans.
Upon this matter of individuality, note first, the necessity of an earnest sense of our individual interest in the gospel which we preach. Brethren, we shall never preach the Savior of sinners better than when we feel ourselves to be the sinners whom He came to save. A penitent mourning for sin fits us to preach repentance. "I preached," says John Bunyan, "sometimes, as a man in chains to men in chains, hearing the clanking of my own fetters while I preached to those who were bound in affliction and iron." Sermons wrung out of broken hearts are often the means of consolation to despairing souls. It is well to go to the pulpit, at times, with "God be merciful to me a sinner" as our uppermost prayer. Some mourners will never be cheered till they see the preacher smite upon his own breast, and hear him confess his personal sense of unworthiness.
We must never preach to others with a counterfeit voice, narrating an experience which we have not ourselves enjoyed; but if we feel that we have back-slidden to any degree, we must either rally to the mark, or penitently speak from the standpoint we actually occupy. On the other hand, if we have grown in grace, it is wicked to conceal what we have tasted and handled, and affect a mock humility; in fact, we dare not do so, we cannot but speak what Christ has taught us. We must speak out of the God-given fulness within, and not borrow from another; better far to be silent than to do that. We must be true to our personal condition before God, for perhaps the Lord allows the state of heart of His ministers to vary on purpose that their roving paths may lead to the discovery of His wandering sheep. I have sometimes traversed a portion of the pilgrim path by no means to be desired, and I have groaned in my soul, "Lord, why and wherefore is it thus with me?" And I have preached in a way which made me lie in the dust, fearing that the Lord had not spoken by me, and all the while He was leading me by the hand in a way that I knew not, for the good of His own. There have come forward, ere long, one or two who have been just the people God intended to bless, and they were reached by the very sermon which cost me so much, and grew out of an experience so exceedingly bitter.
Brethren, this personality of life in Christ being well kept in our minds, it will be well for us never to forget our personal commission to preach the gospel. for I hope you have each of you received such a personal commission, and know it; or else why are you here? Leave the ministry, brethren, if you have not received it of the Lord. I preach—I dare to say it—because I can do no otherwise; I cannot refrain myself; a fire burns within my bones which will consume me if I hold my peace. Every God-sent Christian minister is as much called to preach the gospel as was that apostle to whom Ananias spoke concerning "the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way." This makes our preaching a solemn business. Suppose that, this morning, in going down the stairs of this College alone, an angel should meet you, and lay his hand upon you, and say, "The Lord God Almighty hath sent me to commission you to preach the gospel henceforth." Brother, you would feel a burden laid upon you, and yet you would feel renewed confidence and ardour. But no mere angel's hand has touched thee, brother; the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who redeemed thee with His most precious blood, has laid this "necessity" upon thee. The pierced hand, which gave thee healing, has appointed thee to thy Lord's service, and made thee a chosen vessel to bear His Name. Hear afresh from His lips the commands, "Feed My sheep" and "Feed My lambs," even as Peter did by the Sea of Galilee.
Brethren, in connection with our individuality, we ought to feel a great respect for our own sphere of labour. You who are pastors are not only set to be watchmen for souls, but to be watchmen for the souls in particular places. You brethren, as a whole, are to go into all the world to preach the gospel, but each one of you must feed that flock of Christ over which the Holy Ghost has made you an overseer. There your principal labors must be expended, for there your principal responsibilities lie. I would have every brother think very highly of the position in which God has placed him. If I am a sentinel, set to guard the army at a certain point, I know that every post in the whole cordon is important; but I am not to dream that mine is not so. If so, I may be inclined to sleep, and the foe may surprise the camp at the point which I ought to have guarded. I am to feel as if the whole safety of the entire camp depended upon me;—at least, I ought to be as zealous and as watchful as if it were so. You see the links of that chain; each one of them has a certain strain upon it. Suppose that one of them should say, "I may rust through; it does not matter, for many other links are strong." No, my friend, the chain depends upon each link; and so, for the completeness of church work, and for the perfect edification of the body of Christ, a great weight of responsibility lies upon you. I am very responsible; I admit it, but you have each one your measure of responsibility, which you cannot shift to another's shoulders. If all the rest of the world should be blest, and the hamlet to which you minister should be unvisited, the general revival would be no joy to you if your negligence had made your little vineyard a mournful exception to the rule. You might rejoice in the increase of blessing elsewhere, but the deeper would be your regret that you had none of it at home.
A dear brother said to me, "I wish you would go abroad, and preach the Word;" and he urged as a reason that my people would appreciate me better if they had less of me. I:replied that I did not want my people to appreciate me any more, for they go already as far in that direction as would be safe, and I assured him that I should stop at home for fear they should appreciate me more. I might have rambled all the world over, and done great good, if that had been my calling; but the day will declare whether I have not been more in the path of duty and real usefulness by fostering Institutions at home, and scattering the Word by my printed sermons far more widely than I could have done with my voice. Be it so or not, brethren, when you know which part of the Lord's work He has committed to you, give your whole soul to it. Going through the famous factory at Sevres, the other day, I noticed an artist painting a very beautiful vase. I looked at him, but he did not look at me; his eyes were better engaged than in staring at a stranger. There were several persons at my heels, and they all looked at him, and made various observations, yet the worker's eye never moved from his work. He had to paint the picture upon that vase, and what benefit would he get from noticing us, or from our noticing him? He kept to his work. We would fain see such abstraction and concentration in every man who has the Lord's work to do. "This one thing I do." Some frown, some smile, but "this one thing I do." Some think they could do it better, but "this one thing I do." How they could do it, may be their business; but it certainly is not mine.
Come fair or come foul, my comrades, hold ye the fort. Some men attempt to excuse their own negligence by blaming the times. What have you and I to do with the times, except to serve our God in them? The times are always evil to those who are of morbid temperament. A scholar tells us that he once read a passage from a book to a worthy gentleman of the desponding school; it described "these days of blasphemy and rebuke,"—I think that is the correct expression,—and lamented the failure of the faithful from among men "Ah, how true!" said the worthy man, "it is the precise picture of the times." "What times?" exclaimed the scholar. "These times, of course," was the reply. "Pardon me," said the scholar, "the sentiment was delivered about four hundred years ago; examine for yourself the date of the volume." The benefit of railing at the times it would be hard to discover, for railing does not mend them. What have you to do with the times? Do your own work. Charles the Twelfth of Sweden had his secretary sitting by his side writing from dictation, when a bombshell fell through the roof into the next room. The secretary, in alarm, dropped his pen, upon which the king exclaimed, "What are you doing?" The poor man faltered, "Ah, sire, the bomb!" The king's answer was, "What has the bomb to do with what I am telling you?" You will say that the secretary's life was in danger. Yes, but you are safe in any case, for you are side by side with Jesus in holy service, and no evil can befall you. Watch on, and work on, even to the crack of doom. Leave the times and the seasons with God, and go on with your work. Carlyle speaks somewhere of the house-cricket chirping on while the trump of the archangel is sounding;—who blames it for so doing? If God had made you a house-cricket, and bidden you chirp, you could not do better than fulfil His will. As He has made you a preacher, you must abide in your vocation. Even if the earth should be removed, and the mountains should be cast into the midst of the sea, would that alter our duty? I trow not. Christ has sent us to preach the gospel; and if our life-work is not yet finished, (and it is not,) let us continue delivering our message under all circumstances till death shall silence us.
Keep your adaptation for your work up to the highest pitch. Be not in so much hurry to do that you forget to be,—so anxious to give out that you never take in. This is the haste which makes no speed. Old Nat had a large wood pile before him, and he sawed very hard to make that pile smaller. His saw wanted sharpening and re-setting, and it was dreadful work to make it go at all. An honest neighbor stepped up to him, and said, "Nat, why don't you get that saw sharpened? You want to get that put to rights, and then you could do a deal more than you are now doing." "Now then," replied Nat, "don't you come bothering here. I have quite enough to do to saw that pile of wood, without stopping to sharpen my saw." It is unnecessary to point the moral of that anecdote; take note of it, and act accordingly in future. It is a waste of time, not an economy of it, to dispense with study, private prayer, and due preparation for your work.
Once more, remember our personal responsibility. I shall not trust myself to go very deeply into this question, but every brother should remember that, however well or ill another man may do his work, it can have no effect whatever upon our own personal responsibility before God. Some blame others with a kind of silently-implied belief that they are thereby praising themselves; for, if we censure the methods adopted by other workers, we tacitly suggest that our own modes are—or, if we had any, would be—superior to theirs. Well, brother, it may be so. It may be that others are not wise, are scarcely sound, are fanatical, erratic, and the like; but what hast thou to do with them? To their own Master they shall stand or fall, and God's grace is able to make them stand; but your supposed wisdom, which leads you to criticize them, may prove a snare to you, and make you fall. You have yet to bring your work before God, to be tried by fire. Souls are entrusted to you, and for these you must give account. God does not mean to bless those souls by anybody else, they are to be converted through you; so, are you acting, living, and preaching in such a way that God is likely to convert them through you? That is the question for each one of us to answer.
I feel that this matter of personality may be pressed very earnestly upon you, my brethren, in all five of its points; and in all it will be useful. If our individual responsibility be rightly felt, we shall refrain from judging others. We are all too ready to ascend the judgment-seat. One man judges his fellow, and condemns him because he has had so few additions to his church. I should myself be sorry if I saw few conversions, and I should severely censure myself; but I should be very, very wrong if I were to utter an indiscriminate censure upon others. Our brother's congregation may be smaller than ours; the people's hearts may have been long steeled by a cold, dead, stereotyped ministry, and it may be that there is a good deal of work to be done before they will become interested in the gospel, much less affected by it. Possibly it may happen that the preacher, who has one convert, might say as the lioness did about her one cub, when the fox boasted that she had so many, "One, but that one is a lion!" The minister, whose whole year's work ended with one convert, and that one was Robert Moffat, did not reap a scanty harvest.
Our individuality will preserve us, by God's grace, from envying others. This vice is loathsome, and eats as doth a canker. "Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?" I have known persons utter sentiments which condemned themselves merely with the view of injuring others. They cared not if they perished, like Samson, so long as they pulled the house down upon others. An ancient story tells us that a king invited to his palace two men, one of whom he knew to be the slave of envy. "Now," said he, "I will give you whatever you please, upon the condition that this man shall choose first, and his companion shall have twice as much as he." The first man was envious: he desired great wealth, but he could not endure that the other man should have double. He therefore thought that he would reduce what he asked for, but this also left his companion his superior; and as the fable goes,—for peradventure it was only a fable,—his envy so prevailed that he chose to have one of his eyes torn out that the other man might be rendered totally blind. Somewhat similar is the spirit of those who oppose others upon principles fatal to their own work. Brother, do not so. If thy neighbor be honored of God, thank God for it; if thou art not so honored, be humbled, and pray more earnestly. If the blessing comes not to thee, still rejoice that it gladdens thy comrade. In any case, do not envy others.
Dear brethren, I have said enough upon this first point, and I shall not be so long upon the other lest I should weary you. I wish, however, that what I have said may abide in the hearts of us all.
Let us all feel, dear brethren, that, though we have each one a work to do, and are personally fitted to do it, we are not the only workers in the world. Brother, you are not the only lamp to enlighten earth's darkness, you are not the only sower to sow the field of the world with the good seed, you are not the only trumpet through which God proclaims His jubilee, yours is not the only hand by which He feeds the multitudes. You are only one member of the mystic body, one soldier of the grand army. This thought should encourage you, and relieve the despondency engendered by loneliness. When God sent the flies, and locusts, and caterpillars to conquer Egypt, Pharaoh might have ridiculed any one of those insignificant warriors, and said, "What can this caterpillar do? I defy the Lord and His caterpillars." But the caterpillar might have answered, "Beware, O king, for there are ten thousand times ten thousand of us! We come in mighty armies, and will cover all the land. Weak as we are one by one, the Lord will evidence His omnipotence by the multiplication of our numbers." Thus was it in the early days of Christianity. Christians came into Rome,—a few poor Jews they were, and they dwelt in the Ghetto, in obscurity; by-and-by, there were more. Meanwhile, a few had passed over into Spain; soon there were more. A few had reached Britain; soon there were more. The nations, angry at this invasion, set to work to destroy those pests of society, which turned the world upside down. They tormented, burned, and destroyed them; but they continued to come in shoals and swarms, and though they were slain without mercy, there were always more to follow. The foes of God could not possibly stand against the vast host that pressed forward. "The Lord gave the Word: great was the company of those that published it." Even so it is at this day. You are not alone in sounding the praises of Christ, your voice is but one, of a mighty orchestra. The whole world is full of the praises of God: "their line is gone out through all the earth; and their words to the end of the world."
Brethren, we are not alone. Legions of angels are all around us. Hosts of glorified spirits look down upon us. We are surrounded with a mighty band of helpers. We are compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses; wherefore, "let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus."
It is very blessed to feel that God is behind you, that God is in you, and that He is working with you. Mr. Oncken, in the early days of his preaching at Hamburg, was brought up before the burgomaster many times, and imprisoned. This magistrate one day said to him, in very bitter terms, "Mr. Oncken, do you see that little finger?" "Yes, sir." "As long as that little finger can be held up, sir, I will put you down." "Ah!" said Mr. Oncken, "I do not suppose that you see what I see, for I discern not merely a little finger, but a great arm, and that is the arm of God, and as long as that arm can move, you will never put me down." The opposition which is waged against the true minister of Christ does not, after all, amount to more than the burgomaster's little finger, while the power which is with us is that eternal and onmipotent arm whose forces sustain the heavens and the earth. We need not, therefore, fear. God's presence makes us bold. Let the Uhlan in the late war be our example. Picture him, a solitary man, brave and cool, riding upon a fleet horse. He is going along one of those interminable French roads which have no variety, except that now and then one poplar may be half an inch taller than another; he rides hard and fearlessly, though there are foes on all sides. That one man passes through a hamlet, and frightens everybody. He enters a town. Is he not foolhardy? All alone he has ridden up to the Town Hall, and demanded beds and stores. Why is he so bold? They are all afraid of him, evidently. Ask the man why he is so daring, and he replies, "There is an army behind me, and therefore I am not afraid." So must you, dear brother, be one of the Uhlans of the Lord God Almighty, and never be afraid, for the eternal God will be your rearward. "All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth," says our Commander; "go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." I feel as if He were here, this very morning, looking on you as His soldiers, and saying, "Conquer in My Name." Go, then, my brethren, ride to those villages, and arouse them. Go to those towns, and summon them to surrender. Go to the great cities, and say to the people in them, "Christ demands that you yield your hearts to Him." Do this, and He will make your word effectual.
Where God chooses to dwell, there is a palace; His presence glorifies the place of His abode. Is there anything very wonderful in the architecture of Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon? Yet, from the utmost ends of the earth, admirers of the world's great poet will come, because Shakespeare once lived there. Suppose Shakespeare were there now! What would his admirers do then? Now, this day, brethren, our poor humble constitutions and frames and bodies,—be they what they may,—are the temples of the Holy Ghost. It is not only that He was there;—that fact makes us respect the very ashes of the saints, but He is there now. May we never have to lament His absence! You may often see a fine house, of which the owner is dead, only the picture of him hangs on the wall; but our delight is that the living Christ is in us now by the power of His Spirit. I went to the monastery which adjoins the church of St. Onofrio, in Rome, some years ago, and they showed me there the rooms in which Tasso lived, and they had so skillfully drawn his likeness on the wall, that it looked for all the world as if Tasso were there. There were also his bed, and his pen, and his inkstand, and some of the paper on which he wrote; but there were no fresh stanzas of "Jerusalem Delivered" to be heard. Even so, we may have the likeness of Christ in our theological knowledge of Him, in our power of speaking for Him, we may have the pen with which He used to write, and we may have the paper on which He was accustomed to write in hearts that were interested in the gospel; but no "Jerusalem Delivered" will be produced, unless Jesus Himself is there. Brethren, we must have Christ in us, the hope of glory; the Spirit dwelling in us, the pure, the ever-flowing life, or our lives will be failures. O Lord, abide with us, and abide in us!
FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT= "I must conclude with the remark that it is a very delightful thing to feel that all the work we are doing is Jesus Christ's work. All the sheep we have to shepherd are His sheep; the souls we have to bring to Him were bought with His blood; the spiritual house that is to be built is for His habitation. It is all His. I delight in working for my Lord and Master, because I feel a blessed community of interest with Him. That is not my Sunday-school, it is my Lord's; and He says, "Feed My lambs." It is not my church, but His; and He cries, "Feed My sheep." Mine are His, and His are mine; yea, all are His. In the days when servants used to be servants, and were attached to their masters, one of our nobility had with him an old butler who had lived with his father, and was getting grey. The nobleman was often much amused with the way in which the good old man considered everything that was his master's to be his own. I was not only pleased with the story, but it touched my heart when I heard it. His lordship once said to him, "John, whose waggon is that which has just come up loaded with goods?" "Oh!" said he, "that is ours. Those are goods from our town house." His lordship smiled, and as a carriage came up the drive, he said, "John, whose coach is that coming into the park?" "Oh!" said he, "that is our carriage." "But," said the master, "there are some children in it, John; are they our children?" "Yes, my lord, they are our children, bless them, I will run, and bring them in." My Lord Jesus, how dare I have the impertinence to claim anything which is Thine? And yet, when I gaze upon Thy Church, I am so completely Thy servant, and so wholly absorbed in Thee, that I look upon it as mine as well as Thine, and I go to wait upon Thy beloved ones. Yea, Lord, and all these my brethren are going, too. Come with us, Lord, for Thy love's sake! Amen.