[An Extract.]
Do I mean that it is not the duty of the Christian to preach the gospel, or to further the preaching of it, to every creature? Far from it; yea, in this as in other respects, I say the Church is guilty; we ourselves, we are guilty. When I think what the Church was and will be, when I think what the Saviour was and will be and ever is, and then of what we have been and are, I for one cannot but confess that we are verily guilty for the poor, scant, feeble testimony to God’s grace we tender to every creature. Bear with me if I say, beloved friends, that I believe we have, in the present condition of Christendom, peculiarly to watch against a snare that is incident to the true position most of us are in. Beware of substituting a judgment of others, in their wrong ways of doing God’s work, for your own loving sympathy and right service. May we all have grace earnestly, humbly, self-denyingly, to help on the work of God ourselves. May we rather search how to help and sympathize with our brethren? It is an easy thing, comparatively, to criticize the various religious societies―for instance, those for missionary purposes and Bible circulation. It is not difficult for one to discern ways, means and objects even, which are contrary to the word of God. Nor do I wish to weaken godly feeling as to all this for a moment. No doubt, the way in which the world is appealed to and mingled with the Church is a fatal vice, ruinous to the testimony of God, and contradictory to the whole character of His Church. It is the same kind of sin as for the wife of a loving husband to play him false, giving herself up to that which is as shameful to her as contrary to his honor and love. Let no one infer the least indifference to the sin of Christendom, to the duty of entire separation of the Christian from the world in doing the work of God. But this does not alter my conviction, that we ought to be ashamed, on our part, that we so little feel our identification with God’s testimony on earth, that our sympathies are so dull and intermittent for His workmen and His work in every form, that we have and show so little self-renunciation, so little energy of heart in throwing ourselves into every movement of the Spirit of God whenever it may be done with a good conscience. Let us remember, “For my sake, and the gospel’s.” (Mark 10) What an answer in the day of the Lord, to say that we have not done this, and we have kept from that! It is quite right that we should not be drawn into unscriptural and offensive ways; but we ought surely, when we separate in sorrow, but none the leas thoroughly from that which is evil, to look up to God for grace, that we may know His way of doing His own work, and that we be found in it heartily. “Blessed is that servant whom His lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing.”
The Church from the beginning has reason to be ashamed. We ought more thoroughly and universally to have carried out the gospel to every creature. It was, it is the business of the Christian here below―not the whole business, nor yet the most blessed part; but still a most sweet privilege, a most suitable and bounden duty; for duty we have, just as much as privilege. We ought then and thus to have been found in our measure scattering the good seed throughout the field of the world. Let us own that it has not been done, and that we have our own great shortcoming to confess.