It is at this point that Michael Trevanion falls into line with the
great masters. Since the apostolic days we have had two conspicuously
successful evangelists--John Wesley and Mr. Spurgeon. The secret of
their success is so obvious that he who runs may read. I turn to my
edition of John Wesley's _Journal_, and at the end I find a tribute like
this: 'The great purpose of his life was doing good. For this he
relinquished all honor and preferment; to this he dedicated all his
powers of body and mind; at all times and in all places, in season and
out of season, by gentleness, by terror, by argument, by persuasion, by
reason, by interest, by every motive and every inducement, he strove,
with unwearied assiduity, to turn men from the error of their ways and
awaken them to virtue and religion. To the bed of sickness or the couch
of prosperity; to the prison or the hospital; to the house of mourning
or the house of feasting, wherever there was a friend to serve or a soul
to save, he readily repaired. He thought no office too humiliating, no
condescension too low, no undertaking too arduous, to reclaim the
meanest of God's offspring. _The souls of all men were equally precious
in his sight and the value of an immortal creature beyond all
estimation._'
In relation to Mr. Spurgeon, we cannot do better than place ourselves
under Mr. W. Y. Fullerton's direction. Mr. Fullerton knew Mr. Spurgeon
intimately, and the standard biography of the great preacher is from his
pen. Mr. Fullerton devotes a good deal of his space to an inquiry as to
the sources of Mr. Spurgeon's power and authority. It is an elusive and
difficult question. It is admitted that there is scarcely one respect in
which Mr. Spurgeon's powers were really transcendent. He had a fine
voice; but others had finer ones. He was eloquent; but others were no
less so. He used to say that his success was due, not to his preaching
of the Gospel, but to the Gospel that he preached. Obviously, however,
this is beside the mark, for he himself would not have been so
uncharitable as to deny that others preached the same Gospel and yet met
with no corresponding success. The truth probably is that, although he
attained to super-excellence at no point, he was really great at many.
And, behind this extraordinary combination of remarkable, though not
transcendent, powers was an intense conviction, a deadly earnestness, a
consuming passion, that made second-rate qualities sublime. The most
revealing paragraph in the book occurs towards the end. It is a
quotation from Mr. Spurgeon himself. 'Leaving home early in the
morning,' he says, 'I went to the vestry and sat there all day long,
seeing those who had been brought to Christ by the preaching of the
Word. Their stories were so interesting to me that the hours flew by
without my noticing how fast they were going. I had seen numbers of
persons during the day, one after the other; and I was so delighted with
the tales of divine mercy they had to tell me, and the wonders of grace
God wrought in them, that I did not notice how the time passed. At seven
o'clock we had our prayer meeting. I went in to it. After that came the
church meeting. A little before ten I felt faint, and I began to think
at what hour I had eaten my dinner, and I then for the first time
remembered that _I had not had any_! I never thought of it. I never even
felt hungry, because God had made me so glad!' Mr. Spurgeon lived that
he might save men. He thought of nothing else. From his first sermon at
Waterbeach to his last at Mentone, the conversion of sinners was the
dream of all his days. That master-passion glorified the whole man, and
threw a grandeur about the common details of every day. He would
cheerfully have thrown away his soul to save the souls of others.
It is along this road that the Church has always marched to her most
splendid triumphs. Why did the Roman Empire so swiftly capitulate to the
claims of Christ? Lecky discusses that question in his _History of
European Morals_. And he answers it by saying that the conquest was
achieved by the new spirit which Christ had introduced. The idea of a
Saviour who could weep at the sepulcher of His friend; and be touched by
a sense of His people's infirmities, was a novelty to that old pagan
world. And when the early Christians showed themselves willing to endure
any suffering, or bear any loss, if, by so doing, they might win their
friends, their sincerity and devotion proved irresistible.
V
But Michael Trevanion must lead us higher yet. For what Michael
Trevanion learned from Paul, Paul himself had learned from an infinitely
greater. Let us trace it back!
'Let me be damned to all eternity that my boy may be saved!' cries
Michael Trevanion, sitting at the feet of Paul, but misunderstanding his
teacher.
'_I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my
kinsmen according to the flesh_,' exclaims Paul, sitting at the feet of
One who not only _wished_ to be accursed, but _entered into_ the
impenetrable darkness of that dreadful anathema.
'_My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?_' He cried from that depth
of dereliction. 'In that awful hour,' said Rabbi Duncan, addressing his
students, 'in that awful hour _He took our damnation, and He took it
lovingly!_' When, with reverent hearts and bated breath, we peer down
into the fathomless deeps that such a saying opens to us, we catch a
glimpse of the inexpressible value which heaven sets upon the souls of
men. And, when Michael Trevanion has led us to such inaccessible heights
and to such unutterable depths as these, we can very well afford to say
Good-bye to him.