What We Would Be

Chapter 8
What We Would Be*("misc/aarm08.htm" \\l "note") THIS ASSEMBLY begins to be venerable. For years, we were a band of young men; but now, our own sons are with us, comrades of our ministry, and we feel that we are, no longer striplings. We have not yet reached the sere and yellow leaf, nor have we come to our dotage, or our anecdotage; but we are tending toward maturity, and are impressed with the conviction that, if ever we are to do anything for our Lord Jesus, we must do it at once. To us remains no time for loitering, or even for leisure. To me, at least, eternity seems so near that I cannot frame an excuse for delay. "Now or never," sounds sternly in my ears.
RETROSPECT This will be a healthy feeling for the younger brethren, who are flushed with their first victories. Let them rise to a higher scale of expectancy, lest they readily become self-satisfied, and thus destroy all hope of a great life. Believe me, young brother, as our years sober us, we become more and more aware of our imperfections, and feel less and less inclined to admire our own performances. To me, a retrospect means a hearty psalm of praise, and a deep sigh of regret. Unto the Lord be glory forever; but unto me belong shame and confusion of face.
With regard to the prospect before us I may be supposed to be a prophet of evil; but I am not. I mourn the terrible defections from the truth which are now too numerous to be thought of in detail; nevertheless, I am not disquieted, much less dispirited. That cloud will blow over, as many another has done. I think the outlook is better than it was. I do not think the devil is any better: I never expected he would be; but he is older. Brethren, whether that is for the better or for the worse, I do not know; but, assuredly, the arch-enemy is not quite such a novelty among us as he was. We are not quite so much afraid of that particular form of devilry which is raging now, because we begin to perceive its shape. The unknown appeared to be terrible; but familiarity has removed alarm. At the first, this "modern thought" looked very like a lion; the roaring thereof was terrible, though to some ears there was always a suspicion of braying about it. On closer inspection, the huge king of beasts looked more like a fox, and now we should honor it if we likened it to a wild cat. We were to have been devoured of lions, but the monsters are not to be seen. Scientific religion is empty talk without either science or religion in it. The mountain has brought forth its mouse, or, at any rate, the grand event is near. Very soon, "advanced thought" will only be mentioned by servant girls and young Independent ministers. It has gradually declined till it may now be carried off with the slops. There is nothing in the whole bag of tricks.
Lovers of the eternal truth, you have nothing to fear! God is with those who are with Him. He reveals Himself to those who believe His revelation. Our march is not to and fro, but onward unto victory. "The Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more for ever." Other enemies will arise, even as Amalekites, Hivites, Jebusites, Perizzites, and all the rest of them, rose up against Israel; but, in the Name of the Lord, we shall pass on to possess the promised heritage.
PROPOSAL

Brethren, let us look well to our own steadfastness in the faith, our own holy walking with God. Some say that such advice is selfish; but I believe that, in truth, it is not selfishness, but a sane and practical love of others which leads us to be mindful of our own spiritual state. Desiring to do its level best, and to use its own self in the highest degree to God's glory, the true heart seeks to be in all things right with God. He who has learned to swim has fostered a proper selfishness, for he has thereby acquired the power of helping the drowning. With the view of blessing others, let us covet earnestly the best blessings for ourselves.
PERSONAL AMBITION

One thing is past all question; we shall bring our Lord most glory if we get from Him much grace. If I have much faith, so that I can take God at His word; much love, so that the zeal of His house eats me up; much hope, so that I am assured of fruit from my labor; much patience, so that I can endure hardness for Jesus' sake; then I shall greatly honor my Lord and King. Oh, to have much consecration, my whole nature being absorbed in His service; then, even though my talents may be slender, I shall make my life to burn and glow with the glory of the Lord! This way of grace is open to us all. To be saintly is within each Christian's reach, and this is the surest method of honoring God. Though the preacher may not collect more than a hundred in a village chapel to hear him speak, he may be such a man of God that his little church will be choice seed-corn, each individual worthy to be weighed against gold. The preacher may not get credit for his work in the statistics which reckon scores and hundreds; but in that other book, which no secretary could keep, where things are weighed rather than numbered, the worker's register will greatly honor his Master.
NEED OF GREAT CARE

Need I affectionately call upon you, my brethren, to stir up the gifts which are in you? Cultivate your natural and gracious qualifications for the ministry. The pastor knows far more than when he left College; has he learned all he ought to have learned in that interval? No doubt many of our brethren—
"Grow wiser than their teachers are,
And better know the Lord."

I am not so sure about those who are the most eager to assert this of themselves. Real progress may be usually reckoned by the gauge of humility. He knows most who is most aware that he knows little. We have all great need of much hard study if our ministry is to be good for anything. We have heard of the French peasants who sent to the Pope for a cure. "who had finished his education." They complained that their pastor was always studying, and they wanted a man who knew all that was necessary, and consequently needed no time for books and thoughts. What fools they must be in that part of France! We need exactly the kind of preacher whom they despised. He who has ceased to learn has ceased to teach. He who no longer sows in the study will no more reap in the pulpit.
I hope it will never get to be your notion that only a certain class of preachers can be soul-winners. Every preacher should labor to be the means of saving his hearers. The truest reward of our life work is to bring dead souls to life. I long to see souls brought to Jesus every time I preach. I should break my heart if I did not see it to be so. Men are passing into eternity so rapidly that we must have them saved at once. We indulge no secret hope which can make it easy to lose present opportunities. From all our congregations a bitter cry should go up unto God, unless conversions are continually seen. If our preaching never saves a soul, and is not likely to do so, should we not better glorify God as peasants, or as tradesmen? What honor can the Lord receive from useless ministers? The Holy Ghost is not with us, we are not used of God for His gracious purposes, unless souls are quickened into heavenly life. Brethren, can we bear to be useless? Can we be barren, and yet content?
Brethren, I long that we may all be "apt to teach." The Church is never overdone with those whose "lips feed many." It should be our ambition to be "good stewards of the manifold grace of God." We all know certain able ministers who are expositors of the Word, and instructors of believers. You always bring something away when you hear them. They trade in precious things; their merchandise is of the gold of Ophir. Certain passages of Scripture are quoted and set in a new light; and certain specialties of Christian experience are described and explained. We come away from such preaching feeling that we have been to a good school. Brethren, I desire that we may each one exercise such an edifying ministry! Oh, that: we may have the experience, the illumination, the industry needful for so high a calling! Oh, for more richly-instructive sermons! Brethren, look at many modern sermons! What fire and fury! What flash and dash! What is it all about? To what purpose is this display? We often meet with sermons which are like kaleidoscopes, marvelously pretty, but what is there in them? See, there are several bits of colored glass, and one or two slips of mirror, and other trifles, and these are put into a tube! How they sparkle! What marvelous combinations! What fascinating transformations! But what are you looking at? You have not seen any more after twenty displays than you saw at first; for indeed there is no more. Some preachers excel in quotations of poetry; and others excel in apposition and alliteration, or in the quaintness of the division of their texts. Many are great in domestic sorrows, and death-bed spectacles, and semi-dramatic picturings. Very telling, very sensational; and, under gracious direction, useful in its own measure; but when souls are to be saved, and saved souls are to be fed, more solid matters must take a prominent place. We must feed the flock of God. We must deal with eternal verities, and grapple with heart and conscience. We must, in fact, live to educate a race of saints, in whom the Lord Jesus shall be reflected as in a thousand mirrors.
FATHERS The parental relation is one which requires much of us. A father should be a stable and established man. Something of solid worth and substantial judgment is looked for in a father. Many a preacher we could not call "father"; it would seem too ridiculous. The trifler, the brother of many ways of thinking, and the man who is of an angry spirit, are out of the list when we read over the roll of fathers. Something of weight, kindliness, dignity, steadiness, and venerableness, goes to make up our idea of the father. Great truths are very dear to him, for he has had experience of their power for many years. When some of the boys tell him that he is behind the times, he smiles at their superior wisdom. Now and then, he tries to show them that he is right, though it is hard to make them see it. The boys think the fathers fools; the fathers do not think that of them,—there is no need. True fathers are patient; they do not expect to find old heads on young shoulders. They have the knack of waiting till tomorrow, for time brings with it many instructions; and while it may demonstrate the true, it may also explode the false. Father is not blown about by every wind of doctrine, neither does he run after every new thing which is cried up by the skeptical or by the fanatical. A father knows what he does know, stands by what he has verified, and is rooted and grounded in the faith.
Does any brother exclaim, "I should like to fill a father's place in my church, for then I could rule it"? This is a sorry motive, and one which will disappoint you. The father of a family usually finds that his pre-eminence is one of superior self-denial, rather than of self-assertion. The best of fathers do really rule, but they never raise the question of "Who is master?" In a well-ordered house, "baby is king." Have you not seen how everything is set aside for him? The warmest welcome is for that little stranger, and the movements of the household are guided by his needs. If you were as great an autocrat as the King of the Cannibal Islands, it would make no difference,—baby must be attended to. What means this? Why, that the poorest, weakest, and most easily offended person in the whole church must rule you if you are a true father! You will study the most wayward, and yield your personal pleasure for the good of the most faulty. Somebody asked, "Why should we deny ourselves alcoholic drink because weak-minded persons are overcome by it? That would be to make the weakest persons the virtual rulers of our conduct, which would be absurd." Just so; but the absurdity appertains to the family of love. Our domestic affairs must seem absurd to unsympathetic strangers. Who likes to tell them to the uninitiated? It would be casting pearls before swine. I would say,—All hail to the absurdities of holy love: long may they reign! Baby is king: the weakest rule our hearts. The pace of the whole flock is slackened, lest we overdrive the lambs. Our ruling is carried out by seeing that none tread down the weak, and by setting the' example of the greatest self-forgetfulness. He is not fit to be a father who does not see that this is the imperative law of love, and is, indeed, the secret: of power. We lay ourselves down for all men to go over us if thus they may come to Jesus.
A father must possess wisdom. But in this matter many are deceived, for they aspire to it from a wrong motive, and so become foolish. If you had wisdom, my brother, what would you do with it? Would you so use it as to make others feel your superiority? If so, you have little wisdom as yet. A minister's wisdom lies in endeavoring to be wise for others, not cunning for himself. Some use their wisdom in a very unwise way, and curse the church which they should bless. And so you would go about the church, and put everybody right, being so wise yourself! Herein is often great folly. A man I have heard of said, "I am not at all afraid of thieves breaking into my house. If I heard a burglar, I should touch this button, and in a moment an electric current would explode dynamite in the cellar, and that would blow up the burglar and the whole establishment." You laugh; but we have met with ministers who have acted in much the same manner. I am sorry to know a brother who has performed this feat in five or six churches. The moment he thinks that a member, especially a deacon, has gone wrong, he blows the whole thing to pieces, and calls it faithfulness. This is not acting the part of a wise father. If we have wisdom, we shall maintain peace, and shall attempt reforms with gentleness. Fathers do not kill their children because they are unphilosophical, or unsound in theology, or somewhat disobedient in conduct.
You know the weighty responsibility of a father towards his children; such is ours. I do not think that any of us would dare to say to our people, "Follow me in all thing? And yet their tendency is to follow the pastor. In this tendency lies influence for the holy, and a dreadful power for mischief for the careless. Many beginners take readily to an earthly model; they find it more natural to copy a godly man, whom they have seen, than to imitate the Lord Jesus, whom they have not seen. I do not commend them in this; but so it is, and we must be tender toward this weakness so that it may not become the occasion of evil. Children first obey their parents, and so learn the law of the Lord, and no doubt many of the weaker sort learn the way of holiness from their spiritual guides. A painter, who afterwards becomes a great original, is in his earliest days a disciple of a certain school of art; it is so in religion. The babe in grace is taught to walk by an older brother, and afterwards takes his own path. I believe that many weak ones in our churches are seriously injured, if not entirely broken down, by following the example of their ministers in matters wherein they come short of the Lord's mind. How grievous it would be; if any believers were dwarfed through our conduct! May we not fear that there are some in our churches today who are not what they might have been had we properly guided them? No doubt some have been coddled into weakness, and others have been allowed to grow more in one direction than in others. Do you say, "We cannot help this; it is no business of ours "? I tell you it is our business. Strangers may talk in a careless way, but fathers are conscious of great responsibility as to their children. If a family is not well ordered, a wise father begins to mend his own ways. If our people do wrong, we fret and blame ourselves. If we were better, our church-members would be better. It is little use to scold them; our wiser way is to humble ourselves before God, and find out the reason why our ministry does not produce better results.
We had need be kind and courteous, for even such a small thing as shaking hands, or giving a nod, may have an influence. One who is now a member of our church told me that he had often stood to shake hands with me at the back gate, as I left the building, long before he had come inside to hear me preach. The mere fact of a kindly' notice which I gave him on going out had made him think of me, and inclined him to hear. He assured me that this simple matter was the first link between him and religion. He was drunken, and wretched, and ungodly; but he had, by a happy accident, become the friend of a minister of Christ, and this bond, though slight as a spider's thread, was the beginning of better things. Never be stiff and proud. "Be pitiful, be courteous." Children expect kindness from a father; let them not he disappointed. It is ours to be all things to all men, if by any means we may save some.
On the other hand, survey the picture of a father who sees his child returning from the error of his way. In the New Testament, you see the portrait divinely drawn. When the prodigal was a great way off, his father saw him. Oh, to have quick eyes to spy out the awakened! The father ran to meet him. Oh, to be eager to help the hopeful! He fell upon his neck, and kissed him. Oh, for a heart overflowing with love, to joy and rejoice over seeking ones! As that father was, such should we be; ever loving, and ever on the outlook. Our eyes, and ears, and feet should ever be given to penitents. Our tears and open arms should be ready for them. The father in Christ is the man to remember the best robe, and the ring, and the sandals; he remembers those provisions of grace because he is full of love to the returning one. Love is a practical theologian, and takes care to deal practically with all the blessings of the covenant, and all the mysteries of revealed truth. It does not hide away the robe and ring in a treasury of theology; but brings them forth, and puts them on.
But lest you should feel pleased with the fact that you desire this high honor, and fancy that the mere aspiration will fulfil itself, let me remind you how the Savior lived. He never settled down in desires and resolves, but girded Himself for constant service. He said, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." Soul-winning must be meat and drink to us. To do the Lord's work must be as necessary as food to us. His Father's work is that in which we also are engaged, and we cannot do better than imitate our Lord. Tell me, then, how Jesus set about it. Did He set about it by arranging to build a huge Tabernacle, or by organizing a monster Conference, or by publishing a great book, or by sounding a trumpet before Him in any other form? Did He aim at something great, and altogether out of the common line of service? Did He bid high for popularity, and wear Himself out by an exhausting sensationalism? No; He called disciples to Him one by one, and instructed each one with patient care. To take a typical instance of His method, watch Him as He paused in the heat of the day. He sat upon a well, and talked with a woman,—a woman who was none of the best. This looked like slow work, and very commonplace action. Yet we know that it was right and wise.
As the Lord shall help us, let us lay our all upon the altar, and only breathe for Him. Certain of you will go abroad, some of you may find a grave on the banks of the Congo. We cannot all do this; but, brethren, we must all live unto the Lord, and lay down our lives for the brethren. The Thames and the Clyde must have their consecrated ones as well as the Congo and the Ganges. London and Bristol must witness to as true a heroism as Canton and Calcutta. Because we belong to Christ, the zeal of the Lord's house must eat us up.
FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT= "I wish I could have spoken to you with all my strength, but it may be that my weakness may be used of God to greater purpose. My thoughts are few by reason of pain, which disorders my head; but they are all on fire, for my heart remains true to my Lord, to His gospel, and to you. May He use every man of us to the utmost of our capacity for being used, and glorify Himself by our health and our sickness, our life and our death! Amen.

NOTE
* This address was delivered in great pain. It is not what we desired it to be. Our anguish made it hard to think, and almost impossible to think connectedly. Almost all that had been prepared was forgotten, and no new springs of thought could make channels for themselves while the mind was smothered up in physical suffering. The address may be regarded as a literary curiosity,—the talk of a man who could with difficulty keep himself from tears through acute suffering, and yet was resolved to take his part in a meeting which he had anticipated with solemn interest for months before. We may add that the revising of the address was accomplished under much the same conditions as the delivery of it.—C. H. S.