'It came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept,
and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of
heaven.'--NEH. i. 4.
Ninety years had passed since the returning exiles had arrived at
Jerusalem. They had encountered many difficulties which had marred
their progress and cooled their enthusiasm. The Temple, indeed, was
rebuilt, but Jerusalem lay in ruins, and its walls remained as they
had been left, by Nebuchadnezzar's siege, some century and a half
before. A little party of pious pilgrims had gone from Persia to the
city, and had come back to Shushan with a sad story of weakness and
despondency, affliction and hostility. One of the travellers had a
brother, a youth named Nehemiah, who was a cup-bearer in the court of
the Persian king. Living in a palace, and surrounded with luxury, his
heart was with his brethren; and the ruins of Jerusalem were dearer to
him than the pomp of Shushan.
My text tells how the young cupbearer was affected by the tidings, and
how he wept and prayed before God. The accurate dates given in this
book show that this period of brooding contemplation of the miseries
of his brethren lasted for four months. Then he took a great
resolution, flung up brilliant prospects, identified himself with the
afflicted colony, and asked for leave to go and share, and, if it
might be, to redress, the sorrows which had made so deep a dint upon
his heart.
Now, I think that this vivid description, drawn by himself, of the
emotions excited in Nehemiah by his countrymen's sorrows, which
influenced his whole future, contains some very plain lessons for
Christian people, the observance of which is every day becoming more
imperative by reason of the drift of public opinion, and the new
prominence which is being given to so-called 'social questions.' I
wish to gather up one or two of these lessons for you now.
I. First, then, note the plain Christian duty of sympathetic
contemplation of surrounding sorrows. Nehemiah might have made a great
many very good excuses for treating lightly the tidings that his
brother had brought him. He might have said: 'Jerusalem is a long way
off. I have my own work to do; it is no part of my business to rebuild
the walls of Jerusalem. I am the King's cupbearer. They went with
their eyes open, and experience has shown that the people who knew
when they were well off, and stayed where they were, were a great deal
wiser.' These were not his excuses. He let the tidings fill his heart,
and burn there.
Now, the first condition of sympathy is knowledge; and the second is
attending to what we do know. Nehemiah had probably known, in a kind
of vague way, for many a day how things were going in Palestine.
Communications between it and Persia were not so difficult but that
there would come plenty of Government despatches; and a man at
headquarters who had the ear of the monarch, was not likely to be
ignorant of what was going on in that part of his dominions. But there
is all the difference between hearing vague general reports, and
sitting and hearing your own brother tell you what he had seen with
his own eyes. So the impression which had existed before was all
inoperative until it was kindled by attention to the facts which all
the time had been, in some degree, known.
Now, how many of us are there that know--and don't know--what is going
on round about us in the slums and back courts of this city? How many
of us are there who are habitually ignorant of what we actually know,
because we never, as we say, 'give heed' to it. 'I did not think of
that,' is a very poor excuse about matters concerning which there is
knowledge, whether there is thought or not. And so I want to press
upon all you Christian people the plain duty of knowing what you do
know, and of giving an ample place in your thoughts to the stark
staring facts around us.
Why! loads of people at present seem to think that the miseries, and
hideous vices, and sodden immorality, and utter heathenism, which are
found down amongst the foundations of every civic community are as
indispensable to progress as the noise of the wheels of a train is to
its advancement, or as the bilge-water in a wooden ship is to keep its
seams tight. So we prate about 'civilisation,' which means turning men
into cities. If agglomerating people into these great communities,
which makes so awful a feature of modern life, be necessarily attended
by such abominations as we live amongst and never think about, then,
better that there had never been civilisation in such a sense at all.
Every consideration of communion with and conformity to Jesus Christ,
of loyalty to His words, of a true sense of brotherhood and of lower
things--such as self-interest--every consideration demands that
Christian people shall take to their hearts, in a fashion that the
churches have never done yet, 'the condition of England question,' and
shall ask, 'Lord! what wouldst Thou have me to do?'
I do not care to enter upon controversy raised by recent utterances,
the motive of which may be worthy of admiration, though the expression
cannot be acquitted of the charge of exaggeration, to the effect that
the Christian churches as a whole have been careless of the condition
of the people. It is not true in its absolute sense. I suppose that,
taking the country over, the majority of the members of, at all events
the Nonconformist churches and congregations, are in receipt of weekly
wages or belong to the upper ranks of the working-classes, and that
the lever which has lifted them to these upper ranks has been God's
Gospel. I suppose it will be admitted that the past indifference with
which we are charged belonged to the whole community, and that the new
sense of responsibility which has marked, and blessedly marked, recent
years, is largely owing to political and other causes which have
lately come into operation. I suppose it will not be denied that, to a
very large extent, any efforts which have been made in the past for
the social, intellectual, and moral, and religious elevation of the
people have had their impulse, and to a large extent their support,
both pecuniary and active, from Christian churches and individuals.
All that is perfectly true and, I believe, undeniable. But it is also
true that there remains an enormous, shameful, dead mass of inertness
in our churches, and that, unless we can break up that, the omens are
bad, bad for society, worse for the church. If cholera is raging in
the slums, the suburbs will not escape. If the hovels are infected,
the mansions will have to pay their tribute to the disease. If we do
not recognise the brotherhood of the suffering and the sinful, in any
other fashion--'Then,' as a great teacher told us a generation ago
now, and nobody paid any attention to him, 'then they will begin and
show you that they are your brethren by killing some of you.' And so
self-preservation conjoins with loftier motives to make this
sympathetic observation of the surrounding sorrows the plainest of
Christian duties.
II. Secondly, such a realisation of the dark facts is indispensable to
all true work for alleviating them.
There is no way of helping men out by bearing what they bear. No man
will ever lighten a sorrow of which he has not himself felt the
pressure. Jesus Christ's Cross, to which we are ever appealing as the
ground of our redemption and the anchor of our hope, is these, thank
God! But it is more than these. It is the pattern for our lives, and
it lays down, with stringent accuracy and completeness, the enduring
conditions of helping the sinful and the sorrowful. The 'saviours of
society' have still, in lower fashion, to be crucified. Jesus Christ
would never have been 'the Lamb of God that bore away the sins of the
world' unless He Himself had 'taken our infirmities and borne our
sicknesses.' No work of any real use will be done except by those
whose hearts have bled with the feeling of the miseries which they set
themselves to cure.
Oh! we all want a far fuller realisation of that sympathetic spirit of
the pitying Christ, if we are ever to be of any use in the world, or
to help the miseries of any of our brethren. Such a sorrowful and
participating contemplation of men's sorrows springing from men's sins
will give tenderness to our words, will give patience, will soften our
whole bearing. Help that is flung to people, as you might fling a bone
to a dog, hurts those whom it tries to help, and patronising help is
help that does little good, and lecturing help does little more. You
must take blind beggars by the hand if you are going to make them see;
and you must not be afraid to lay your white, clean fingers upon the
feculent masses of corruption in the leper's glistening whiteness if
you are going to make him whole. Go down in order to lift, and
remember that without sympathy there is no sufficient help, and
without communion with Christ there is no sufficient sympathy.
III. Thirdly, such realisation of surrounding sorrows should drive to
communion with God.
Nehemiah wept and mourned, and that was well. But between his weeping
and mourning and his practical work there had to be still another link
of connection. 'He wept and mourned,' and because he was sad he turned
to God, 'and I fasted and prayed certain days.' There he got at once
comfort for his sorrows, his sympathies, and deepening of his
sympathies, and thence he drew inspiration that made him a hero and a
martyr. So all true service for the world must begin with close
communion with God.
There was a book published several years since which made a great
noise in its little day, and called itself _The Service of Man_,
which service it proposed to substitute for the effete conception of
worship as the service of God. The service of man is, then, best done
when it is the service of God. I suppose nowadays it is
'old-fashioned' and 'narrow,' which is the sin of sins at present, but
I for my part have very little faith in the persistence and wide
operation of any philanthropic motives except the highest--namely,
compassion caught from Jesus Christ. I do not believe that you will
get men, year in and year out, to devote themselves in any
considerable numbers to the service of man unless you appeal to this
highest of motives. You may enlist a little corps--and God forbid that
I should deny such a plain fact--of selecter spirits to do purely
secular alleviative work, with an entire ignoring of Christian
motives, but you will never get the army of workers that is needed to
grapple with the facts of our present condition, unless you touch the
very deepest springs of conduct, and these are to be found in
communion with God. All the rest is surface drainage. Get down to the
love of God, and the love of men therefrom, and you have got an
Artesian well which will bubble up unfailingly.
And I have not much faith in remedies which ignore religion, and are
brought, without communion with God, as sufficient for the disease. I
do not want to say one word that might seem to depreciate what are
good and valid and noble efforts in their several spheres. There is no
need for antagonism--rather, Christian men are bound by every
consideration to help to the utmost of their power, even in the
incomplete attempts that are made to grapple with social problems.
There is room enough for us all. But sure I am that until grapes and
waterbeds cure smallpox, and a spoonful of cold water puts out
Vesuvius, you will not cure the evils of the body politic by any
lesser means than the application of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We hear a great deal to-day about a 'social gospel,' and I am glad of
the conception, and of the favour which it receives. Only let us
remember that the Gospel is social _second_, and individual
_first_. And that if you get the love of God and obedience to
Jesus Christ into a man's heart it will be like putting gas into a
balloon, it will go up, and the man will get out of the slums fast
enough; and he will not be a slave to the vices of the world much
longer, and you will have done more for him and for the wide circle
that he may influence than by any other means. I do not want to
depreciate any helpers, but I say it is the work of the Christian
church to carry to the world the only thing that will make men deeply
and abidingly happy, because it will make them good.
IV. And so, lastly, such sympathy should be the parent of a noble,
self-sacrificing life. Look at the man in our text. He had the ball at
his feet. He had the _entree_ of a court, and the ear of a king.
Brilliant prospects were opening before him, but his brethren's
sufferings drew him, and with a noble resolution of self-sacrifice, he
shut himself out from the former and went into the wilderness. He is
one of the Scripture characters that never have had due honour--a
hero, a saint, a martyr, a reformer. He did, though in a smaller
sphere, the very same thing that the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews magnified with his splendid eloquence, in reference to the
great Lawgiver, 'And chose rather to suffer affliction with the people
of God,' and to turn his back upon the dazzlements of a court, than to
'enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,' whilst his brethren were
suffering.
Now, dear friends! the letter of the example may be put aside; the
spirit of it must be observed. If Christians are to do the work that
they can do, and that Christ has put them into this world that they
may do, there must be self-sacrifice with it. There is no shirking
that obligation, and there is no discharging our duty without it. You
and I, in our several ways, are as much under the sway of that
absolute law, that 'if a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it brings forth fruit,' as ever was Jesus Christ or His Apostles. I
have nothing to say about the manner of the sacrifice. It is no part
of my business to prescribe to you details of duty. It is my business
to insist on the principles which must regulate these, and of these
principles in application to Christian service there is none more
stringent than--'I will not offer unto my God burnt-offering of that
which doth cost me nothing.'
I am sure that, under God, the great remedy for social evils lies
mainly here, that the bulk of professing Christians shall recognise
and discharge their responsibilities. It is not ministers, city
missionaries, Bible-women, or any other paid people that can do the
work. It is by Christian men and by Christian women, and, if I might
use a very vulgar distinction which has a meaning in the present
connection, very specially by Christian ladies, taking their part in
the work amongst the degraded and the outcasts, that our sorest
difficulties and problems will be solved. If a church does not face
these, well, all I can say is, its light will go out; and the sooner
the better. 'If thou forbear to deliver them that are appointed to
death, and say, Behold! I knew it not, shall not He that weigheth the
hearts consider it, and shall He not render to every man according to
his work?' And, on the other hand, there are no blessings more rich,
select, sweet, and abiding, than are to be found in sharing the sorrow
of the Man of Sorrows, and carrying the message of His pity and His
redemption to an outcast world. 'If thou draw out thy soul to the
hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, the Lord shall satisfy thy
soul; and thou shalt be as a watered garden, and as a spring of water
whose waters fail not.'
'OVER AGAINST HIS HOUSE'
'The priests repaired every one over against his house.'--NEH. iii.
28.
The condition of our great cities has lately been forced upon public
attention, and all kinds of men have been offering their panaceas. I
am not about to enter upon that discussion, but I am glad to seize the
opportunity of saying one or two things which I think very much need
to be said to individual Christian people about their duty in the
matter. 'Every man over against his house' is the principle I desire
to commend to you as going a long way to solve the problem of how to
sweeten the foul life of our modern cities.
The story from which my text is taken does not need to detain us long.
Nehemiah and his little band of exiles have come back to a ruined
Jerusalem. Their first care is to provide for their safety, and the
first step is to know the exact extent of their defencelessness. So we
have the account of Nehemiah's midnight ride amongst the ruins of the
broken walls. And then we read of the co-operation of all classes in
the work of reconstruction. 'Many hands made light work.' Men and
women, priests and nobles, goldsmiths, apothecaries, merchants, all
seized trowel or spade, and wheeled and piled. One man puts up a long
length of wall, another can only manage a little bit; another
undertakes the locks, bolts, and bars for the gates. Roughly and
hastily the work is done. The result, of course, is very unlike the
stately structures of Solomon's or of Herod's time, but it is enough
for shelter. We can imagine the sigh of relief with which the workers
looked upon the completed circle of their rude fortifications.
The principle of division of labour in our text is repeated several
times in this list of the builders. It was a natural one; a man would
work all the better when he saw his own roof mutely appealing to be
defended, and thought of the dear ones that were there. But I take
these words mainly as suggesting some thoughts applicable to the
duties of Christian people in view of the spiritual wants of our great
cities.
I. I need not do more than say a word or two about the ruins which
need repair. If I dwell rather upon the dark side than on the bright
side of city life I shall not be understood, as forgetting that the
very causes which intensify the evil of a great city quicken the
good--the friction of multitudes and the impetus thereby given to all
kinds of mental activity. Here amongst us there is much that is
admirable and noble--much public spirit, much wise and benevolent
expenditure of thought and toil for the general good, much conjoint
action by men of different parties, earnest antagonism and earnest
co-operation, and a free, bracing intellectual atmosphere, which
stimulates activity. All that is true, though, on the other hand, it
is not good to live always within hearing of the clatter of machinery
and the strife of tongues; and the wisdom that is born of solitary
meditation and quiet thought is less frequently met with in cities
than is the cleverness that is born of intercourse with men, and
newspaper reading.
But there is a tragic other side to all that, which mostly we make up
our minds to say little about and to forget. The indifference which
has made that ignorance possible, and has in its turn been fed by the
ignorance, is in some respects a more shocking phenomenon than the
vicious life which it has allowed to rot and to reek unheeded.
Most of us have got so familiarised with the evils that stare us in
the face every time we go out upon the pavements, that we have come to
think of them as being inseparable from our modern life, like the
noise of a carriage wheel from its rotation. And is it so then? Is it
indeed inevitable that within a stone's throw of our churches and
chapels there should be thousands of men and women that have never
been inside a place of worship since they were christened; and have no
more religion than a horse? Must it be that the shining structure of
our modern society, like an old Mexican temple, must be built upon a
layer of living men, flung in for a foundation? Can it not be helped
that there should be streets in our cities into which it is unfit for
a decent woman to go by day alone, and unsafe for a brave man to
venture after nightfall? Must men and women huddle together in dens
where decency is as impossible as it is for swine in a sty? Is it an
indispensable part of our material progress and wonderful civilisation
that vice and crime and utter irreligion and hopeless squalor should
go with it? Can all that bilge water really not be pumped out of the
ship? If it be so, then I venture to say that, to a very large extent,
progress is a delusion, and that the simple life of agricultural
communities is better than this unwholesome aggregation of men.
The beginning of Nehemiah's work of repair was that sad midnight ride
round the ruined walls. So there is a solemn obligation laid on
Christian people to acquaint themselves with the awful facts, and then
to meditate on them, till sacred, Christ-like compassion, pressing
against the flood-gates of the heart, flings them open, and lets out a
stream of helpful pity and saving deeds.
II. So much for my first point. My second is--the ruin is to be
repaired mainly by the old Gospel of Jesus Christ. Far be it from me
to pit remedies against each other. The causes are complicated, and
the cure must be as manifold as the causes. For my own part I believe
that, in regard to the condition of the lowest of our outcast
population, drink and lust have done it almost all, and that for all
but an infinitesimal portion of it, intemperance is directly or
indirectly the cause. That has to be fought by the distinct preaching
of abstinence, and by the invoking of legislative restrictions upon
the traffic. Wretched homes have to be dealt with by sanitary reform,
which may require municipal and parliamentary action. Domestic
discomfort has to be dealt with by teaching wives the principles of
domestic economy. The gracious influence of art and music, pictures
and window-gardening, and the like, will lend their aid to soften and
refine. Coffee taverns, baths and wash-houses, workmen's clubs, and
many other agencies are doing real and good work. I for one say, 'God
speed to them all,' and willingly help them so far as I can.
But, as a Christian man, I believe that I know a thing that if lodged
in a man's heart will do pretty nearly all which they aspire to do;
and whilst I rejoice in the multiplied agencies for social elevation,
I believe that I shall best serve my generation, and I believe that
ninety-nine out of a hundred of you will do so too, by trying to get
men to love and fear Jesus Christ the Saviour. If you can get His love
into a man's heart, that will produce new tastes and new inclinations,
which will reform, and sweeten, and purify faster than anything else
does.
They tell us that Nonconformist ministers are never seen in the slums;
well, that is a libel! But I should like to ask why it is that the
Roman Catholic priest is seen there more than the Nonconformist
minister? Because the one man's congregation is there, and the other
man's is not--which, being translated into other words, is this: the
religion of Jesus Christ mostly keeps people out of the slums, and
certainly it will take a man out of them if once it gets into his
heart, more certainly and quickly than anything else will.
So, dear friends! if we have in our hearts and in our hands this great
message of God's love, we have in our possession the germ out of which
all things that are lovely and of good report will grow. It will
purify, elevate, and sweeten society, because it will make individuals
pure and strong, and homes holy and happy. We do not need to draw
comparisons between this and other means of reparation, and still less
to feel any antagonism to them or the benevolent men who work them;
but we should fix it in our minds that the principles of Christ's
Gospel adhered to by individuals, and therefore by communities, would
have rendered such a condition of things impossible, and that the true
repair of the ruin wrought by evil and ignorance, in the single soul,
in the family, the city, the nation, the world, is to be found in
building anew on the One Foundation which God has laid, even Jesus
Christ, the Living Stone, whose pure life passes into all that are
grounded and founded on Him.
III. Lastly, this remedy is to be applied by the individual action of
Christian men and women on the people nearest them.
'The priests repaired every one over against his house.' We are always
tempted, in the face of large disasters, to look for heroic and large
remedies, and to invoke corporate action of some sort, which is a
great deal easier for most of us than the personal effort that is
required. When a great scandal and danger like this of the condition
of the lower layers of our civic population is presented before men,
for one man that says, 'What can _I_ do?' there are twenty who
say, 'Somebody should do something. Government should do something.
The Corporation should do something. This, that, or the other
aggregate of men should do something.' And the individual calmly and
comfortably slips his neck out of the collar and leaves it on the
shoulders of these abstractions.
As I have said, there are plenty of things that need to be done by
these somebodies. But what they do (they will be a long time in doing
it), when they do get to work will only touch the fringe of the
question, and the substance and the centre of it you can set to work
upon this very day if you like, and not wait for anybody either to set
you the example or to show you the way.
If you want to do people good you can; but you must pay the price for
it. That price is personal sacrifice and effort. The example of Jesus
Christ is the all-instructive one in the case. People talk about Him
being their Pattern, but they often forget that whatever more there
was in Christ's Cross and Passion there was this in it:--the
exemplification for all time of the one law by which any reformation
can be wrought on men--that a sympathising man shall give himself to
do it, and that by personal influence alone men will be drawn and won
from out of the darkness and filth. A loving heart and a sympathetic
word, the exhibition of a Christian life and conduct, the fact of
going down into the midst of evil and trying to lift men out of it,
are the old-fashioned and only magnets by which men are drawn to purer
and higher life. That is God's way of saving the world--by the action
of single souls on single souls. Masses of men can neither save nor be
saved. Not in groups, but one by one, particle by particle, soul by
soul, Christ draws men to Himself, and He does His work in the world
through single souls on fire with His love, and tender with pity
learned of Him.
So, dear friends! do not think that any organisation, any corporate
activity, any substitution of vicarious service, will solve the
problem. It will not. There is only one way of doing it, the old way
that we must tread if we are going to do anything for God and our
fellows: 'The priests repaired every one over against his house.'
Let me briefly point out some very plain and obvious things which bear
upon this matter of individual action. Let me remind you that if you
are a Christian man you have in your possession the thing which will
cure the world's woe, and possession involves responsibility. What
would you think of a man that had a specific for some pestilence that
was raging in a city, and was contented to keep it for his own use, or
at most for his family's use, when his brethren were dying by the
thousand, and their corpses polluting the air? And what shall we say
of men and women who call themselves Christians, who have some faith
in that great Lord and His mighty sacrifice; who know that the men
they meet with every day of their lives are dying for want of it, and
who yet themselves do absolutely nothing to spread His name, and to
heal men's hurts? What shall we say? God forbid that we should say
they are not Christians! but God forbid that anybody should flatter
them with the notion that they are anything but most inconsistent
Christians!
Still further, need I remind you that if we have found anything in
Jesus Christ which has been peace and rest for ourselves, Christ has
thereby called us to this work? He has found and saved us, not only
for our own personal good. That, of course, is the prime purpose of
our salvation, but not its exclusive purpose. He has saved us, too, in
order that the Word may be spread through us to those beyond. 'The
Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three
measures of meal until the whole was leavened,' and every little bit
of the dough, as it received into itself the leaven, and was
transformed, became a medium for transmitting the transformation to
the next particle beyond it and so the whole was at last permeated by
the power. We get the grace for ourselves that we may pass it on; and
as the Apostle says: 'God hath shined into our hearts that we might
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ.'
And you can do it, you Christian men and women, every one of you, and
preach Him to somebody. The possession of His love gives the
commission; ay! and it gives the power. There is nothing so mighty as
the confession of personal experience. Do not you think that when that
first of Christian converts, and first of Christian preachers went to
his brother, all full of what he had discovered, his simple saying,
'We have found the Messias,' was a better sermon than a far more
elaborate proclamation would have been? My brother! if you have found
Him, you can say so; and if you can say so, and your character and
your life confirm the words of your lips, you will have done more to
spread His name than much eloquence and many an orator. All can preach
who can say, 'We have found the Christ.'
The last word I have to say is this: there is no other body that can
do it but you. They say:--'What an awful thing it is that there are no
churches or chapels in these outcast districts!' If there were they
would be what the churches and chapels are now--half empty. Bricks and
mortar built up into ecclesiastical forms are not the way to
evangelise this or any other country. It is a very easy thing to build
churches and chapels. It is not such an easy thing--I believe it is an
impossible thing (and that the sooner the Christian church gives up
the attempt the better)--to get the godless classes into any church or
chapel. Conducted on the principles upon which churches and chapels
must needs at present be conducted, they are for another class
altogether; and we had better recognise it, because then we shall feel
that no multiplication of buildings like this in which we now are, for
instance, is any direct contribution to the evangelisation of the
waste spots of the country, except in so far as from a centre like
this there ought to go out much influence which will originate direct
missionary action in places and fashions adapted to the outlying
community.
Professional work is not what we want. Any man, be he minister,
clergyman, Bible-reader, city missionary, who goes among our godless
population with the suspicion of pay about him is the weaker for that.
What is needed besides is that ladies and gentlemen that are a little
higher up in the social scale than these poor creatures, should go to
them themselves; and excavate and work. Preach, if you like, in the
technical sense; have meetings, I suppose, necessarily; but the
personal contact is the thing, the familiar talk, the simple
exhibition of a loving Christian heart, and the unconventional
proclamation in free conversation of the broad message of the love of
God in Jesus Christ. Why, if all the people in this chapel who can do
that would do it, and keep on doing it, who can tell what an influence
would come from some hundreds of new workers for Christ? And why
should the existence of a church in which the workers are as numerous
as the Christians be an Utopian dream? It is simply the dream that
perhaps a church might be conceived to exist, all the members of which
had found out their plainest, most imperative duty, and were really
trying to do it.
No carelessness, no indolence, no plea of timidity or business shift
the obligation from your shoulders if you are a Christian. It is your
business, and no paid agents can represent you. You cannot buy
yourselves substitutes in Christ's army, as they used to do in the
militia, by a guinea subscription. We are thankful for the money,
because there are kinds of work to be done that unpaid effort will not
do. But men ask for your money; Jesus Christ asks for yourself, for
your work, and will not let you off as having done your duty because
you have paid your subscription. No doubt there are some of you who,
from various circumstances, cannot yourselves do work amongst the
masses of the outcast population. Well, but you have got people by
your side whom you can help. The question which I wish to ask of my
Christian brethren and sisters now is this: Is there a man, woman, or
child living to whom you ever spoke a word about Jesus Christ? Is
there? If not, do not you think it is time that you began?
There are people in your houses, people that sit by you in your
counting-house, on your college benches, who work by your side in mill
or factory or warehouse, who cross your path in a hundred ways, and
God has given them to you that you may bring them to Him. Do you set
yourself, dear brother, to work and try to bring them. Oh! if you
lived nearer Jesus Christ you would catch the sacred fire from Him;
and like a bit of cold iron lying beside a magnet, touching Him, you
would yourselves become magnetic and draw men out of their evil and up
to God.
Let me commend to you the old pattern: 'The priests repaired every one
over against his house'; and beseech you to take the trowel and spade,
or anything that comes handiest, and build, in the bit nearest you,
some living stones on the true Foundation.