No doubt the Apostle had, in a special sense, a 'necessity laid upon'
him, which was first laid upon him on that road to Damascus, and
repeated many a time in his life. But though he differs from us in
the direct supernatural commission which was given to him, in the
width of the sphere in which he had to work, and in the splendour of
the gifts which were entrusted to his stewardship, he does not differ
from us in the reality of the obligation which was laid upon him.
Every Christian man is as truly bound as was Paul to preach the
Gospel. The commission does not depend upon apostolic dignity. Jesus
Christ, when He said, 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the
Gospel to every creature,' was not speaking to the eleven, but to all
generations of His Church. And whilst there are many other motives on
which we may rest the Christian duty of propagating the Christian
faith, I think that we shall be all the better if we bottom it upon
this, the distinct and definite commandment of Jesus Christ, the grip
of which encloses all who for themselves have found that the Lord is
gracious.
For that commandment is permanent. It is exactly contemporaneous with
the duration of the promise which is appended to it, and whosoever
suns himself in the light of the latter is bound by the precept of
the former. 'Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world,'
defines the duration of the promise, and it defines also the duration
of the duty. Nay, even the promise is made conditional upon the
discharge of the duty enjoined. For it is to the Church 'going into
all the world, and preaching the Gospel to every creature,' that the
promise of an abiding presence is made.
Let us remember, too, that, just because this commission is given to
the whole Church, it is binding on every individual member of the
Church. There is a very common fallacy, not confined to this subject,
but extending over the whole field of Christian duty, by which things
that are obligatory on the community are shuffled off the shoulders
of the individual. But we have to remember that the whole Church is
nothing more than the sum total of all its members, and that nothing
is incumbent upon it which is not in their measure incumbent upon
each of them. Whatsoever Christ says to all, He says to each, and the
community has no duties which you and I have not.
Of course, there are diversities of forms of obedience to this
commandment; of course, the restrictions of locality and the other
obligations of life, come in to modify it; and it is not every man's
duty to wander over the whole world doing this work. But the direct
work of communicating to others who know it not the sweetness and the
power of Jesus Christ belongs to every Christian man. You cannot buy
yourselves out of the ranks, as they used to be able to do out of the
militia, by paying for a substitute. Both forms of service are
obligatory upon each of us. We all, if we know anything of Christ and
His love and His power, are bound, by the fact that we do know it, to
tell it to those whom we can reach. You have all got congregations if
you would look for them. There is not a Christian man or woman in
this world who has not somebody that he or she can speak to more
efficiently than anybody else can. You have your friends, your
relations, the people with whom you are brought into daily contact,
if you have no wider congregations. You cannot all stand up and
preach in the sense in which I do so. But this is not the meaning of
the word in the New Testament. It does not imply a pulpit, nor a set
discourse, nor a gathered multitude; it simply implies a herald's
task of proclaiming. Everybody who has found Jesus Christ can say, 'I
have found the Messiah,' and everybody who knows Him can say, 'Come
and hear, and I will tell what the Lord hath done for my soul.' Since
you can do it you are bound to do it; and if you are one of 'the dumb
dogs, lying down and loving to slumber,' of whom there are such
crowds paralysing the energies and weakening the witness of every
Church upon earth, then you are criminally and suicidally oblivious
of an obligation which is a joy and a privilege as much as a duty.
Oh, brethren! I do want to lay on the consciences of all you
Christian people this, that nothing can absolve you from the
obligation of personal, direct speech to some one of Christ and His
salvation. Unless you can say, 'I have not refrained my lips, O Lord!
Thou knowest,' there frowns over against you an unfulfilled duty, the
neglect of which is laming your spiritual activity, and drying up the
sources of your spiritual strength.
But, then, besides this direct effort, there are the other indirect
methods in which this commandment can be discharged, by sympathy and
help of all sorts, about which I need say no more here.
Jesus Christ's ideal of His Church was an active propaganda, an army
in which there were no non-combatants, even although some of the
combatants might be detailed to remain in the camp and look after the
stuff, and others of them might be in the forefront of the battle.
But is that ideal ever fulfilled in any of our churches? How many
amongst us there are who do absolutely nothing in the shape of
Christian work! Some of us seem to think that the voluntary principle
on which our Nonconformist churches are largely organised means, 'I
do not need to do anything unless I like. Inclination is the guide of
duty, and if I do not care to take any active part in the work of our
church, nobody has anything to say.' No man can force me, but if
Jesus Christ says to me, 'Go!' and I say, 'I had rather not,' Jesus
Christ and I have to settle accounts between us. The less _men_
control, the more stringent ought to be the control of Christ. And if
the principle of Christian obedience is a willing heart, then the
duty of a Christian is to see that the heart is willing.
A stringent obligation, not to be shuffled off by any of the excuses
that we make, is laid upon us all. It makes very short work of a
number of excuses. There is a great deal in the tone of this
generation which tends to chill the missionary spirit. We know more
about the heathen world, and familiarity diminishes horror. We have
taken up, many of us, milder and more merciful ideas about the
condition of those who die without knowing the name of Jesus Christ.
We have taken to the study of comparative religion as a science,
forgetting sometimes that the thing that we are studying as a science
is spreading a dark cloud of ignorance and apathy over millions of
men. And all these reasons somewhat sap the strength and cool the
fervour of a good many Christian people nowadays. Jesus Christ's
commandment remains just as it was.
Then some of us say, 'I prefer working at home!' Well, if you are
doing all that you can there, and really are enthusiastically devoted
to one phase of Christian service, the great principle of division of
labour comes in to warrant your not entering upon other fields which
others cultivate. But unless you are thus casting all your energies
into the work which you say that you prefer, there is no reason in it
why you should do nothing in the other direction. Jesus Christ still
says, 'Go ye into all the world.'
Then some of you say, 'Well, I do not much believe in your missionary
societies. There is a great deal of waste of money about them. A
number of things there are that one does not approve of. I have heard
stories about missionaries being very idle, very luxurious, and
taking too much pay, and doing too little work.' Well, be it so! Very
probably it is partly true; though I do not know that the people
whose testimony is so willingly accepted, to the detriment of our
brethren in foreign lands, are precisely the kind of people that
should talk much about self-sacrifice and luxurious living, or whose
estimate of Christian work is to be relied upon. I fancy many of
them, if they walked about the streets of an English town, would have
a somewhat similar report to give, as they have when they walk about
the streets of an Indian one. But be that as it may, does that
indictment draw a wet sponge across the commandment of Jesus Christ?
or can you chisel out of the stones of Sinai one of the words
written there, by reason of the imperfections of those who are
seeking to obey them? Surely not! Christ still says, 'Go ye into all
the world!'
I sometimes venture to think that the day will come when the
condition of being received into, and retained in, the communion of a
Christian church will be obedience to that commandment. Why, even
bees have the sense at a given time of the year to turn the drones
out of the hives, and sting them to death. I do not recommend the
last part of the process, but I am not sure but that it would be a
benefit to us all, both to those ejected and to those retained, that
we should get rid of that added weight that clogs every organised
community in this and other lands--the dead weight of idlers who say
that they are Christ's disciples. Whether it is a condition of church
membership or not, sure I am that it is a condition of fellowship
with Jesus Christ, and a condition, therefore, of health in the
Christian life, that it should be a life of active obedience to this
plain, imperative, permanent, and universal command.