Speaking generally, society is constituted upon a non-Christian basis.
We talk about 'Christian' nations. There is not one on the face of the
earth. There is not a nation whose institutions and maxims and politics
and the practices of its individual members are ruled and moulded
predominantly by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So every man that has come
into personal touch with that Lord, and has felt that His commandments
are the supreme authority in his own individual life, when he goes out
into society, comes full tilt against a whole host of things that are
in pronounced antagonism, or in real though unacknowledged
contradiction, to the principles by which a Christian has to live for
himself, and to commend to his brethren. So we have to fight. There are
two things to be done--the imparting of good which will increase the
sum of the world's happiness, and the destruction of evil, which will
subtract some of the world's sorrows. The latter is always a conflict,
for there are arrayed in defence of the evil vested interests, and the
influence of habit, and the lowered vitality and sensitiveness of
conscience which has come from breathing the polluted atmosphere which
evil has vitiated. So that if we set ourselves, in humble, quiet,
out-and-out dependence on Jesus Christ and submission to His will, to
lead other people to submit to His will, there is nothing in the world
more certain than that we shall find against us, starting up, as it
were, out of the mist and taking form suddenly, a whole host of
enemies. So we Christian men, as individuals, as members of a community
and able to bring some influence to bear upon the conscience of
society, have to fight against popular social evils, and to war for
righteousness' sake.
There is another foe. There is nothing that men dislike more than being
lifted up into a clearer atmosphere and made to see truths which they
do not see or care for. When we first become Christians we are all hot
to go and teach and preach; and we fancy that we have only to stand up,
with a Bible in our hand, and read two or three texts, and our fellows
will grasp them as gladly as we have done. But soon we find out that it
is not so easy to draw men to Christ as we thought it would be. We have
to fight against gravitation and unwillingness, when we would lift a
poor brother into the liberty and the light that we are in. We have to
struggle with the men that we are trying to help. We have to war, in
order to bring 'the peace of God which passes understanding' into their
hearts.
But the worst of all our foes, in doing Christian service, is our own
miserable selves, with our laziness, and our vanity, and our wondering
what A, B, and C will think about us, and the mingling of impure
motives with nobler ones, and our being angry with people because they
are so insensible, not so much to Christ's love as to our words and
pleadings. Unless we can purge all that devil's leaven out of
ourselves, we have little chance of working 'the work of the
tabernacle,' or warring the warfare of God. Ah! brethren, to do
anything for this world of unbelief and sin, of which we ourselves are
part, is a struggle. And I know of no work that needs more continual
putting a firm heel upon self, in all its subtle manifestations, than
the various forms of Christian service. Not only we preachers, but
Sunday-school teachers, mothers in their nurseries, teaching their
children, and all of us, if we are trying to do anything for men, for
Christ's sake, must feel, if we are honest with ourselves and about our
work, that the first condition of success in it is to fight down self,
and that only then, being emptied of ourselves, are we ready to be
filled with the Spirit, by which we are made mighty to pull down the
strongholds of sin.